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“Which would be worse, to live as a monster or to die as a good man?”
Looking for books with shocking plot twists that will keep you on the edge of your seat? There’s nothing better than reaching that jaw-dropping moment in a novel when everything you thought you knew is flipped upside down. The best plot twist books combine clever storytelling, suspense, and unforgettable characters, leading to endings you never see coming. Whether you’re a fan of twisty thrillers, dark mysteries, or psychological novels with unexpected endings, these stories prove that the right surprise can make a book unputdownable. From subtle misdirections to shocking finales, these recommendations are packed with the sorts of twists that spark gasps and late-night reading sessions. And, don’t worry, we here at What We Reading won’t spoil any of these reveals. Instead, you’re getting a list of the best books with twists that deliver mind-bending surprises without ruining the fun.
Where else could we begin a list of the best books with plot twists than with Gillian Flynn’s infamous and iconic Gone Girl? This book club staple begins with Nick Dunne waking up on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, only to discover that his beloved wife, Amy, has disappeared. The police immediately suspect Nick. Amy’s friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears that none of it is true.
A police investigation of his computer reveals a series of strange searches. He claims that he isn’t responsible for them. And then there are the bizarre, persistent calls on his cell phone. But what has happened to Nick’s darling wife? A timeless domestic thriller brimming with unreliable narrators and jaw-dropping twists, Gone Girl is a dark and pulsating page-turner that every self-respecting thriller fan needs to read.
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Shooting up the global bestseller lists on the back of its infamous plot twists, Alex Michaelides’ debut novel, The Silent Patient, opens with famous painter Alicia Berenson, a woman who appears to have everything in life, committing a shocking, seemingly senseless crime. When her husband comes home late from work one evening, she ties him to a chair and shoots him five times. From that moment on, she never utters another word. She is sentenced to The Grove, a secure forensic unit in London.
Alicia’s refusal to talk or provide any explanation for this shocking crime turns a domestic tragedy into a viral media storm. Theo Faber, a criminal psychotherapist, is obsessed with the crime and Alicia’s silence. He is determined to unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband, but his efforts soon lead to a dizzying descent into his own motivations – and an intense search for the truth that threatens to consume him.
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Melville Heights is one of the nicest neighbourhoods in Bristol, England. It’s not the sort of place where people are brutally murdered in their own kitchens. But it is the sort of place where everyone has a secret. And everyone is watching you. As the headmaster credited with turning his school’s fortunes around, Tom Fitzwilliam is beloved by all – including Joey Mullen, his new neighbour, who develops an intense infatuation with this thoroughly charming, yet unavailable man. Joey believes that he is a secret. Little does she know that Tom’s teenage son, Freddie, excels at observing people and has spotted how strangely she behaves around his father.
One of Tom’s students, Jenna Tripp, also lives on the same street, and she isn’t convinced that the teacher is as squeaky clean as he seems. For one thing, he has taken a particular liking to her best friend and fellow classmate. Meanwhile, twenty years prior, a schoolgirl writes in her diary, chronicling her doomed obsession with a handsome young English teacher named Mr. Fitzwilliam…
A tragic accident. It all happened so quickly. She couldn’t have prevented it. Could she? In a split second, Jenna Gray’s world descends into a nightmare. Her only hope of moving on is to walk away from all that she knows to start anew. Desperate for escape, Jenna moves to a remote cottage on the Welsh coast. But, she continues to be haunted by her fears, her grief, and her memories of a cruel November night that changed her life forever.
Slowly, Jenna begins to glimpse the potential for happiness in her future. But her past is about to catch up with her, and the consequences will be devastating. One of the best books with plot twists, I Let You Go is a gripping mystery thriller by Clare Mackintosh that has become a real favourite with crime-obsessed book clubs everywhere.
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Harry is a novelist on the brink of stardom. Edward, her husband-to-be, is seemingly perfect. In love and freshly engaged, their bliss is interrupted by the reemergence of the Holbecks, Edward’s family, and the embodiment of American old money. For years, they dominated the headlines and pulled society’s strings, though Edward left them all behind to forge his own path in life.
But, even though he’s long severed ties with his family, Edward is still set to inherit all their wealth. Harry is pulled into the wealth and glamour of the Holbecks, but is particularly captivated by Robert, the magnetic head of the family. During their first encounter, he slips Harry a cassette, revealing a shocking confession that sets the inevitable game in motion. As she is forced to endure the Holbecks’ savage Christmas traditions, Harry embarks on a deadly quest for the truth in this shocking thriller-mystery novel by Catherine Steadman.
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Years ago, bookseller and mystery aficionado Malcolm Kershaw compiled a list of the genre’s most unsolvable murders, those that are almost impossible to crack – which he titled “Eight Perfect Murders”. Yet no one is more surprised than Mal when an FBI agent comes knocking on his door. She is looking for information on a series of unsolved murders that eerily resemble the killings on Mal’s old list. But the FBI isn’t the only one interested in Mal. The killer is out there, watching his every move.
To protect himself, Mal begins to look into possible suspects and sees a killer in everyone around him. But Mal doesn’t count on the investigation leaving a trail of death in its wake. Suddenly, a series of shocking twists leaves more victims dead – and the noose around Mal’s neck grows so tight he may never escape.
Every summer, Cadence Sinclair Eastman and her affluent family retreat to their private island. There, Cadence, her cousins Mirren and Johnny, and their friend Gat, grow up together and are collectively dubbed the ‘Liars’ by their family. But on the fifteenth visit to the island, a harrowing, tragic accident occurs to the group, leaving Cadence with severe amnesia.
After two years away from the island, Cadence returns to the island. As she retraces the steps and recalls the memories of that final, fateful summer, she begins to discover more and more of the dark truth about her family, the accident that occurred, and about herself. One of the best books with plot twists for anyone looking for a more literary, YA vibe, We Were Liars is a psychological mystery about memory, nostalgia, and the lies we tell ourselves to hide ourselves from the truth.
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Lou is a happily married mother of an adorable toddler. She’s also the victim of a local serial killer. Recently brought back to life and returned to her grieving family by a government project, she is grateful for her second chance. But as the new Lou adapts to her old routines, and as she bonds with other female victims, she realises that disturbing questions remain about what exactly preceded her death and how much she is truly able to trust around her.
Now it’s not enough to care for her child, love her husband, and work the job she’s always enjoyed – she must also figure out the circumstances of her death. Darkly comic, tautly paced, and delivering plenty of plot twists that balance bittersweet with jaw-dropping, My Murder is a clever and unique thriller novel by Katie Williams.
Riley Sager has become renowned for writing books with plot twists that leave us stunned, but The Only One Left might be his finest work of all. Back in 1929, the Hope family murders shocked the Maine coastline. Whilst most people assume seventeen-year-old Lenora Hope was responsible, the police were never able to prove it. Other than her denial of the killings, she has never spoken publicly about what happened that evening, nor has she ever set foot outside Hope’s End, the cliffside mansion where the killings occurred.
It is now 1983, and home-health aide Kit McDeere arrives at a decaying Hope’s End to care for Lenora. In her seventies, confined to a wheelchair and rendered mute after a series of strokes, Lenora can only communicate via a typewriter. Then, one evening, Lenora uses this to make a tantalising offer. She wants to tell all. As Kit helps Lenora tell her story about the events leading up to the murders, she soon starts to wonder whether this seemingly harmless woman in her care could be far more dangerous than she first thought.
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New Year’s Eve, 1999. At a Blockbuster Video in Linden, New Jersey, four teenage girls working the night shift are attacked. Only one of them survives. Police soon identify a suspect who flees and is never seen again. Fifteen years on, in the same town, four teenage employees are working late at an ice cream shop. They are attacked and, again, only one of them makes it out alive. Both surviving victims call the killer, uttering only a few final words: “Goodnight, pretty girl.”
In the aftermath, three lives intersect: the survivor of the Blockbuster massacre who’s forced to relive her tragedy, the brother of the original suspect, and the FBI agent tasked with solving both cases. On a collision course toward the truth, all three lives will forever be changed, and not everyone will make it out alive in this book filled with plot twists, Alex Finlay’s The Night Shift.
Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, has just been handed the assignment of a lifetime: a week on a luxury cruise with just a handful of cabins. The sky is clear, the waters calm, and the veneered, select guests are jovial as the exclusive cruise ship, Aurora, begins her voyage. At first, Lo’s stay is nothing short of idyllic. However, as the weeks wear on, frigid winds whip the deck, gray skies fall, and Lo witnesses what she can only describe as a dark, 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 (or someone) has gone terribly, terribly wrong.
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Another one of the best books with plot twists comes from one of the queens of the thriller world, Shari Lapena, in An Unwanted Guest. It’s winter in the Catskills and Mitchell’s Inn, nestled deep in the woods, is the perfect setting for a relaxing – perhaps even romantic – weekend away. It boasts spacious old rooms with huge wood-burning fireplaces, a well-stocked wine cellar, and opportunities for cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, or just curling up with a good murder mystery.
So when the weather takes a turn for the worse, and a blizzard cuts off the electricity, all the guests settle in to try and make the best of it. Soon, though, one of the guests winds up dead. And when a second guest dies, the remaining survivors realise it is no accident. Within the snowed-in paradise, someone is picking off the guests one at a time. And there’s nothing any of them can do now but hunker down and hope they’re able to survive the storm – and one another.
The Long Weekend might not be the most polished thriller book of all time; however, if you’re looking for a book with jaw-dropping plot twists and as many unhinged characters as possible, it’s a great go-to. Three women arrive at Dark Fell Barn for a girls’ night. Their husbands are set to join them tomorrow. Missing from the group is Edie, who was previously the glue holding them together until her husband died suddenly.
But what they hoped would be a relaxing break soon turns to horror. Upon arriving at Dark Fell Barn, the women find a devastating note claiming that one of their husbands will be murdered. There are no phones, no cell service. Friendships will fracture as the situation spirals wildly out of control. This group has kept each other’s secrets for far too long.
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No list of the best plot twists in books would be complete without mentioning Shutter Island. The year is 1954. U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his partner, Chuck Aule, have come to Ashcliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane to investigate the disappearance of a patient. Multiple murderer Rachel Solando is loose somewhere on this remote and barren island, despite having been kept in a locked cell under constant surveillance.
As a killer hurricane relentlessly bears down on them, a strange case takes on an even darker, more sinister shade – with hints of radical experimentation, horrifying surgeries, and lethal countermoves being made in the cause of a covert shadow war. No one is going to escape Shutter Island unscathed, because nothing at Ashcliffe is what it seems. But then neither is Teddy Daniels.
Jess is in need of a fresh start. She’s broke and alone, and she’s just left her job under less than ideal circumstances. Her half-brother, Ben, didn’t sound thrilled when she asked to stay with him in his Paris apartment. But when she shows up to find a very nice apartment, could Ben really have afforded this? – he’s not there.
The longer Ben stays missing, the more Jess begins to dig into her brother’s situation, and the more questions she has. Ben’s neighbours are an eclectic bunch of characters, and not especially friendly. Jess might have come to Paris to escape her past, but it’s beginning to look like it’s Ben’s future that may be in question. Everyone’s a neighbour. Everyone’s a suspect. And everyone knows something they’re not saying.
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Mallory Quinn is fresh out of rehab when she takes a job as a babysitter for Ted and Caroline Maxwell. She is there to look after their five-year-old son, Teddy. Mallory immediately takes to her job. She has her own living space, goes on nightly runs, and has the stability she craves. And she sincerely bonds with Teddy, a boy who is never without his sketchbook and pencil. But one day, he draws something different: a man in a forest, dragging a woman’s lifeless body.
Then, Teddy’s artwork becomes increasingly sinister, and his stick figures soon evolve into lifelike sketches well beyond the ability of any five-year-old. Mallory begins to wonder if these are glimpses of a long-unsolved murder. Knowing just how crazy all of that sounds, Mallory nevertheless sets out to decipher the images and save Teddy before it’s too late.
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Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her hometown to cover the unsolved murder of a preteen girl and the disappearance of another. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother, or to her half-sister she barely knows: a thirteen-year-old girl with a bizarre grip on the whole town.
Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims – perhaps a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story – and survive this homecoming. Sharp Objects is another book by Gillian Flynn, one of the all-time greats at books with plot twists.
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One night, Mia Dennett enters a bar to meet her on-again, off-again boyfriend. But when he doesn’t show, she unwisely leaves with an enigmatic stranger. At first, Colin Thatcher seems like a safe one-night stand. But following Colin home will turn out to be the worst mistake of Mia’s life.
When Colin decides to hide Mia in a secluded cabin in rural Minnesota instead of delivering her to his employers, Mia’s mother, Eve, and detective Gabe Hoffman will stop at nothing to find them. In this book full of plot twists and shocking discoveries, no one will predict the emotional entanglements that eventually cause this family’s world to shatter.
Alex Walker has always looked up to her perfect older sister. Maddie has succeeded in all the ways Alex hasn’t. But, despite their differences, the two sisters made a pact to spend one week together every summer. It’s a promise they have never broken, until now. When Maddie suddenly cancels her annual trip home, Alex begins to worry.
Relying only on the clues her sister has left behind, Alex follows Maddie to the Hamptons, where she meets the Blackwell family – the last people to have seen Maddie alive before she vanished into thin air. The Blackwells appear to have it all: wealth, beauty, and a private beachside mansion. It’s a world unlike any Alex has ever seen, but she quickly discovers that looks can be deceiving, and a life of luxury always comes at a cost.
The Home Group is a glamorous collection of celebrity members’ clubs dotted across the world where the rich and famous can party hard and then crash out in five-star suites, far from the prying eyes of the media and the public. The most spectacular of all is Island Home – a closely-guarded resort off the English coast, whose three-day launch party is the event of the year.
But, behind the scenes, tensions are at breaking point: the event has pushed the whole team to their limits. All of them have something to hide. As tempers fray and behaviour worsens, some of Island Home’s members will begin to wish they’d never made the guest list. A book full of plot twists and shocking reveals, Ellery Lloyd’s The Club is dark, sinister, and smart, set within the world of exclusive celebrity clubs.
Desperate to escape the ghosts of his failed marriage, Cole upends his life. He leaves London behind for a remote stretch of coast, relishing the respite from the noise, drama, and relentless careerism that curdled both his relationship and his mental health. Leonora has made the same move for similar reasons. She’s living just a short walk from Cole’s seaside cottage, preparing for her latest art exhibition. Although Cole still can’t work out what went wrong with his marriage, Leonora is having trouble acclimating to the hostile landscape.
Then, two young female activists raising awareness about gendered violence disappear while passing through. Cole and Leonora suddenly find themselves in the middle of a police investigation – and the resulting media firestorm when the world learns of what happened. And as the tensions escalate alongside the search for the missing women, they soon realise that they don’t know each other as well as they thought.
Cass is having a hard time since the night she saw the car in the woods on the winding rural road, in the middle of a downpour, with the woman sitting inside – the woman who was killed. She’s been trying to put the crime out of her mind; what could she have done, really? It’s a dangerous road to be on in the middle of a storm. Her husband would be furious if he knew she’d broken her promise not to take that shortcut home. And she probably would only have hurt herself if she’d stopped.
But since then, she’s been forgetting every little thing: where she left the car, if she took her pills, the alarm code, why she ordered a pram when she doesn’t have a baby. The only thing she can’t forget is that woman, the woman she might have saved, and the terrible nagging guilt. Or the silent calls she’s receiving, or the feeling that someone’s watching her…
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
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