Tag: Unreliable Narrator

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Hunger and Thirst by Claire Fuller: A haunting story about the ache to belong

Mandy Webster

Some hungers have nothing to do with food. Some thirsts cannot be quenched. In Hunger and Thirst, Claire Fuller builds a quietly unsettling novel about loneliness, guilt, and the dangerous places people wander when they want love badly enough.

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Claire Fuller has long excelled at writing stories that feel atmospheric without sacrificing emotional complexity. Readers familiar with Our Endless Numbered Days (one of my all-time favorites!), Swimming Lessons, or Bitter Orange will recognize her gift for creating settings that feel slightly unsteady, places where human relationships become as unsettling as any ghost story. Hunger and Thirst, releasing June 2, 2026, continues that tradition while leaning more openly into gothic territory.

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Man of My Dreams by Olivia Worley is a twisty thriller that may frustrate romance readers—but thriller fans looking for chaos and curveballs will probably have a blast

Mandy Webster

There’s a very specific kind of thriller setup that immediately hooks me: an intense romantic connection that feels just a little too perfect to trust. Man of My Dreams by Olivia Worley initially seemed poised to deliver exactly that kind of story. Ivy Harcourt, a bestselling romance author unlucky in love, meets Liam—an attractive British architect who eerily resembles the male lead from the novel she’s currently writing. What follows at first feels like the beginning of a glossy psychological thriller in the vein of the 1995 film Never Talk to Strangers, with mounting suspicion, romantic tension, and the creeping sense that something underneath the fantasy is deeply wrong. Then the book swerves hard.

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About a third of the way through, Man of My Dreams reveals what kind of story it actually wants to be, and that pivot will likely determine whether readers end up loving or hating the novel. For me, the transition didn’t entirely work. I didn’t feel like there was enough groundwork laid to support the shift, and several developments later in the novel left me questioning the internal logic of the narrative. By the end, there were enough loose ends dangling that I found myself more distracted than shocked.

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The Children by Melissa Albert is a haunting story about the danger of becoming someone else’s myth

Mandy Webster

There’s something deeply unsettling about the idea of growing up inside a story that never really belonged to you. In The Children by Melissa Albert, releasing June 2, 2026, childhood becomes both a performance and a prison as two siblings struggle to survive the legacy their mother built from their lives. The result is a darkly hypnotic literary fantasy that feels as though it’s flickering between reality and nightmare the entire time you’re reading it.

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Guinevere and Ennis Sharpe grew up as the unwilling inspirations for their mother Edith’s wildly beloved Ninth City fantasy novels. To the world, they were magical children adventuring through an enchanted realm. In reality, they were neglected kids growing up isolated in rural Vermont, half-feral and largely abandoned while their mother disappeared into the mythology she was creating around them. Albert builds both timelines—the children’s traumatic upbringing and adult Guin’s unraveling in the present day—with a sense of inevitable catastrophe. Every chapter feels like a countdown toward something terrible waiting just beyond the firelight.

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Sorry for Your Loss by Georgia McVeigh: A deliciously twisted game of obsession, grief, and control

Mandy Webster

Grief can make people do strange things—but in Sorry for Your Loss by Georgia McVeigh, releasing March 31, 2026, grief is just the starting point for a psychological duel between two people who may be far more dangerous than they first appear. What begins as a chance meeting in a grief support group quickly turns into a tense, unsettling cat-and-mouse game where the real question isn’t whether someone is lying—it’s who’s manipulating whom.

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At the center of the story is Iris, a woman who is clearly out of touch with reality. She attends a local grief group to keep herself “grounded,” but from the start it’s obvious that Iris is holding onto far more than grief. Her childhood offers clues about how she became the person she is. Iris grew up in the shadow of her twin sister, Marcie—the golden child who their mother adored. Marcie’s birth came easily, while Iris reportedly took days to arrive, a story their mother never let her forget. Even after Marcie’s tragic death at seventeen, their mother openly wished it had been Iris instead. It’s the kind of emotional wound that never quite heals, and as an adult Iris is still searching for the love and validation she never received.

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Dirty Metal by Allison LaMothe: A gritty debut that barrels ahead, even when logic struggles to keep up

Mandy Webster

Dirty Metal by Allison LaMothe drops readers into pre-Giuliani New York City with a pill-popping, rule-breaking tabloid reporter at its center—and it does so with real confidence for a debut. Set in 1992, the novel follows Parker Snow, a 27-year-old crime reporter whose last big story went spectacularly wrong. Now sidelined onto organized crime coverage, Parker is desperate to prove she still belongs on the streets, no matter how questionable her methods become.

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LaMothe’s biggest strength is atmosphere. The city feels grimy, volatile, and alive, especially as Russian organized crime begins asserting power in Brighton Beach. Parker herself fits this world: reckless, sharp-tongued, and driven more by obsession than good judgment. She steals, trespasses, manipulates sources, and self-medicates her trauma, all while insisting she’s chasing the truth. It’s not hard to see how she landed in professional trouble—and why her boss tries to keep her on a short leash.

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Darkrooms by Rebecca Hannigan: A gripping Irish mystery with unforgettable, flawed women

Mandy Webster

On the night of the Summer Solstice in 1999, nine-year-old Roisin O’Halloran vanished into the Hanging Woods, a copse that had terrified generations of children in the small Irish town of Bannakilduf. Twenty years later, her disappearance remains a shadow over the town—and over the two women now drawn together to uncover the truth: Roisin’s older sister, Deedee, a rookie cop barely holding herself together, and Caitlin, Roisin’s childhood best friend and a petty criminal with a penchant for deception and risky behavior. In Darkrooms, Rebecca Hannigan delivers a lush, moody thriller that explores guilt, justice, and the dangerous ways past traumas shape the present.

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If you’re a fan of unlikeable characters and unreliable narrators, this novel is made for you. Caitlin lies, steals, and teeters on the edge of self-destruction, and you’re never quite sure whether to believe her confessions—or whether they hint at something even darker.

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Pam Kowalski is a Monster! by Sarah Langan — When memory lies and the world unravels

Mandy Webster

There’s something deliciously unsettling about realizing your memories might be wrong. Sarah Langan’s Pam Kowolski Is a Monster! turns that unease into a full-blown psychological and supernatural meltdown. This novella barrels through themes of memory, trauma, and rivalry with the manic energy of an apocalypse that might already be happening — or might only be in the mind of its unraveling narrator.

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Janet Chow’s life didn’t exactly pan out the way her classmates might have predicted back at Sewanhaka High. Once destined for greatness, she’s now middle-aged, adrift, and licking the wounds of a career in journalism that has long since crashed and burned. Then she spots her old nemesis — Pam Kowolski, the girl she used to despise — who has somehow transformed into “Madame Pamela,” America’s psychic sweetheart and doomsday influencer. Pam is rich, beautiful, and adored, while Janet is invisible. Convinced that Pam’s fame is built on lies, Janet sets out to expose her as a fraud. But digging into Pam’s past also means unearthing the pieces of her own history that she’s conveniently buried — and the deeper she digs, the more she starts to question what’s real, what’s remembered, and what’s imagined.

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Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney: A thriller that keeps you guessing

Mandy Webster

Some thrillers keep you hooked with breakneck pacing, while others lure you in with a slow burn that seeps under your skin. Alice Feeney’s Beautiful Ugly does both. This is the kind of novel where you tell yourself, “Just one more chapter,” only to find yourself still turning pages deep into the night. With a mix of tension, unreliable narration, and a chilling atmosphere, Beautiful Ugly cements Feeney’s reputation as the Queen of Twists.

The cover of Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney
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The novel follows Grady Green, an author whose life falls apart when his wife, Abby, disappears without a trace. One moment, he’s on the phone with her, listening as she pulls over her car. The next, she’s gone—her car abandoned by a cliff, her phone still inside. A year later, Grady is drowning in grief and writer’s block when he flees to a remote Scottish island in hopes of rebuilding his life. But his fragile reality shatters when he sees a woman who looks exactly like Abby. From there, the novel spirals into a tangled web of memory, identity, and revenge.

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