100 books like What Happened That Night

Blackout follows Allie, a girl who has woken up after a car accident with amnesia in the small town of Pender Falls, British Columbia. Allie can’t remember who she was before, but she’s forced to fall back into the life of “Old Allie”—a girl who had a boyfriend the new Allie isn’t comfortable with, a best friend she doesn’t trust, and a shady past she finds more than unsavory. Allie slowly discovers that she doesn’t like who she was before—and she wants to be better.

The core mystery of this story revolves around Allie discovering the events that lead to her car accident. What caused it? And do all these strange dreams mean anything? Can she really trust the people who apparently love and know her?

While the mystery certainly kept me turning the pages, what I loved most about this book was the characters. Allie is a strong girl… show more.

Kacey, the new girl in Broken Falls who has two best friends, Bailey and Jade. There’s a sinister vibe in this book, right off the top; something feels off with this friend group, and when Bailey goes missing, we—as readers—are left flipping the pages, trying to find out what could have happened.

This is one of those books where you really feel like you can’t trust anyone—even the main character. I loved how this story kept me guessing until the very end. Its gritty, filled with family and friendship drama, and the wintery setting make it all the more haunting of a read.

In this book Ariel—AKA Olivia—is the daughter of a couple who was killed when she was a child. Olivia got away and was raised in foster care, but she’s always been haunted by what happened to her parents. The fact that his story was true crime fodder for the public doesn’t help, with many online speculations as to what really happened.

When new details arise in the case that make it seem as though the events of her parents’ deaths might not be what the public previously thought, Olivia is compelled to return home to her small Oregon hometown to uncover the truth. Equipped with enough red herrings to make your head spin, The Girl I Used to Be is a book that will keep you guessing until the end.

In this book, Elliot is a boy whose best friend, Colton, was just murdered. Devastated by the discovery of Colton’s body, Elliot is even more concerned to find a note in his locker—from somebody claiming to be Colton’s killer.

This riveting mystery follows Elliot as he desperately finds the clues left by Colton’s alleged killer. But as he does so, he starts to think that maybe he didn’t know his best friend as well as he thought he did. Either way, Elliot is determined to find the truth.

Flynn Berry’s first thriller opens with a stunningly rendered scene in which the protagonist, Nora, discovers the body of her sister, Rachel, who has been murdered.

Throughout the novel, Berry captures Nora’s shock, grief, and sense of mission—to find out who killed her beloved sister—in precise but poetic language. I witnessed the horror visually and felt Nora’s emotions without any extra flourishes or sentimental language. 

I love true crime and I love history. This book combined the two in an enthralling, often poetic read.

It’s about the case of Lizzie Borden. In this multi-POV story, Schmidt gets into the characters of Lizzie, her sister, a housemaid, and Lizzie’s uncle to explore how the crime unfolded.

It leans literary in its narration style, but I personally like that. The details used in the story really make the reader feel present in the scenes and get into the minds of the characters.

Kellye Garrett takes the fake world of reality TV, hashtags, and influencers to circle her reluctant protagonist, Lena Scott. Life and actions are judged to only have value if you have video of it to get clicks. That’s the message that stuck with me.

Lena Scott and her sister Desiree may share a father, but they could not be more different. That father is hip-hop mogul Mel Pierce known in the business as Murder Mel. The family members are in and out of each other’s lives with the same kinds of drama a blue-collar family would have; there are just bigger price tags. Lena steps out and opts for a modest life away from the family fortune and her father’s name.

When Desiree suddenly dies as a fallen from grace celebrity who appears to have overdosed, Lena doesn’t buy it. Even two years without speaking doesn’t erase how well she… show more.

A beautiful story of sisterhood and the drive for one sister to find out the truth about her murdered sibling.

The writing is pacy, tense, and is a read-in-one-sitting book. I remember not being able to breathe for the entirety of the novel! It is, honestly, one of the finest thrillers of all time.

I love everything Sara Shepard does.

The story kicks off with Emma, a kind-hearted foster kid, discovering she has an identical twin sister named Sutton, who was adopted by a wealthy family. When Emma agrees to meet Sutton, she's shocked to learn that Sutton has mysteriously disappeared, and she's expected to step into Sutton’s life until she returns. What starts as a simple case of mistaken identity quickly spirals into a compelling mystery as Emma immerses herself in Sutton’s world, uncovering secrets and lies at every turn.

What really draws me to this book is its layered storytelling. As Emma digs deeper into the life of her sister, she encounters the dangerous game that Sutton and her friends played—a game all about deceit and cruel pranks. Shepard masterfully intertwines the suspense of the investigation with the drama of high school life, making each character’s motives murky and adding to the… show more.

This novel is a murder mystery, of sorts, that also has a lot to say about socio-economic divides in contemporary Korea. This was particularly interesting to me because when I lived there in the 1970s, everyone was poor. No one owned a motorbike, much less a car, and they were all barely scraping by. Now, though, great wealth and privilege have emerged alongside persistent poverty, and that class divide looks too familiar to Americans. The rich are privileged and have access to things the poor do not, including justice.