Books like Big Little Lies
What should you read after Liane Moriarty’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Liane Moriarty
- 2017
- 514 pages
- Domestic drama
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after Big Little Lies
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchThe Husband's Secret
Liane Moriarty
Moriarty doing the same thing one street over: three women, a letter that should not be opened, and a comedy that turns out to have been about a death all along.
- Three mothers, three secrets
- School-gate politics
- Comedy sitting next to violence
- No murder investigation
Great matchThe Girl on the Train
Paula Hawkins
Suburban lives observed from just outside, an abusive man at the centre, and a woman whose account nobody accepts. The dark half of Moriarty, minus the jokes.
- Domestic abuse behind a nice house
- Three mothers, three secrets
- A murder you hear about first
- No humour to soften it
Great matchGone Girl
Gillian Flynn
The marriage-as-performance novel, equally fascinated by how a couple look from the neighbours' side of the fence. Flynn is simply out for blood.
- Domestic abuse behind a nice house
- A murder you hear about first
- Comedy sitting next to violence
- Far nastier in every way
Best for the communityLittle Fires Everywhere
Celeste Ng
A tidy suburb, a set of mothers with incompatible ideas about raising children, and a fire announced on page one. Ng plays the same opening card.
- School-gate politics
- A murder you hear about first
- Three mothers, three secrets
- Literary and slower
Great matchThe Couple Next Door
Shari Lapena
Moriarty's premise stripped back to thriller bones: a nice couple, a nice street, a catastrophe, and neighbours who knew rather more than they said.
- A murder you hear about first
- Domestic abuse behind a nice house
- School-gate politics
- No humour or warmth
Great matchThe Silent Wife
A long marriage taken apart from both sides, with the ending flagged early so the interest lies entirely in how two reasonable people talk themselves there.
- Domestic abuse behind a nice house
- A murder you hear about first
- Three mothers, three secrets
- No community, just the couple
Worth a look — with a warningBefore I Go to Sleep
S.J. Watson
Here for the nerve Moriarty keeps touching: a woman whose husband controls the only version of events she is permitted to have.
- Domestic abuse behind a nice house
- A murder you hear about first
- Three mothers, three secrets
- An amnesia gimmick
Great matchThe Lying Game
Ruth Ware
Four school friends, one lie they agreed on years ago, and motherhood raising the cost of keeping it. Ware is stronger on dread than on jokes.
- Three mothers, three secrets
- A single mother with a past
- A murder you hear about first
- No comedy at all
Great matchIn a Dark, Dark Wood
Ruth Ware
A hen weekend where everybody is performing friendship and one person is not. The social claustrophobia Moriarty excels at, compressed into a single house.
- School-gate politics
- A single mother with a past
- Comedy sitting next to violence
- Thriller mechanics over character
Great matchThe Woman in the Window
A.J. Finn
Watching the neighbours obsessively and being wrong about nearly everything — the suburban surveillance instinct behind every trivia-night rumour in Moriarty.
- School-gate politics
- A murder you hear about first
- Three mothers, three secrets
- One narrator, one house
Worth a look — with a warningThe Secret History
Donna Tartt
The death is announced in the first paragraph and the book is the long walk towards it. That is Moriarty's structure, executed by a very different writer.
- A murder you hear about first
- Comedy sitting next to violence
- School-gate politics
- 550 pages, slow burn
Worth a look — with a warningSharp Objects
Gillian Flynn
A small town where the mothers are the danger and everyone watches everyone. Flynn takes Moriarty's subject and strips out every available comfort.
- Domestic abuse behind a nice house
- A single mother with a past
- Comedy sitting next to violence
- Self-harm and abuse throughout
Great matchThe Book of You
Claire Kendal
A woman stalked by a colleague nobody else finds threatening, written as her own account of it. The disbelief around her is where the horror lives.
- Domestic abuse behind a nice house
- Three mothers, three secrets
- A murder you hear about first
- A single-thread narrative
What should you read after Big Little Lies?
Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty 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 Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty — moriarty doing the same thing one street over: three women, a letter that should not be opened, and a comedy that turns out to have been about a death all along.
If what stayed with you was domestic abuse behind a nice house, read The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins instead: suburban lives observed from just outside, an abusive man at the centre, and a woman whose account nobody accepts. The dark half of Moriarty, minus the jokes. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn is the other strong option — the marriage-as-performance novel, equally fascinated by how a couple look from the neighbours' side of the fence. Flynn is simply out for blood.
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