2 Thrillers to Read, 1 to Skip

A Better World, Rabbit Hole and The Only One Left

Read It

A Better World

by Sarah Langan
Read it if you’re into: Near future dystopias, creepy suburban towns, satirical takedowns

It is the near future in a world riven by technology-gone-wrong and the effects of climate change, and the Farmer Bowens get an opportunity to live in Plymouth Valley. Plymouth Valley is a "company town," built by the makers of Omnium, a product that endlessly recycles plastic, thereby sort of saving the world (or keeping the apocalypse at bay). These towns are the only places where life can be normal; self sustaining enclaves where the air is purified privately — none of those horrid city pollutants or outside world germs. But it comes, of course, at a price. What exactly that price is, is what we are here to find out. There are also mandated holiday celebrations, a freakish bird mascot worshipped by the PVers with God-like adherence, and an underground labyrinth built to allow the entire town to survive a nuclear attack. Surprise surprise, things start to get a little bit culty. 

I said ‘what the fuck!?’ an innumerable amount of times while reading this book. It contains one of the absolute freakiest, most insane scenes I have read in fiction. I could rave for hours about the insane eccentricities this author dreamt up. The people in Plymouth Valley HISS to express their displeasure — it's psychotic and I love it. The plot moves fast, and it quickly becomes clear that some people in the town are up to no good, but it’s a unique sort of fun to find out exactly who and what. The book, immersive from page one, starts out as one thing and ends up as something entirely different, and the slow ratcheting up of terror works. I came to love the flawed family at its center, all of whom deeply understood one another despite their individual weaknesses. A Better World is at once dystopian and hopeful, and unlike anything you’ve read before. This book really freaked me out, and I loved it. 

Rabbit Hole

by Kate Brody
Read it if you’re into: True crime subbreddits, flawed protagonists, portrayals of grief

It has been ten years since Teddy's sister, Angie, disappeared. The suicide of their father, who had been searching for Angie at the expense of everything else in his life until the moment he died, has reignited Teddy's quest to find out what happened to her sister, and it quickly becomes clear Teddy herself never moved on. Her unraveling hastens when a girl bearing a mysterious resemblance to her missing sister appears in her life. 

If you couldn't tell from the elements above — missing girl, dead father — this is not a happy book. There is also the family dog's slowly unfolding death, which unsurprisingly becomes possibly the saddest part. Teddy’s downward spiral is like a car crash, impossible not to watch, as she surrounds herself with characters of dubious trustworthiness. In the story’s darkness, however, there is beauty. The author writes well about families, and the stories we tell ourselves about our own and others.  She’s one of the few who manages to get the strange and mundane terror of the internet age right, and the resultant mystery encapsulates better than most the age of the very online. If you’re into eerie, dark mysteries, you’ll find something to enjoy here.

Skip It

The Only One Left

by Riley Sager

An infamous old lady haunts the town in which she lives, perched in a mansion (with the very on-the-nose name ‘Hope’s End’) on a hill, after murdering her entire family, Lizzie Borden style, in the 1950s. Our narrator, a home health aide, is assigned to care for her in that creaky old house which is crumbling bit by bit, much like the plot of this dime-a-dozen story.

While I once looked forward to his books, Sager has quickly and unfortunately become formulaic. This book is no different. We have all the cliched elements of a Sager story: A creepy small town, a surviving narrator whom nobody believes (least of all the police). Spare me, please, this one dimensional woman who appears in so many modern thrillers. She is beaten down by her life, she has suffered a dramatic loss and hinges her entire personality upon being aggrieved. She is one dimensionally unhappy, and I am tired of her. In the end, this is not a terrible book, but one with little of substance or surprise.