Ever since my adolescent days when I, like every other kid I knew, had unlimited access to HBO and Cinemax After Dark, I’ve been hooked on salacious thrillers. The more Adrian Lyne-esque the better. There’s something about the themes of obsession, infidelity, betrayal, seduction, and murder that set my inner wicked heart a thrumming.
Bold women making devious—and sometimes dangerous choices—so-called “unlikable” female characters acting in unapologetic ways. The more salacious, the better. I think of Diane Lane in Lyne film, “Unfaithful” and how she strays from a perfect marriage into the arms of a dashing, torrid fling. And how perfectly subversive that is. Here’s a female acting strictly out of desire—gasp!—which punctures the notion that women have to have a very good reason to act out.
Here’s five of my most favorite, salacious thrillers.
One of Us Is Dead by Jeneva Rose
Set against the backdrop of the posh Atlanta suburb, Buckhead, Rose’s deviously twisted thriller has been appropriately compared to Big Little Lies, Desperate Housewives, and Mean Girls. Brimming with sex, lies, secrets, and backstabbing socialites, and told through shifting between the povs of four women—one of whom winds up murdered—this wickedly dark thriller had me gasping at every twist and turn.
Good Rich People by Eliza Jane Brazier
An unflinching, searing throat-punch to the uber wealthy, Eliza Jane Brazier dishes up the goods in her latest juicy, devilish thriller, Good Rich People, which takes place high in the dizzying Hollywood Hills and centers around Lyla, who rattles off wicked one liners like, “Of course I don’t listen. I hate listening to people when they talk,” and her husband, Graham, who, along with Graham’s dark-hearted mother, Margo, who play a dangerous game with their tenants. Simmering with scalpel-sharp commentary on class and privilege and loaded with head-spinning twists that had me cackling one second and my jaw-dropping the next, I could cite line after wicked line but will leave off with this zinger:
“There are circles of wealth like there are circles of hell and we’re all trapped in our particular punishing privilege. I wasn’t always rich. I was born rich. I was raised rich. But for seven months before I met Graham, I had nothing. My dad lost everything…I was forced to shoplift designer bags, sell family heirlooms, steal credit cards. I almost had to get a job. It was inhuman.”
The Girls Are All So Nice Here by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
In this delectably twisty thriller, “Amb” Ambrosia Wellington is beckoned back to her leafy college campus years after graduation for her ten-year reunion, where she’ll be reunited with the toxic and complex Sloane “Sully” Sullivan. The only problem? A dark secret buried in both their pasts lies in wait like a ticking time bomb and it’s clear that someone wants revenge. But who? I loved Flynn’s unflinching portrait of messy female friendships and searing social commentary on female ambition captured in this perfect line: “It would be years before I realized that girls weren’t supposed to own their ambition, just lease it from time to time when it didn’t offend anyone else.”
More Than You’ll Ever Know by Katie Gutierrez
I had the pleasure of reading this mesmerizing, groundbreaking literary suspense early and I’m here to testify that this is the kind of novel that will resound for years to come. Even the tag line is salacious: “The dance becomes an affair, which becomes a marriage, which becomes a murder.” More Than You’ll Ever Know follows a propulsive, dual narrative that follows Lore Rivera, who, in 1985, finds herself living a double life in both Laredo, Texas, and also in Mexico City by marrying two men in each city, one who eventually gets arrested for murdering the other. The other pov is set in present day and is that of Cassie Bowman, a true-crime writer who stumbles across Lore’s story and becomes obsessed with finding out the truth of Lore’s past. The oft-tropey themes of infidelity, betrayal, secrets and lies–and also our society’s fixation on true crime—are so artfully explored in Gutierrez’s deft hands that they become intensely nuanced and personal, an elevated meditation on marriage, motherhood, and the shadow self that lies in wait inside all of us.
Watch Out For Her by Samantha M. Bailey
A hypnotic, Hitchcockian take on voyeurism, obsession, and motherhood, I devoured this riveting psychological thriller. Sarah Goldman, mother to her young son Jacob, is hopeful that her family’s recent cross-country move will give them each a fresh start. Especially from Holly Monroe, the gorgeous twenty-something babysitter that had been hired by Sarah’s husband, Daniel, to watch after Jacob. But soon, Holly becomes overly-attached to the Goldman’s while Sarah, a relatable, anxious mother, begins to keep tabs on Holly, until her watchfulness tips over into true surveillance and she glimpses something that propels her to part ways with Holly. But once they are nestled into their new city, it’s clear that the past isn’t willing to let go of them so easily. With twist after pulse-pounding twist and cinematic prose, Bailey delivers a fresh, explosive examination of what it means to be both the watcher and to feel watched.
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