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'Gone Girl' Turns 10: Discover a Decade of Domestic Thrillers
When author Gillian Flynn published Gone Girl in 2012, her book tweaked the entire trajectory of domestic thrillers as a kind of sub-subgenre category designation. Like Patricia Highsmith before her, Flynn flipped the script on what could be done with plot structure and psychological depth in an established narrative format.
In the past ten years, we’ve seen the delightfully creepy results of this change in direction. Domestic thrillers have always featured spouses with secrets, but now the spouses are more sinister, the secrets are more baroque, and the narrators are often severely unreliable. Psychological suspense is the richer for it.
To recognize just how much this subgenre has exploded in the past decade, we’ve gathered below a collection of popular thriller, suspense, and mystery-adjacent books with title words that play off some aspect of "gone," "girl," and related familial terms. All books featured here were published between the release of Gone Girl in 2012 and spring 2022—a strange and specific little slice of history. Enjoy!
Gone/Missing/Vanish/Disappear
Girl/Woman
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Wife/Mrs.
A Grab Bag of Words About Families!
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Do you love domestic thrillers? Share your favorite books below!
Comments Showing 1-27 of 27 (27 new)
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PinkPanthress
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Apr 04, 2022 02:05AM
I only started getting interested in this kind of genre, always 'forgetting' that gone Girl is still on my TBR List. A few goodies in this list, too!
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I've read 28/61 books on this list! lolNeed to check out some of these other books.
Great list! I've read just NINE of them so far...more to come.
Can't believe how many of these I've already read! Can you tell this is my favorite genre?
Though I have read Gone Girl, haven't read any others on this list. I have been wanting to read 'The Death of Mrs. Westaway'...I wonder how it is?
I can't wait for summer so I can dive into more of these books!! There just aren't enough hours in the day right now to read everything I want to read.
Heads up, if you read Gone Girl, you won't need to read any of these 😂. Any time I read a domestic thriller, I just find myself wishing it was more like that book. It "ruined" the subgenre, as folks say.
Im only read 5 on this list along with Gone Girl, which i loved when i read it a few years ago!! I disagree with the above comment, if you read Gone Girl you DO NEED TO READ the above books mentioned cause every Domestic Thriller is TOTALLY DIFFERENT from the last one!!
Noble wrote: "Though I have read Gone Girl, haven't read any others on this list. I have been wanting to read 'The Death of Mrs. Westaway'...I wonder how it is?"I would read other books by Ruth Ware before you read that one!
Rebecca wrote: "Noble wrote: "Though I have read Gone Girl, haven't read any others on this list. I have been wanting to read 'The Death of Mrs. Westaway'...I wonder how it is?"I would read other books by Ruth W..."
You might want to read The Woman in Cabin 10 or The Turn of the Key. Both are excellent.
Jess wrote: "Can't believe how many of these I've already read! Can you tell this is my favorite genre?"Noble wrote: "Though I have read Gone Girl, haven't read any others on this list. I have been wanting to read 'The Death of Mrs. Westaway'...I wonder how it is?"
It's good, but you might want to read Christie's After the Funeral too!
I've read so many of these in the past year that they've become predictable and it's become more difficult for me to be impressed. Thanks for this list that introduced me to a few new authors I had not previously tried. Looking forward to reading them !
Rebecca wrote: "Noble wrote: "Though I have read Gone Girl, haven't read any others on this list. I have been wanting to read 'The Death of Mrs. Westaway'...I wonder how it is?"I would read other books by Ruth W..."
I have read 'The Turn Of The Key'...that was good
Mark wrote: "Rebecca wrote: "Noble wrote: "Though I have read Gone Girl, haven't read any others on this list. I have been wanting to read 'The Death of Mrs. Westaway'...I wonder how it is?"I would read other..."
Thank you! I have read 'The Turn Of The Key' and it was good
Peter wrote: "Jess wrote: "Can't believe how many of these I've already read! Can you tell this is my favorite genre?"Noble wrote: "Though I have read Gone Girl, haven't read any others on this list. I have be..."
OK thank you for the suggestion...have read a lot of Agatha Christies but not that one!
Dori wrote: "Great list! I've read just NINE of them so far...more to come."I've read 9 of them also!
Noble wrote: "Though I have read Gone Girl, haven't read any others on this list. I have been wanting to read 'The Death of Mrs. Westaway'...I wonder how it is?"I loved it. Honestly, the vibe is completely different from the Gone Girl. More like an amateur sleuth cozy mystery kind of book. But enjoyable.
Audrey wrote: "Heads up, if you read Gone Girl, you won't need to read any of these 😂. Any time I read a domestic thriller, I just find myself wishing it was more like that book. It "ruined" the s..."Have you read Dark Places? One of my favorite books!
Samira wrote: "I loved it. Honestly, the vibe is c..."
Thank you...good to hear that!
I've read so many of these! This is definitely my favorite subgenre. Of these, The Last Mrs. Parrish and The Echo Wife are probably my favorites. Highly recommend The Echo Wife if you love domestic thrillers but want to shake things up a bit.
I've read Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train and Pretty Girls. Any other similar to these that anyone would recommend?
One of my favorite genres of all time! Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris is also a great one, I'd recommend checking it out.
Clem wrote: "One of my favorite genres of all time! Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris is also a great one, I'd recommend checking it out."Same! Surprised there are not any B.A.Paris books on this list! They always seem to “wow” me with the same level as reading Gone Girl for the first time.
This is hilarious! No wonder I can never remember the name of the book I'm reading or have read. I guess our thriller writers/publishers need to be more creative with their titles.
It seems most authors--regardless of the genre--are writing in first person POV nowadays, which I avoid at all costs. So as much as I love this genre, I've skipped most of these books for that reason.
Noble wrote: "Though I have read Gone Girl, haven't read any others on this list. I have been wanting to read 'The Death of Mrs. Westaway'...I wonder how it is?"Not that good...
