Gone Girl was an instant hit among crime and thriller fanatics. Gillian Flynn’s mystery thriller was one of her best-selling novels and was written into a movie that also enjoyed critical acclaim. The novel centers around the disappearance of loving wife Amy Dunne and her husband, Nick, who seems to be suspicious at best.
There are 17 book titles like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, including Sometimes I Lie, Girl On The Train, The Woman In The Window, The Silent Patient, and many others. They are all categorized under the same genres, like mystery, thriller, and crime novels.
So if you loved Gone Girl and you’re itching for some more crime thrillers, we have got you covered with our list of 17 similar novels.
1. Sometimes I Lie – Alice Feeney
Have you ever lied so much that you start to believe your own lie? Amber has.
After Amber wakes up in the hospital, she finds herself unable to move and unable to speak. What’s worse is that she can hear everything and everyone around her, but they have no idea. And with no way to tell them, she is forced to stay in her hospital bed and listen to the world pass her by.
But not everything is as it seems. Although Amber doesn’t remember what happened to her, she suspects her husband may have something to do with it. One thing is for certain, though, and that’s that he has fallen out of love with her.
This thrilling novel jumps between the present day and the things that Amber overhears and excerpts from her childhood diaries from more than two decades ago.
2. Girl On The Train – Paula Hawkins
This thrilling novel tells the story of three women whose lives become entangled in a series of events that will leave you confused and intrigued. The book takes on the point of view of each three women – Rachel, Anna, and Megan.
After Rachel’s marriage with Tom crumbled, she fell back into her excessive drinking habits. With no control over her addiction, and after losing her job because of her drunken actions, she tries to regain control by doing creating a routine that seems to bring her a sense of peace.
Rachel begins to take the train every morning and every evening and passes the house of her ex-husband Tom on her journey. Now remarried and living with his new wife, Anna, Tom’s happiness is too much for Rachel to bear.
After watching a young, attractive couple that lives a few houses down from Tom and his seemingly perfect life, Rachel begins to fixate on them and even creates personas for the two strangers. The woman, Jess, seems like the ideal wife: smart, attractive, and mysterious.
But after waking up one day, bloodied and with no recollection of the previous night, Rachel finds out that Jess is missing – and her real name is Megan.
Anna begins to suspect that Rachel knows something about the disappearance after seeing her drunken and stumbling around their home on the night that Megan vanished. Desperate to prove her innocence, Rachel must find a way to put the pieces of the puzzle together and clear her name.
3. The Woman In The Window – A.J. Finn
After a traumatic accident and a recent divorce from her husband, Ed, Anna has developed agoraphobia and rarely ever leaves her home. She sometimes speaks to her daughter Olivia over the phone but spends most of her time people-watching out of her windows.
Soon the Russells move into the home across from her, and Anna seems to get on well with them, especially their quiet teenage son and his mother, Jane. Content in her blossoming friendship with Jane, Anna can’t help but keep tabs on her by watching their house through her window.
But Anna’s newfound happiness is short-lived, and one night while she is spying at her neighbors through her window, she witnesses something that would change her life forever and begin to unravel her fragile mind and repressed memories.
Her life becomes even more complicated when she approaches the police with what she has seen, and not one of the officers believes her story. What’s worse is that the Russells deny that anything strange ever went on in their home. Now Anna has to question everything she thinks is real and is forced to look inwards at her own unraveled life.
4. The Silent Patient – Alex Michaelides
Alicia Berenson had it all: a lucrative painting career and an equally as adored fashion photographer husband, Gabriel. But when Gabriel returns home after a shoot one day, Alicia murders her husband in cold blood.
After the murder, Alicia falls silent and refuses to talk to anyone about her motive for the crime. With whispers sweeping through the public about why she gave up her seemingly perfect life, Alicia’s fame skyrockets, and her paintings are some of the most sought-after artwork in the country.
To avoid the publicity and the mania over Alicia, she is taken to a secure forensic unit in the North of London called the Grove. Her silence only makes the case more fascinating, and nobody is more enveloped in the mystery than a criminal psychotherapist, Theo Faber.
Theo’s intrigue quickly turns into an obsession with Alicia’s case, and his determination to uncover her secrets begins to threaten his career and his sanity.
5. The Passenger – Lisa Lutz
After her husband’s death, Tanya Dubois leaves his corpse at the base of their staircase and packs her bags. Without an alibi, she knows her innocence will be hard to prove, which leaves her with just one other option: run.
Tanya, now going by the name Amelia, changes her appearance and her name and leaves town. While on the run, she meets up with a bartender named Blue, who seems to have a dark and secretive past of her own.
But when Tanya, now donning another new alias – Debra – and Blue try to outrun their past, they come to the realization that living under the radar isn’t as easy as they thought it would be. With more and more bodies popping up wherever they go, they need to find a way to work together and leave their secrets behind them by making a new life for themselves.
6. The Turn Of The Key – Ruth Ware
This chilling crime novel follows Rowan Caine after she accepts a nannying position based in the picturesque Scottish Highlands. The children seem well-behaved, and the house that she will be staying in is modern and is fitted with state-of-the-art technology.
But Rowan’s amazement soon turns to dismay after she is imprisoned for the death of one of the children she has been hired to look after.
While she is locked away, she begins to write to her lawyer from prison and tries to explain the events that lead up to the child’s death. But the details are complicated, even for her, and finding an answer to the questions surrounding the crime is harder than it seems.
Rowan’s story is straight out of a horror novel, with children that are far from the angelic kids she met when she had her interview, cameras that follow and watch her every move, and unexplained footsteps coming from the boarded-up attic.
But Rowan has secrets of her own. She lied on her job application, and her false credentials have landed her in a situation that she could never have predicted. Although she maintains her innocence, how did a bright young girl end up being committed for crimes that would shock even the hardest of criminals?
7. Girl Last Seen – Nina Laurin
Lainey has worked tirelessly for more than a decade to put her past behind her. But now, thirteen years later, her past is staring at her in the form of a photograph. A photograph of a missing girl.
A missing girl that looks just like she did when she was abducted all those years ago…
Ten-year-old Olivia Shaw looks identical to Lainey when she was taken, and Lainey knows exactly who has taken her. The same man that has caused her a lifetime of pain, suffering, and unresolved trauma. A man who was never caught or convicted for his crime.
But now Lainey has a chance to bring him to justice, and she can’t let another poor girl fall victim to his evil again, even if that means digging up the past and reliving the nightmare that she went through all over again.
8. Lock Every Door – Riley Sager
After losing her boyfriend and her job, loveless and penniless, Jules is looking for a way out of the situation she’s in. And then she finds it: a job posting for an apartment sitter for a luxury building called the Bartholomew.
But there are a few rules that Jules will need to follow. No bothering the residents, no leaving the apartment unattended overnight, and no visitors. Without any other options that could make her a quick buck, she agrees to take on the job and begins to settle into the beautiful – if slightly unsettling – apartment building.
While staying in the apartment, Jules meets another apartment sitter named Ingrid. She is sweet and pleasant enough, although she bears a creepy resemblance to Jules’ sister, who she had lost almost a decade ago.
After getting to know one another, Ingrid confides in Jules that she is suspicious of the goings-on in the Bartholomew. Although paranoid, Jules doesn’t believe the stories. That is – until Ingrid goes missing the next day.
In her search for the missing girl, Jules uncovers the dark and terrible secrets hidden within the Bartholomew’s walls and unwittingly starts a horrifying chain of events that could change her life forever. If she ever gets out of the building alive.
9. The Good Girl – Mary Kubica
When young school teacher Mia Dennet agreed to meet her irresistible on-again, off-again boyfriend at a local bar, she never thought she would end up leaving with Colin – a charming and attractive stranger.
Leaving with Colin seemed like a fun and reckless thing to do, but little did Mia know that following him home would be the biggest mistake she would ever make.
After months of being trapped by Colin in a remote cabin, Mia is changed forever. Much to her mother’s dismay, her daughter is nothing like the person she once knew. Working tirelessly with the help of Police Detective Gabe Hoffman, they will stop at nothing to uncover the truth of what happened at the cabin.
Told through the perspective of three of the characters – Mia, her mother, Eve, and Colin – this psychological thriller will have you on the edge of your seat.
10. Before I Go To Sleep – S.J. Watson
Christine wakes up every day to find herself in a strange room that she has never seen before. And then, she is greeted by a man who calls himself Ben and insists that he is her husband.
Every morning, Ben reminds her of the accident that has left her with amnesia and the inability to form new memories. Christine soon also learns that she was working with a doctor to recover her memory, but everything the doctor is telling her seems to be an alternate version of Ben’s recollections.
To put the pieces of her life back together, Christine has to delve into her past and try to remember the life that she is told she had. But as she gets closer to the truth, the past seems to become more and more unbelievable.
Determined to find out who she really is and what really happened to her, Christine begins a journey of self-discovery while fighting against the memory loss she must face at the end of each day.
11. In The Woods – Tana French
More than twenty years ago, twelve-year-old Adam and his two friends spent an afternoon playing in the dense woods near their housing estate. But when the children failed to return, the police were sent out in search of the missing kids.
When the police arrive at the scene, they find one of the boys clinging to a tree with bloodied shoes and no recollection of anything that happened that afternoon. The other children were never found.
Now 34 and a detective for the Dublin Murder Squad, Adam Ryan – now named Rob Ryan – must do everything in his power to keep his past a secret in an effort to keep his new life and the most important thing in his life: his job.
But when Ryan and his partner are given the case of a twelve-year-old girl that has been murdered in the same woods where his nightmare began, Rob must attempt to relive the events of his past to discover the truth of what happened.
12. If You Knew Her – Emily Elgar
Cassie Jensen is a beautiful, loving, and loyal wife. But when she’s brought into the hospital early one morning after being hit by a car, she is in critical condition and desperately clinging to life.
After tending to Cassie, Chief Nurse Alice feels like she knows Cassie – or at least, she looks incredibly familiar – and begins to suspect that there is something more going on with her patient than anyone knows.
After it is revealed that Cassie is three months pregnant despite the odds against it, her fears are confirmed, and she knows that she has to get to the bottom of her patient’s mystery life.
But Nurse Alice isn’t the only one who knows that something is wrong. Frank Ashcroft, a fellow patient, believed by doctors to be comatose, is unable to move or talk and is trapped in his own body, forced only to listen as the world passes him by.
But Frank knows something. Something important. And he needs to find a way to warn Alice that Cassie’s life is, in fact, in danger.
13. The Silent Wife – A.S.A. Harrison
Psychotherapist Jodi Brett lives comfortably with her long-term partner, Todd Gilbert. And after almost thirty years in a happy and fulfilling partnership, their relationship is as close to perfect as you can get.
Except, of course, for Todd’s occasional wandering eye. While admittedly annoying, he had never acted on his impulses – until Natasha.
Now Natasha wants Todd to herself, and she has a few tricks up her sleeve to make sure that she gets what she wants. But Jodi won’t let him go that easily and discovers that she has a few dirty tricks of her own.
With Natasha forcing her hand, Jodi soon learns just how much she is capable of and just how far she will go to claim what’s hers.
14. False Step – Victoria Helen Stone
Stuck in a dead-end marriage to the down-and-out penniless Johnny, Veronica Bradley has stayed with her husband for the sake of their daughter, Sydney, who worships the ground that Johnny walks on.
But when Johnny ends up finding a missing child and returning him to his family, he is thrust into the spotlight and branded a local hero. With the public eye now not only on Johnny but on Veronica and her daughter, as well, the cracks of the young couple’s marriage begin to show.
Veronica would rather keep her secrets hidden from the public – and for a good reason – but her constant deceit and secret-keeping have made her suspicious of her own husband. His behavior is becoming increasingly strange, and Veronica is left wondering if her husband is hiding something even bigger than she is.
15. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
This novel deals with extremely sensitive subject matter that some readers may find disturbing or offensive. We would recommend reading this book with caution.
The Lovely Bones tells the story of young Susie Salmon, who, after taking a shortcut home one night, meets a mysterious stranger. Susie is then assaulted and murdered and narrates the novel from her own personal Heaven.
From Heaven, Susie watches her friends and family. She is also able to watch the events after her disappearance unfold.
Her family initially refuses to accept her death, and without answers about what happened to their daughter and sister, they are caught in a loop – unable to move on from her sudden departure.
Susie’s father grows increasingly suspicious of an odd neighbor and will stop at nothing to get to the bottom of his daughter’s death. He is racing against time to solve the murder himself after the local law enforcement drops the case, and he will need to find out what happened on the night in question before his guilt consumes him.
16. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson
After the disappearance of his niece, Harriet Vanger, more than forty years ago, her uncle Henrik has worked tirelessly to solve the mystery of her disappearance. In a desperate attempt to uncover the truth, he hires Mikael Blomkvist, a disgraced journalist and former publisher of a political magazine called Millenium.
Mikael teams up with Lisbeth Salander, a woman whose appearance is shadowed by her numerous piercings and tattoos. But Lisbeth has a haunted past of her own.
Together, both Mikael and Lisbeth must work to find out the hidden truths and uncover the corruptions that surround Harriet Vanger’s disappearance.
17. The Couple Next Door: A Novel – Shari Lapena
It seems as if Anne and Marco Conti have it all – a loving relationship, a gorgeous home, and their adorable baby, Cora. But after a horrific crime is committed while they are at a dinner party with their next-door neighbors, they are quickly branded persons of interest.
But what really unfolded that night is a much more complicated sequence of events than anyone thought possible.
Assigned to the case, Detective Rasbach becomes suspicious of the frantic couple and is determined to figure out what they’re hiding. But they aren’t only keeping secrets from the detective.
The couple soon realizes that they have both been keeping secrets from one another, as well, and they’re finally coming to light.
In a novel filled with deception and unexpected twists, you’ll be left speechless at the final shocking revelation that brings the book to an unforgettable close.
References:
Good Reads: Gone Girl
Book Bub: Books Like Gone Girl
Book Riot: 24 Psychological Thrillers For Fans of Gone Girl, The Girl on the Train, and Big Little Lies