Others: Overwhelmingly negative Nora is a reclusive crime writer, content with the routine of life in her apartment in London. She hasn't seen her friend Clare in years - not since Nora walked out of school one day and never went back. So she's surprised to receive an invitation to Clare's hen do. Perhaps it's a chance to reconnect with her best friend. But something goes terribly wrong in the eerie glass house deep in the English countryside. Then Nora wakes up with her head bandaged and a police guard outside her door. Are they there to protect her - or arrest her? Nora is scared. Scared because while she can remember the broken glass, the gun, the blood, she's not sure if she can bear the full truth of what happened.
Genres: mystery, thriller, literary fiction
Lists: …
Stuart Turton
2018 · 273 pages · 7 reviews
Others: Mostly positiveGosford Park meets Groundhog Day by way of Agatha Christie and Black Mirror – the most inventive story you'll read Tonight, Evelyn Hardcastle will be killed ... Again It is meant to be a celebration but it ends in tragedy. As fireworks explode overhead, Evelyn Hardcastle, the young and beautiful daughter of the house, is killed. But Evelyn will not die just once. Until Aiden – one of the guests summoned to Blackheath for the party – can solve her murder, the day will repeat itself, over and over again. Every time ending with the fateful pistol shot. The only way to break this cycle is to identify the killer. But each time the day begins again, Aiden wakes in the body of a different guest. And someone is determined to prevent him ever escaping Blackheath...
What made the match, strongest first
Ottessa Moshfegh
2020 · 272 pages · 4 reviews
Others: MixedA novel of haunting metaphysical suspense about an elderly widow whose life is upturned when she finds a cryptic note on a walk in the woods that ultimately makes her question everything about her new home. While on her normal daily walk with her dog in the forest woods, our protagonist comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground with a frame of stones. "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body". Our narrator is deeply shaken; she has no idea what to make of this. She is new to area, having moved her from her longtime home after the death of her husband, and she knows very few people. And she's a little shaky even on best days. Her brooding about this note quickly grows into a full-blown obsession, and she begins to devote herself to exploring the possibilities of her conjectures about who this woman was and how she met her fate. Her suppositions begin to find echoes in the real world, and with mounting excitement and dread, the fog of mystery starts to form into a concrete and menacing shape. But as we follow her in her investigation, strange dissonances start to accrue, and our faith in her grip on reality weakens, until finally, just as she seems be facing some of the darkness in her own past with her late husband, we are forced to face the prospect that there is either a more innocent explanation for all this or a much more sinister one - one that strikes closer to home. A triumphant blend of horror, suspense, and pitch-black comedy, 'Death in Her Hands' asks us to consider how the stories we tell ourselves both guide us closer to the truth and keep us at bay from it. Once again, we are in the hands of a narrator whose unreliability is well earned, only this time the stakes have never been higher.
What made the match, strongest first
Rebecca Makkai
2023 · 4 reviews
Others: Leaning positiveA successful film professor and podcaster, Bodie Kane is content to forget her past—the family tragedy that marred her adolescence, her four largely miserable years at a New Hampshire boarding school, and the murder of her former roommate, Thalia Keith, in the spring of their senior year. Though the circumstances surrounding Thalia's death and the conviction of the school's athletic trainer, Omar Evans, are hotly debated online, Bodie prefers—needs—to let sleeping dogs lie. But when the Granby School invites her back to teach a course, Bodie is inexorably drawn to the case and its increasingly apparent flaws. In their rush to convict Omar, did the school and the police overlook other suspects? Is the real killer still out there? As she falls down the very rabbit hole she was so determined to avoid, Bodie begins to wonder if she wasn't as much of an outsider at Granby as she'd thought—if, perhaps, back in 1995, she knew something that might have held the key to solving the case.
What made the match, strongest first
Laura Dave
2024 · 400 pages · 3 reviews
Others: PositiveNora Noone’s father, Liam, was many things to many people. To the public he was a self-made hotel magnate, whose luxury boutique hotels were among the most coveted destinations in the world. To his three ex-wives, he was a loving yet distant family man who managed to keep his finances—and his families—separate. But to Nora, her father was always a mystery—especially after his suspicious death at his cliffside home. Though the authorities rule Liam's death accidental, Nora and her estranged brother, Sam, believe otherwise. As they form an uneasy alliance to unpack the mystery, they start putting together the pieces of their father’s past and uncover a family secret that changes everything.
What made the match, strongest first
Ruth Ware
2017 · 429 pages · 13 reviews
Others: Leaning negative"Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, has just been given the assignment of a lifetime: a week on a luxury cruise with only a handful of cabins. At first, Lo's stay is nothing but pleasant as the exclusive cruise ship, the Aurora, begins her voyage in the picturesque North Sea. But as the week wears on, frigid winds ship the deck, gray skies fall, and Lo witnesses what she can only describe as a dark and terrifying nightmare: a woman being thrown overboard. The problem? All passengers remain accounted for--and so, the ship sails on as if nothing has happened, despite Lo's desperate attempts to convey that something has gone terribly wrong."--Page [4] cover.
What made the match, strongest first
Angie Kim
2023 · 387 pages · 2 reviews
Others: Positive"We didn't call the police right away." Those are the first words of this extraordinary novel about a biracial Korean-American family in Virginia whose lives are upended when their beloved father and husband goes missing. Mia, the irreverent, hyperanalytical twenty-year-old daughter, has an explanation for everything--which is why she isn't initially concerned when her father and younger brother Eugene don't return from a walk in a nearby park. They must have lost their phone. Or stopped for an errand somewhere. But by the time Mia's brother runs through the front door bloody and alone, it becomes clear that the father in this tight-knit family is missing and the only witness is Eugene, who has the rare genetic condition Angelman syndrome and cannot speak.
What made the match, strongest first
Not a fanI despised these two because I thought the twists and the endings were very predictable I thought the characters were incredibly annoying and just overall I happen to read these two this year and they also just happen to be the two least favorite books by her that I have read.
Not a fani loathe in a dark wood in particular the characters the characters are horrible a lot of times the thrillers if i read books where they're so unlikable characters and they're not written well i do not care what happens to them
