Our Favorite Rich Lady Thrillers of 2021
When we went to compile the list of all the books we’d read this year, there were so. many. thrillers. I guess we’ve been craving the escape from reality that reading a book about wealthy women who are suddenly in danger or doubting their own sanity can bring! Kind of like if you introduce a little murder into an episode of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Can you see mesh of Squid Games and Real Housewives as clearly as I can right now??
The Neighbor’s Secret by L. Alison Heller
This book has a little bit of everything-murder, vandals, wild teenagers and a book club where all the mom’s meet to one up each other with themed baking and all the gossip that’s running under the surface of their perfect suburban neighborhood. There are so many sympathetic characters that I rooted for and an underlying tension that created a great edge to the writing. Plus the most elegant mom with the biggest house in the neighborhood has a dead husband and a daughter who’s barely speaking to her-leaving me wondering what she’s hiding behind her perfect facade. -E
The Hunting Wives by May Cobb
This might be my favorite book cover of the year. Set in a small Texas town, a newcomer from Chicago gets sucked into the elite group of women who run the social scene and are keeping a lot of dark secrets. Their regular shooting nights are much less innocent than they seem and the group dynamics are…complicated at best. As the intoxicating leader of the group, Margot, pulls her in, she loses herself, her grip on reality and her judgement, risking the rest of her life for these friendships. When a young girl shows up dead, Sophie finds herself in the center of a murder investigation and doesn’t know who to trust or what to believe. -D
A Special Place for Women by Laura Hankin
Laura Hankin has the ability to write books that I think are completely about one thing - like a reporter trying to infiltrate a secretive women-only club (think The Wing but with passwords, mysterious doors and mean-girl leadership group), that end up going completely off the rails and being about something else altogether. I love her funny and fast moving takedowns of little pockets of Manhattan society, especially because she always seems to try to find the good in the characters. Definitely lighter on the murders and violence than some of the other books we read this year, but with a healthy dose of big twists that you don’t see coming. - D
The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Marie Benedict
This is a little different than our other thrillers because it’s historical and based on the true story of the time that Agatha Christie disappeared for eleven days and ignited a national manhunt, but it’s got all the same ingredients that make the other books so good, a successful and wealthy women who may be an unreliable narrator, a handsome and potentially philandering husband, and a beautiful home and life that may not be all they seem. This is the kind of mystery that you could read in a day and then share with your mom. -E