99 books like My Dark Vanessa

I expected to be swept away by this book in the way most psychological thrillers impact me–my heart quickening with the pace, my chest aching for resolution, and a rush of relief when the novel ends, followed by a craving for more. That happened. Sure. But the twist in this book comes in the middle of the book with a buildup of suspense and a major resolution that satisfied all my expectations of a thriller.

After that, the novel thrust me into a whole new reading experience, almost another genre, one marked by a different kind of intensity and suspense. Still, it did not feel like two books in one. It felt like one story told through two necessarily different genres. It felt right.

Privilege, entitlement, politics, and sleaze, it’s all here, along with the disturbing sense that many perpetrators get away with far too many misdeeds for most of their lives, while their victims’ lives are instantly thrown into crisis. It’s a solid, twisty psychological thriller with hints of the Bullingdon Club and Westminster bad behaviour.

Lily King’s Writers & Lovers is set in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1997, where my own novel takes place a century earlier. It’s a fictional coming-of-age story of a young woman who tries to write her way into adulthood.

Casey Peabody works as a waitress in Harvard Square, spends time with her aspiring writer friends, walks along the Charles River, and sits for hours at her desk trying to write, all of which I did in those same places at her same age and often with the same sense of longing—and which, incidentally, Victoria Swann does, too, albeit while wearing a floor-length skirt and using a fountain pen.

Casey, Victoria, and I, (and I assume Lily King herself), were not alone: so many people I’ve met over the years have spent time in their twenties hanging out around Harvard Square, anxious and waiting to become the grown-ups we hoped to be.… show more.

I loved this book because it took me to places I found uncomfortable in a way I could manage.

I found the relationships challenging to accept but totally understandable, given the circumstances. The voices were clear and distinct. The way the story progressed allowed me to stay with and feel compassion for lives I would have otherwise judged.

It was a stunningly brave book.

Emma O’Donovan is a pretty and popular 18-year-old whose life completely changes after she attends a couple of parties and the following day is found semi-conscious on her doorstep. Unaware of what she has been through the night before, Emma struggles to cope with the public shaming that ensues. This is a brilliant examination of consent, rape culture, and how hard it can be to speak out and seek justice.

This novel was once lauded as an “ultimate feminist fantasy” and is about Bella, a woman who’s eventually had enough of being a victim and sets about murdering sleazy men.

I remember how this novel and author lost some respect when the book was picked up by film director Michael Winner (of Death Wish movies fame).

Winner went on to play fast and loose, adapting it into serial killer schlock. But. Don’t let that put you off as this novel is far better, more witty, and funny than any Winner movie.

It fulfils the fantasy of what (every now and then) a woman might love to do to any man who “done her wrong”. Surely a blueprint for serial killer and assassin Villanelle?

“Tell me what you can’t forget, and I’ll tell you who you are.”

Thus begins Marlena, Julie Buntin’s debut novel about Marlena and Cat, who meet as fifteen-year-olds in rural Michigan. Their friendship is intense and complicated, and right from the start, we know that Cat is the only one who makes it out alive.

Buntin’s writing perfectly captures the voice and texture of adolescence, and her book is a model for how to maintain tension in a story when you find out early on (page 6 to be exact) that one of the main characters is dead.

The sections featuring Cat as an adult show that while she may have left her small town behind, she can’t escape her past. 

You don’t need me to recommend Ferrante, but I will anyway.

A ferocious story about the pain of leaving childhood behind, Ferrante tells the story of Giovanna, a sheltered only child whose life changes when she overhears her father compare her to his sister Vittoria, from whom he is estranged: “She’s getting the face of Vittoria.”

With that, Giovanna is thrown into an existential crisis that leads her to connect with her mysterious aunt, the dark side of Ferrante’s beloved Naples as well as herself. 

Ferrante understands the cruelty of women better than anyone and creates drama with the subtlest glance or turn of phrase.

Here she is at the height of her power, weaving a tense, glittering story that revolves, in part, around who is the rightful owner of a bracelet.

This book is a luminously honest, unflinching, and brave memoir by the marvelous Dani Shapiro, whose most recent memoir, Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love, caused a sensation when it was published in 2019. 

When Slow Motion begins, Dani is in her early 20s, adrift, rebelling against her Jewish heritage, dabbling in acting and modeling, involved in a dead-end affair with a married man. 

Then one night, a phone call changes everything- her parents have been in a dreadful car accident. Her father dies a few weeks later, and her mother requires months of intensive rehab.

Dani's tragic loss of the father she idolized and adored prompts a reckoning with her choices and a reevaluation of her life. Slow Motion is beautifully written, wrenching, and unwaveringly candid.

This author blows me away with her unflinching approach to sex and sexuality.

This exposes complex and rarely approached relationships in a fresh and startling way. The issue of pain transference isn’t something often dealt with in fiction.

I think I love this book because it’s unsettling and honest. I like a book that upends me and makes me consider life in ways I hadn’t before.