If You Loved Gone Girl, These 7 Thriller Books Will Get Your Blood Pumping

Reading a really good thriller book is such a uniquely gripping experience. You’ll swear you’re fine, just reading a few pages before bed, until you suddenly find yourself sweating, holding your breath, and whispering, “Oh my God,” over and over at 2 a.m.

Like true crime documentaries, these books awaken your inner detective, but with even more devastating emotional stakes. There’s just something disturbingly satisfying about a sick plot twist that punches you in the chest, right? So, in honour of all the books that mentally shocked me, here’s a list of thrillers that will truly have your jaw on the floor. 

Gone Girl is practically a genre-defining moment in modern thrillers, and if you haven’t read it yet, you need to. Or if you've seen it on Netflix, you might just want to read it. It begins with the sudden disappearance of Amy Dunne, the beautiful and beloved wife of Nick Dunne, who is immediately the prime suspect.

Halfway through, the story turns so sharply that your brain might physically short-circuit. It’s an exploration of love, ego, media manipulation, and what happens when two deeply flawed people try to outsmart each other. The writing is razor-sharp, and the suspense builds with suffocating intensity. Price: $12.87. Where To Buy: Shop Amazon.

This book is everywhere, and rightly so. Alicia Berenson is a glamorous painter living the dream until she casually shoots her husband in the face five times and then never speaks another word. Her therapist, Theo Faber, is obsessed with finding out why.

The novel peels back layers of trauma, deceit, and shocking secrets, all while daring you to guess the ending (spoiler: you probably won’t). The final twist knocked the wind out of me so violently I had to just sit in silence and recalibrate my entire personality. Price: $14.65. Where To Buy: Shop Amazon.

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If you’ve ever wanted to understand the dark world of mob justice, police corruption, and post-colonial trauma through the lens of psychological crime fiction, Lightseekers has that in every front. It follows Dr Philip Taiwo, a psychologist, who returns to Nigeria after years abroad and is hired to investigate the brutal killing of three university students. The twist is that these murders were public, captured on camera, and deemed justified by the local community.

As Taiwo digs deeper in the tense town of Okriki, he’s met with resistance, silence, and a very real threat to his safety. His only real ally is Chika, his witty and resourceful driver, who often proves more helpful than any detective. What sets Lightseekers apart is its pace, which combines the thrill of a classic thriller with rich cultural context. You follow the case, you feel the heat, the tension, the paranoia. Price: ₦14,500. Where To Buy: Shop Roving Heights.

This book is about sibling rivalry, but in a homicidal way. Set in Lagos, this darkly comedic thriller follows Korede, a nurse who is always cleaning up after her little sister Ayoola who just happens to have a habit of stabbing her boyfriends to death. Each murder is spun as self-defence, but Korede knows something’s off.

Things spiral when Ayoola catches the eye of Tade, the doctor Korede has been crushing on for ages, and you start to hope that Ayoola doesn’t kill off her sister’s crush. If you’ve ever had a sibling who gets away with everything, this’ll hit very close to home. Price: ₦6,000. Where To Buy: Shop Narrative Landscape.

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The Housemaid tells us the story of Millie who is just trying to get her life back together after getting out of prison. She lands a job as a live-in housemaid for the well-off Winchester family and things go from weird to completely unhinged very quickly. Living in the attic with a locked door, dealing with a wife who flips moods like a light switch, and resisting a crush on the devastatingly handsome husband, Millie’s walking a very tightrope.

Then you add in a creepy child, a sexy Italian landscaper who doesn’t speak English, and a house full of secrets, and you’ve got a twisty, claustrophobic thriller that burns. This book had me screaming internally from the first chapter. Price: ₦12,000. Where To Buy: Shop Roving Heights.

Teen true crime nerd Pippa decides to re-investigate a local murder for her school project, because…what could possibly go wrong? Well, everything. The deeper she digs into the death of popular girl Andie Bell, the more it becomes clear that the original suspect (Andie’s boyfriend) might not have been guilty.

Working with his brother, Pippa uncovers a trail of lies, buried secrets, and serious danger. The pacing is relentless and it’s genuinely unputdownable. You’ll fly through it and then immediately recommend it to every teenage girl you know. Price: ₦10,500. Where To Buy: Shop Roving Heights.

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Now this book was really something. I started reading it thinking I was about to read a tragic love story. What I got instead was a horrifying tale of obsession, manipulation, and one of the most disturbing manuscripts I’ve ever read in fiction. Lowen, a struggling writer, is hired to ghostwrite for the injured Verity Crawford. But while sorting through Verity’s office, Lowen discovers a hidden autobiography packed with horrifying admissions about what happened to the family’s dead children.

The tension is brutal, the sex scenes are wild, and the ending still haunts me. If you’re sensitive to topics like child harm or domestic trauma, do tread carefully. But if you’re after something that’ll wreck you in a what-did-I-just-read way, this book is worth it. Price: ₦12,000. Where To Buy: Shop Roving Heights.

There’s nothing quite like a well-written thriller to pull you completely out of your own world and dunk you headfirst into someone else’s chaos. If you’re into psychological breakdowns, messy family dynamics, or morally grey heroines with secrets to hide, this list has you covered.

Just don’t blame me when you’re still up at 3 a.m., frantically flipping pages and texting your best friend about what just happened. You’ve been warned. Let’s embrace the emotional damage together.