We’ve read 80+ psychological thriller books with twists so you don’t have to. Here are the 20 best hand-picked, rated, and brutally honest thrillers. If you are crazy about twist and turns, then you surely gonna enjoy a lot.
If you are a fan of thriller, action and horror genre, you can get your next TBR from our Scariest Book Ever List.
Now, I personally feel that choosing a thriller isn’t be that time consuming but in between your never ending search you can actually miss some of the absolute best books. So, for that reason I’m providing the Top 5 most disturbing psychological thrillers at the very start only.
Top 5 Must- Read Psycho Thriller Novels (Don’t Miss!)
1. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
Mr. Book Review’s Rating: 5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best For:
- If you want a shocking classic novel with talk about twists.
- If you want a classic thriller full of tricky twists.
Content Warnings: Domestic Violence, Mental Health
If you’ve spent more than five minutes in thriller reddit pages online, you’ve 99% heard of The Silent Patient. A famous painter shoots her husband multiple times and then never speaks another word.
Ever.
A psychotherapist becomes obsessed with finding the truth behind her silence, and I must just say this book has one of those kind of endings that had readers spoil it to their friends.
2. The Housemaid Series by Freida McFadden
Mr. Book Review’s Rating: 5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best For:
- If you want a fast thriller action
- One sitting read
Content Warnings: Past Trauma
Need a thriller that practically reads itself?
Start here from The Housemaid. A woman takes a job as a housemaid for a rich family and then, realizes something is very wrong. Then things get worse.
And then worse again, and then somehow even worse than that. (trust me but you will enjoy this phenomena)
If you want similar Freida McFadden read, you can read The Ex Freida McFadden
3. The Push by Ashley Audrain
Mr. Book Review’s Rating: 4.75/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best For:
- If you want a thriller book focused on intuition
Content Warnings: Child Harm,
What if your worst fear as a parent was real, but nobody believed you? That’s The Push for you.
The Push is a story of Blythe, a mother who struggles to connect with her daughter and becomes convinced that something isn’t quite right. The problem? Blythe cannot be trusted. (at least i think, she is totally unreliable.
This book is disturbing, emotional, and guaranteed to make you question everything, this is the kind of psychological thriller which is slow but will not leave you mind easily.
4. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Mr. Book Review’s Rating: 4.6/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best For:
- If you want a twisty grey character vibe book
- If you enjoy marriage gone wrong kinda novel
Content Warnings: Manipulation and Violence
This book is an all time classic and truly it deserves to be. When Amy Dunne disappears on her wedding anniversary, all eyes turn toward her husband Nick.
If you’ve not read it and even avoided spoilers all these years, congratulations. You had a great tbr.
5. Lo Blacklock Series by Ruth Ware
Mr. Book Review’s Rating: 4.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best For:
- If you want a locked up setting ex. a ship, a cabin etc.
- claustrophobic thriller kinda read
Content Warnings: Gaslighting, Liquor
Imagine witnessing a murder on a luxury cruise ship.
Now imagine everyone insisting that nobody is missing.
It’s a sort of locked room mystery, but it’s also psychological thriller, yes i am confused and suspicious as everyone on board is. The sequence The Woman in Suite 11 is also great thriller.
Psycho-Thriller Book List:
The All Time Classics
6. Verity by Colleen Hoover
Mr. Book Review’s Rating: 4.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best For:
- If you want a open-ended reveals
- If you like grey unreliable kinda narrator
Content Warnings: Child Loss, Disturbing
Verity is a story of a writer Lowen Ashleigh, who is hired to finish a bestselling series for famous author Verity Crawford after a tragic accident leaves her unable to write. While going through Verity’s notes, he comes across an unfinished autobiography filled with obviously secrets.
Suddenly, the job becomes a lot more complicated.
It’s psychological thriller, with twisted romance, Verity is the kind of book that will have you flying through pages and questioning everything until the very end.
7. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins
Mr. Book Review’s Rating: 4.25/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best For:
- If you want a classic all time fav. kinda read
- suburban style novel
Content Warnings: Domestic Ab*se, Alcoholism
Paula Hawkins psycho thriller novels are well known, you can read one of her another Classic thriller here, The Blue Hour.
Rachel does that every day from her train window. She becomes fascinated by a seemingly perfect couple she passes each morning—until one day she witnesses something shocking.
Then the woman disappears.
Suddenly, Rachel finds herself tangled in a missing-person investigation, despite being the last person anyone should trust, including herself.
The Girl on the Train is the kind of psychological thriller that keeps you questioning everyone’s version of the truth right up to the final page.
8. The Mindf*ck Series by S.T. Abby
Mr. Book Review’s Rating: 4.2/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best For:
- If you want a classic criminal & investigator sort of story.
Content Warnings: Violence
This series is absolutely unhinged in the best possible way.
We’re here for Lana Myers, who appears perfectly normal but is secretly on a mission of revenge. Meanwhile, she’s falling for an FBI profiler who is investigating the very crimes she’s committing. (funny;))
What could possibly go wrong?
Everything. The answer is everything.
9. The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver
Mr. Book Review’s Rating: 4.2/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best For:
- If you want a classic detective thriller
- If you like forensic and small details to read.
Content Warnings: Graphic Violence, Kidn*pping
The storyline of The Bone Collector is a brilliant detective trapped in a bed teams up with a rookie cop to track a serial killer.
Overall, it’s Fast-paced, clever, and packed with forensic details that make you feel smarter just by reading them.
10. The Tenant by Freida McFadden
Mr. Book Review’s Rating: 4.1/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best For:
- If you want a domestic thriller with powerful characters
Content Warnings: Paranoia, Violence references
Fast, addictive, and suspicion everywhere, The Tenant is the kind of thriller you think you’ll read one more chapter, just before accidentally finishing the entire book at 2 a.m.
You know it’s probably a bad idea to let a stranger move into your home. This book takes that idea and runs absolutely wild with it.
When a tenant seems like the perfect solution to a financial problem, things initially look normal. But slowly, strange incidents start piling up, tensions rise, and it becomes clear that someone in this house is hiding something.
Similar Read: The Intruder by Freida McFadden
Underrated Thriller Novels
11. The Hannibal Lecter Series by Thomas Harris
Mr. Book Review’s Rating: 4.0/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best For:
- If you want a seriously disturbing, hard hitting read.
Content Warnings: Violence, cannibalism
Before there were countless serial killer thrillers, there was Hannibal Lecter. These books are dark and creepy, and surprisingly psychological. TV Series Hannibal is also made on the premise of this storyline.
You’ll probably spend half the time terrified of Hannibal and the other half weirdly impressed by him.
12. The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty
Mr. Book Review’s Rating: 4.0/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best For:
- If you want a slow but serious novel.
- If you enjoy multiple POV morally grey type of read.
Content Warnings: Crime, Infidelity
What would you do if you discovered a letter from your husband that was only supposed to be opened after his death?
And then you opened it while he was still very much alive?
Exactly. One more book by Liane Moriarty, i like to name drop here Here One Moment.
13. The Good Lie by A.R. Torre
Mr. Book Review’s Rating: 3.8/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best For:
- If you want a criminal lead novel
- Who wants a read with serial killer as one of the lead.
Content Warnings: Violence, Se*ual Content
A psychiatrist becomes involved in a missing-person investigation involving a man accused of murder.
The deeper she digs, the murkier everything becomes.
This one keeps moving the goalposts in the most entertaining way possible.
14. First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston
Mr. Book Review’s Rating: 3.75/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best For:
- If you want a criminal lead novel
- Who wants a read with serial killer as one of the lead.
Content Warnings: Crime, Manipulation
A con artist gets assigned a new identity and a new target.
Simple enough.
Except things start getting complicated when real feelings get involved.
Who knew lying for a living could be so inconvenient?
15. Into the Darkest Corner by Elizabeth Haynes
Mr. Book Review’s Rating: 3.6/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best For:
- If you want a survivor’s perspective story
- Who wants a read a story very close to realism.
Content Warnings: PTSD, Domestic abuse
ITDC is one of the most intense psychological thrillers on this list.
It explores obsession, control, trauma, and recovery in a way that feels deeply unsettling and incredibly realistic.
Modern Thriller
16. Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney
Mr. Book Review’s Rating: 3.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best For:
- If you want a gothic thriller read
- Isolated island setting with heavy twists
Content Warnings: Grief, Manipulation
Grady calls his wife, as she’s driving, he hears the unmistakable sound of screeching brakes, a car door opening… and then radio silence.
When he finally finds her car near a cliff, the headlights are on, the door is wide open, her phone is on the seat, but Abby? Vanished.
17. Hidden Nature by Nora Roberts
Mr. Book Review’s Rating: 3.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best For:
- If you like small town sort of story
- Literal dark thriller sort of read
Content Warnings: Religious Extre*ism, Violence
Hidden Nature is about Sloan Cooper, who is a total badass. She gets shot, moves back home, and starts chasing a creepy serial abductor while falling for a guy named Nash. Trap??
18. The Patient’s Secret by Loreth Anne White
Mr. Book Review’s Rating: 3.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best For:
- If you like secrets filled stories with suburban setting
- Inspired by real life crime kinda story
Content Warnings: Trauma, Murd*r
Secrets, betrayal, murder, and a whole lot of tension.
Basically everything you want from a thriller wrapped up in one very bingeable package.
19. Don’t Let Him In by Lisa Jewell
Mr. Book Review’s Rating: 3.5/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best For:
- If you like charming con man storyline
Content Warnings: Deception, Manipulation
So, Don’t Let Him In was like watching a almost true crime doc. set by your dramatic aunt chaotic, but also lil bit exhausting.
Lisa Jewell’s novel gave us gaslighting dish with a side of emotional manipulation, and the villain? A walking red flag factory.
20. The Secrets She Keeps by Michael Robotham
Mr. Book Review’s Rating: 3.45/5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Best For:
- Thriller filled with envy and realistic acts
- Slow read, character focussed
Content Warnings: Grief, Deception
Two women from very different lives become strangely connected.
One has everything.
One desperately wants everything.
And that’s where the trouble starts.
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