Books like The Wife Between Us
What should you read after Greer Hendricks, Sarah Pekkanen’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- Greer Hendricks, Sarah Pekkanen
- 2018
- 353 pages
- Psychological thriller
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after The Wife Between Us
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchGone Girl
Gillian Flynn
The original marriage-as-crime-scene novel, and the one that made structural deceit respectable. Flynn's turn is meaner than this one, and better earned.
- A twist that resets the story
- A marriage that looked perfect
- Unreliable by omission
- Considerably more cynical
Great matchThe Girl on the Train
Paula Hawkins
An ex-wife circling a marriage she has been cut out of, and unable to be trusted about any of it. The same jealousy, from the other side of the window.
- An ex-wife watching
- Unreliable by omission
- A marriage that looked perfect
- Alcohol drives the unreliability
Best for the twistThe Silent Patient
Alex Michaelides
Another book engineered backwards from its final page, and one of the few whose reveal genuinely holds up when you go back and check.
- A twist that resets the story
- Short chapters, fast read
- A marriage that looked perfect
- Clinical, chilly tone
Great matchThe Last Mrs. Parrish
Liv Constantine
A social climber targets a rich man's wife, and then the book hands the microphone to the wife. The mid-book perspective flip you have just enjoyed.
- A twist that resets the story
- Coercive control up close
- Money and Manhattan gloss
- The first half is deliberately unpleasant
Great matchThe Woman in Cabin 10
Ruth Ware
Ware puts a woman nobody believes on a boat nobody can leave. Less structural trickery, more sustained claustrophobia and noticeably better sentences.
- Unreliable by omission
- Money and Manhattan gloss
- Short chapters, fast read
- No perspective trick
Great matchBig Little Lies
Liane Moriarty
Moriarty hides who died and who did it while writing three marriages properly, including one that looks enviable from the school gate.
- Coercive control up close
- A marriage that looked perfect
- A twist that resets the story
- Comic social satire throughout
Worth a look — with a warningBehind Closed Doors
B. A. Paris
The most direct match for the controlling-husband thread and the least merciful: Paris tells you what he is early, then makes you watch.
- Coercive control up close
- A marriage that looked perfect
- Short chapters, fast read
- No real twist to wait for
Great matchThe Couple Next Door
Shari Lapena
Lapena writes marriages in which each spouse is quietly keeping their own accounts. Plot-driven rather than clever, but it never stops moving.
- Short chapters, fast read
- A marriage that looked perfect
- A twist that resets the story
- The missing-child plot may be too much
Great matchThe Girl Before
J.P. Delaney
Two women, two timelines, one architect with rules about how you may live in his house. Structured specifically to make you assume the wrong things.
- Unreliable by omission
- Coercive control up close
- A twist that resets the story
- The house gimmick strains
Great matchThe Lying Game
Ruth Ware
Ware again, on four friends who have spent decades keeping a story straight. The pleasure lies entirely in what the narrator won't tell you yet.
- Unreliable by omission
- Short chapters, fast read
- Slow burn, low body count
Great matchThe Good Girl
Mary Kubica
Four voices, two time frames, and a final page that sends you back through the book. Built on the same trick, if less elegantly.
- A twist that resets the story
- Unreliable by omission
- Abduction, not marriage
Great matchBefore I Go to Sleep
S.J. Watson
A wife who wakes each morning with no history, entirely dependent on a husband who may be editing it. Coercive control with the memory removed.
- Unreliable by omission
- Coercive control up close
- A marriage that looked perfect
- Repetition is the structure
Worth a look — with a warningThe Perfect Stranger
Megan Miranda
Miranda writes women who have edited their own pasts and roommates who may not exist. Nearest to the identity games here, at a lower voltage.
- Unreliable by omission
- A twist that resets the story
- Slower and more literary
What should you read after The Wife Between Us?
The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks, Sarah Pekkanen 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 Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn — the original marriage-as-crime-scene novel, and the one that made structural deceit respectable. Flynn's turn is meaner than this one, and better earned.
If what stayed with you was an ex-wife watching, read The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins instead: an ex-wife circling a marriage she has been cut out of, and unable to be trusted about any of it. The same jealousy, from the other side of the window. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides is the other strong option — another book engineered backwards from its final page, and one of the few whose reveal genuinely holds up when you go back and check.
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