10 Best Books With Unreliable Narrators To Keep You Guessing

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“It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.”

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There’s nothing quite like a story that keeps you guessing, and books with unreliable narrators are masters at doing just that. From narrators who deliberately mislead to those whose perspectives are skewed by emotion or circumstance, these storytellers challenge readers to question every word on the page. Whether you’re pulled to psychological thrillers, literary fiction, or suspenseful mysteries, an unreliable narrator book offers twists and revelations that stick. Today at What We Reading, we’re curating our best unreliable narrator books that will keep you on your toes, questioning what is and isn’t true. Expect clever misdirection, flawed perspectives, and narrators whose truths unfold in surprising ways. If you love novels that make you second-guess everything, these are the stories you won’t want to put down. 

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Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier

Kicking off our list of books with unreliable narrators is one of the most famous gothic romance books of all time, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. The novel opens in Monte Carlo, where our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady’s maid, she barely believes her luck. 

It is only when they arrive at his massive country estate that she realises how large a shadow his late wife will cast over their lives – presenting her with a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their marriage from beyond the grave. First published back in 1938, this classic Gothic novel is such a compelling read that it won the Anthony Award for Best Novel of the Century. 

Life Of Pi – Yann Martel

Life of Pi tells the story of Piscine “Pi” Patel, a young Indian boy who survives a shipwreck and is stranded on a lifeboat in the Pacific Ocean for 227 days. He is accompanied by a Bengal tiger named Richard Parker, along with a zebra, a hyena, and an orangutan, all of whom play symbolic and practical roles in his struggle for survival. Through Pi’s narration, readers experience his fear, ingenuity, and spiritual reflections as he navigates the vast ocean, battling hunger, storms, and the psychological strain of isolation. 

One of the novel’s defining features is the ambiguity of Pi’s account. At the end, he offers an alternative version of events – one entirely devoid of animals but filled with human cruelty and survival instincts – forcing readers to question which story is “true.” This makes Pi a subtly unreliable narrator: his perspective is filtered through trauma, imagination, and his father, leaving us readers to wrestle with the nature of truth and storytelling. 

The Lying Game – Ruth Ware

On a cool June morning, a woman is walking her dog in the idyllic coastal village of Salten along a tidal estuary known as the Reach. Before she can stop him, the dog charges into the water to retrieve something sinister. The next morning, three women in and around London – Fatima, Thea, and Isabel – receive the text they hoped would never come from the fourth member of their once inseparable group, Kate. 

The four girls were best friends at Salten, a boarding school near the cliffs of the English Channel. The four were infamous for playing the Lying Game, telling lies at every turn with varying states of serious and flippant nature that were disturbing enough to ensure that everyone steered clear of them. Yet their little game had consequences, and the girls were all expelled under mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the school’s eccentric art teacher, Ambrose. 

Boy Parts – Eliza Clark

Irinia obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her. Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema. 

The news triggers a destructive tailspin, centred around Irinia’s relationship with her obsessive best friend, and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention. Undoubtedly one of our favourite books with an unreliable narrator who is as unhinged as she is hilarious, Boy Parts is a pitch-black comedy that fearlessly explores the taboo regions of sexuality and gender roles in contemporary society. 

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Before I Go To Sleep – S.J. Watson

S.J. Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep orbits around Christine Lucas, a woman who suffers from amnesia, causing her to awaken every single day with no memory of her past, or even her own identity. Every morning, she’s shocked to find herself in a stranger’s bed; her husband, Ben, patiently helps her piece together the fragments of her life. 

But, as Christine begins to keep a secret journal, she discovers a series of increasingly disturbing inconsistencies in the stories she’s been told, leading her to question everything she’s learned to believe about the past – and the people around her. With a mounting sense of dread, Christine realises that she can no longer trust anyone, even those closest to her. 

Room – Emma Donoghue

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it’s where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and sleep and play. At night, Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe where he is meant to sleep when Old Nick visits. 

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has built a life for Jack. But it isn’t enough. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son’s bravery and a lot of luck. A poignant book with an unreliable narrator, Room is told entirely from Jack’s innocent, energetic perspective, conjuring a tale about what it means to journey from one world to another.

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The Fury – Alex Michaelides

One of the best authors, renowned for his unreliable characters, Alex Michaelides introduces readers to Lana Farrar, a reclusive ex-movie star, and her friend (and our narrator for the piece), Elliott Chase, in 2024’s The Fury. Every year, Lana invites her closest friends to escape the English weather and spend Easter on her idyllic private Greek island. 

Only this year, the group found themselves trapped there overnight. Old friendships concealed hatred and a desire for revenge. What follows is an intense game of cat and mouse – a battle of wits, full of twists and turns, all building to an unforgettable climax. The night ends in violence and death, as one of the party is found murdered. 

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Atonement – Ian McEwan

On a hot summer day in 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses the flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant. But Briony’s incomplete grasp of adult motives – together with her precocious literary gifts – brings about a crime that will change all of their lives. 

As it follows that crime’s repercussions through the chaos and carnage of the Second World War and into the close of the twentieth century, Atonement engages the reader on every conceivable level, with an ease and authority that mark it as a genuine masterpiece, and one of the best examples of a book featuring nuanced and layered characters. 

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Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita is Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel about obsession, manipulation, and the dark corners, with an untrustworthy character wrapped in its heart. The story is told through the lens of Humbert Humbert, a refined, eloquent French intellectual who becomes infatuated with twelve-year-old Dolores Haze, whom he dubs “Lolita.” After marrying her mother, Humbert gains custody of Dolores when her mother dies. What follows is a disturbing road trip across 1950s America as Humbert attempts to justify his abuse of the girl. 

Told entirely from Humbert’s unreliable POV, Lolita is at times mesmerising and deeply unsettling. Nabokov’s richly layered prose is at odds with the disturbing subject matter, challenging readers to separate narrative beauty from narrative horror, making for one of the most infamous books with unreliable narrators. 

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Gone To Dust – Matt Goldman

Private detective Nils Shapiro is focused on forgetting his ex-wife and keeping warm during another Minneapolis winter when a former colleague, neighbouring Edina Police Detective Anders Ellegaard, calls with the impossible. Suburban divorcee Maggie Somerville was found murdered in her bedroom, her body covered with the dust from hundreds of emptied vacuum bags. 

Digging into Maggie’s cell phone records, Nils finds that the most frequently called number belongs to a mysterious young woman whose true identity could shatter the Somerville family. After the FBI demands that Nils drop the case, Nils and Ellegaard are forced to take their investigation underground, where the case grows as murky as the contents of the vacuum cleaner bags. Is this a strange case of domestic violence, or something with far-reaching, sinister implications? 

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Want More Unreliable Narrators? Check Out Our Guide On Writing Unreliable Narrators On Our Sister Site, What We Writing! 

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