Books like “My Lovely Wife”

What to read after “My Lovely Wife” by Samantha Downing: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.

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1
The Kind Worth Killing
Peter Swanson · 2015
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller”
On a night flight from London to Boston, Ted tells a stranger that he wishes his cheating wife were dead. Lily calmly offers to help him plan it. As their murder scheme takes shape in Boston, each of the narrators hides a past the others know nothing about.
2
Gone Girl
Gillian Flynn · 2012
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller”
On their fifth wedding anniversary, Amy Dunne disappears from a rented house and her husband Nick becomes the prime suspect. Two narrators tell very different versions of the same marriage.
3
The Housemaid
Freida McFadden · 2022
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller”
A woman with no money and a criminal record takes a live-in job cleaning for a wealthy family. The wife is cruel, the husband is kind, and a locked door upstairs keeps drawing her attention as the household's rules grow stranger.
4
The Last Mrs. Parrish
Liv Constantine · 2017
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller”
An ambitious woman works her way into the life of a rich, seemingly perfect couple, planning to take the wife's place. The household she longs to join has secrets of its own, and neither woman is quite what she pretends to be.
5
Fight Club
Chuck Palahniuk · 1996
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller”
Insomniac and alienated, a nameless narrator meets a charismatic soap salesman named Tyler Durden and helps found an underground fight club that grows into something far larger. As the club spreads, the narrator's life and sense of self begin to come apart.
6
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Patricia Highsmith · 1955
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller”
Tom Ripley, a poor young man in New York, is sent to Italy by a rich shipbuilder to bring home his son Dickie. Instead Tom is drawn into Dickie's comfortable world and, when it is threatened, does whatever it takes to keep it.
7
Black-Eyed Susans
Julia Heaberlin · 2015
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller”
As a teenager, Tessa was the only victim to survive the killer who buried girls in a Texas field of wildflowers, and her testimony sent a man to death row. Nearly twenty years later, fresh flowers appear near her home, and lawyers ask her to recover the memories she lost.
8
Local Woman Missing
Mary Kubica · 2021
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller”
In a quiet suburb, a young mother vanishes while out running, and weeks later another woman and her six-year-old daughter disappear nearby. Eleven years on, the daughter suddenly returns, and what she brings back unsettles everyone who stayed behind.
9
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Lionel Shriver · 2003
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller”
Through letters to her estranged husband, Eva looks back on the life of their son Kevin and on the years she struggled to feel any bond with him. She tries to understand the person he became, and to face her own part in what happened.
10
The Woman in the Window
A. J. Finn · 2018
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller”
Child psychologist Anna Fox lives alone, unable to leave her home, and spends her days watching her neighbours through a camera. When she sees something in the house across the street, no one believes her, and she is left to work out whether the danger is real or in her mind.
11
The Girl on the Train
Paula Hawkins · 2015
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller”
Rachel rides the same commuter train every day and invents stories about a couple she sees from the window, until she learns the woman has vanished. Her memory of the night in question is full of gaps, and she cannot tell how much of what she believes is real.
12
A Flicker in the Dark
Stacy Willingham · 2022
Similar atmosphere: “Psychological Thriller”
As a child she helped put her father away for killing girls. Twenty years later she is a therapist about to marry, when young women in her town begin to disappear again and the old case follows her into the present.