I love thrillers! ...right?

And it's hard to be at a party when I feel like an open wound

I do love a good thriller, but I am far from “a thriller girlie.” I think there are many readers who gravitate to thrillers as their go-to genre the way I do with romance. That’s not me. Compared to many of my thriller-loving friends, I am far from well-read in the genre. But according to a quick search on TheStoryGraph, I have read 47 books tagged as thrillers, and when you added the genre categories of mystery, crime, horror, and true crime the total jumped to 77.

I’ve joked that in 2019 and 2020 I “overdosed on thrillers,” and as a result had to abstain for a couple years. I did not read a single thriller in 2022 and doubt I read many in 2021. It was necessary because they started to become too predictable and unfun. It turns out I don’t love a thriller, I just love a good twist.

When thrillers don’t give you the goosebumps you crave or the satisfying reveals that change the way you perceive the entire novel, they’re kind of just a miserable place to be. The genre is teeming with unlikable (and unreliable) narrators who are isolated (geographically or socially) and desperate enough to make risky, ill-advised decisions. And don’t get me started the elevated percentage of sociopaths and psychopaths written solely to make these wild plots conceivable.

The formula gets redundant quick, and the new-to-the-genre luster wanes quickly. When a reader first dips their toes into the thriller genre it’s so exciting! Getting to be inside the heads of twisted individuals? Having visceral and physical reactions to words on paper? Experiencing well-executed, mind-blowing twists and reveals?! It doesn’t get much better than that!

But once you’ve read a few, the allure fades. I also think this is why it’s so hard to recommend thrillers, because so much of how one experiences a thriller is based on the ones she’s read previously. I have a “favorite thrillers” shelf on my TheStoryGraph that I created back in like 2019 and I fear those same stories wouldn’t hold up for me on a jaded re-read.

So please let me know, do you like thrillers? Are we all in them for the twists or do some people just enjoy reading about perverted characters in cortisol-raising settings? Am I uncultured for gravitating toward likable and relatable characters?

And on that note,

I’m off to finish listening to Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter.

---

Hyper-fixation du jour: The Oscars

I spent Saturday at the AMC in Kipps Bay watching five of the Best Picture nominations, and am heading back this weekend to watch another four. (TBD on when I’ll get to watch the Netflix nomination Emilia Perez.)

bck.reads

A post shared by @bck.reads

So far my thoughts on the first five are:

Anora

A new favorite movie. I am obsessed!

I’m Still Here and Conclave

I really enjoyed both of these films and am so glad I saw them.

Nickel Boys and The Substance

Not for me. I appreciate how these films are important and are “Best Picture worthy” to some, but I struggled through both for various reasons. (More nuanced thoughts to come.)

Naturally I made random book recommendations for each film:

---

If you want to purchase any of the books mentioned in this article, please consider using my affiliate link with my favorite independent book store, The Ripped Bodice, or using my referral link to libro.fm for an audiobook!