Chick Noir
Examining “Why We Can’t Get Enough of Twisted Marriage Thrillers,” in the Daily Beast, regular contributor Lucy Scholes looks at the spate of recent “psychological page-turners that subvert the ‘happily ever after’ formula of classic chic lit.”
Following in the footsteps of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, A.S.A Harrison’s The Silent Wife, S. J. Watson’s Before I Go to Sleep, and “the less well known but equally creepy How to Be a Good Wife by Emma Chapman,” (Macmillan/St. Martin’s; Thorndike) are some new titles (Entertainment Weekly also looks at recent titles in the genre this week).
Scholes considers Before We Met by Lucie Whitehouse, (Bloomsbury USA), published last month, as “truly formulaic in every sense of the word, but it’s an easy read and will go some way in filling the Gone Girl shaped hole in Flynn fans’ lives,” (it got a B from Entertainment Weekly).
The one Scholes calls a “significantly superior addition to the genre” arrives next month, Jean Hanff Korelitz’s You Should Have Known, (Hachette/GrandCentral; Hachette Audio, March 18), the author’s next novel after the successful Admission (made into a less successful movie starring Tina Fey). Entertainment Weekly also adds their voice to this one, in their list of “14 Reads That Are Worth the Wait” calling it, ‘The thriller we’re already obsessed with.” LJ did not give it similar cred, saying “the suspense is marred by the overwritten prose” but PW calls it an “intriguing and beautiful book.”
Scholes also suggests keeping an eye out for a summer publication, Natalie Young’s Season to Taste, (Hachette/Little, Brown, 7/15). The American edition does not included the U.K. subtitle, … or How to Eat Your Husband, which gives fair warning that it is not “for the faint hearted or the weak stomached…” It hasn’t been reviewed by the prepub sources yet, so libraries we checked have not ordered it.