Books like Behind Closed Doors
What should you read after B. A. Paris’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- B. A. Paris
- 2016
- Domestic thriller
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after Behind Closed Doors
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchThe Girl on the Train
Paula Hawkins
Another woman nobody believes, watching a marriage from outside and getting closer to it than is safe. Hawkins runs on the same fuel: credibility as the real weapon.
- Nobody believes the wife
- A husband who is perfect in public
- Then-and-now chapters alternating
- Mystery structure, not captivity
Great matchGone Girl
Gillian Flynn
The marriage-as-warfare book everything here descends from. Flynn's couple perform perfection for an audience too, except she lets the wife hold the knife.
- A husband who is perfect in public
- Then-and-now chapters alternating
- A plan formed in silence
- Far more explicit
Great matchThe Silent Patient
Alex Michaelides
A woman stops speaking after shooting her husband, and a narrator arrives determined to explain her. In both books the silence is where the power sits.
- Nobody believes the wife
- A husband who is perfect in public
- Dread instead of mystery
- A clinical setting
Great matchThe Couple Next Door
Shari Lapena
Lapena's speciality is the same as Paris's: the nice house on the nice street where the marriage was already rotten well before the crime arrived.
- A husband who is perfect in public
- Very short chapters
- A locked room in a nice house
- Whodunit, not captivity
Best for the controlling houseThe Girl Before
J.P. Delaney
A man whose rules for the women living in his house start reasonable and never stop tightening. Coercive control, told through architecture.
- A locked room in a nice house
- A husband who is perfect in public
- Then-and-now chapters alternating
- High-concept smart-house premise
Great matchBefore I Go to Sleep
S.J. Watson
A wife entirely dependent on her husband's account of reality, with no way to check it against anything. Watson reaches Paris's central horror by a different road.
- Nobody believes the wife
- A locked room in a nice house
- Dread instead of mystery
- An amnesia conceit
Great matchThe Woman in the Window
A.J. Finn
A woman confined to her house, certain about what she saw, dismissed by everyone with authority over her. The disbelief does most of the damage here too.
- Nobody believes the wife
- A locked room in a nice house
- Very short chapters
- Slow first act
Best for the gilded cageThe Last Mrs. Parrish
Liv Constantine
Halfway through, the perspective flips and you find the enviable wife has been living Grace's exact life. Wealth turns out to be the lock rather than the key.
- A husband who is perfect in public
- A plan formed in silence
- A locked room in a nice house
- Soapy in places
Great matchBig Little Lies
Liane Moriarty
Moriarty writes the same marriage — an adored husband, a frightened wife, friends who notice nothing — and surrounds it with comedy, which somehow sharpens it.
- A husband who is perfect in public
- Nobody believes the wife
- Dread instead of mystery
- Comic tone alongside the abuse
Great matchThe Breakdown
B.A. Paris
Paris again, doing the thing she does best: a woman watching her own mind be discredited, one small staged incident at a time.
- Nobody believes the wife
- Dread instead of mystery
- Very short chapters
- Plot leans on coincidence
Great matchThe Good Girl
Mary Kubica
An abduction told before and after, in which captivity becomes something more complicated than anyone waiting outside the house could imagine.
- Then-and-now chapters alternating
- A locked room in a nice house
- Nobody believes the wife
- A certain procedural coldness
Great matchThe Wife Between Us
Greer Hendricks, Sarah Pekkanen
A husband who charms every room and rewrites every woman he marries, plus a structure built to make you misread which of them is the threat.
- A husband who is perfect in public
- A plan formed in silence
- Nobody believes the wife
- Twist arrives early
Worth a look — with a warningThe Stranger Beside Me
Ann Rule
Ann Rule wrote a book about her charming, helpful colleague Ted Bundy before she knew. Nothing in fiction matches it for the gap between a public face and a private one.
- A husband who is perfect in public
- Dread instead of mystery
- Nobody believes the wife
- Non-fiction, with real victims
What should you read after Behind Closed Doors?
Behind Closed Doors by B. A. Paris works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins — another woman nobody believes, watching a marriage from outside and getting closer to it than is safe. Hawkins runs on the same fuel: credibility as the real weapon.
If what stayed with you was a husband who is perfect in public, read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn instead: the marriage-as-warfare book everything here descends from. Flynn's couple perform perfection for an audience too, except she lets the wife hold the knife. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides is the other strong option — a woman stops speaking after shooting her husband, and a narrator arrives determined to explain her. In both books the silence is where the power sits.
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