10 Highly Anticipated Thriller / Mystery Novels To Read in 2021

It’s a new year and with new year we always have new books to look forward to and boy don’t we need something to look forward to?! Grab a cuppa, a blanket and another biscuit, yes another one, whose counting anyway? Are you looking for the creepy, twisty kind of read that gets your hackles raised? Yes well you are in luck because you’re bound to find something here that will whet your appetite.

These book recommendations are purely what I am looking forward to and their popularity has been widely discussed on booktwitter and bookstagram.

The Wife Upstairs by Rachel Hawkins

This was my most recent read and my review is due to go live on 10th January, so keep your eyes peeled. It’s a Jane Eyre retelling and its full of suspense and strong characterisation.

If I Disappear by Eliza Jane Brazier

When her favorite true crime podcast host goes missing, an adrift young woman plunges headfirst into the wild backcountry of Northern California and her own dangerous obsession.

For Your Own Good by Samantha Downing

USA Today bestselling author Samantha Downing is back with her latest sneaky thriller set at a prestigious private school—complete with interfering parents, overeager students, and one teacher who just wants to teach them all a lesson…

The Other Me by Sarah Zachrich Jeng

An edge-of-your-seat story of a failed artist who accidentally opens a door to an alternate reality where she never pursued her dreams and must uncover the forces behind the switch before time runs out.

The Burning Girls by C.J. Tudor

500 years ago: eight martyrs were burnt to death
30 years ago: two teenagers vanished without trace
Two months ago: the vicar committed suicide

Welcome to Chapel Croft.

Survive The Night by Riley Sager

It’s November 1991. George H. W. Bush is in the White House, Nirvana’s in the tape deck, and movie-obsessed college student Charlie Jordan is in a car with a man who might be a serial killer.

The Girls Are So Nice Here by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn

Two former best friends return to their college reunion to find that they’re being circled by someone who wants revenge for what they did ten years before—and will stop at nothing to get it—in this shocking psychological thriller about ambition, toxic friendship, and deadly desire.

Girl, 11 by Amy Suiter Clarke

Once a social worker specializing in kids who were the victims of violent crime, Elle Castillo is now the host of a popular true crime podcast that tackles cold cases of missing children in her hometown of the Twin Cities. After two seasons of successfully solving cases, Elle decides to tackle her white whale—The Countdown Killer. Twenty years ago, TCK abruptly stopped after establishing a pattern of taking and ritualistically murdering three girls over seven days, each a year younger than the last. No one’s ever known why—why he stopped with his eleventh victim, a girl of eleven years old, or why he followed the ritual at all.

Every Last Fear by Alex Finlay

In one of the year’s most anticipated debut psychological thrillers, a family made infamous by a true crime documentary is found dead, leaving their surviving son to uncover the truth about their final days.

The Therapist by B.A. Paris

When Alice and Leo move into a newly renovated house in The Circle, a gated community of exclusive houses, it is everything they’ve dreamed of. But appearances can be deceptive…

As Alice is getting to know her neighbours, she discovers a devastating, grisly secret about her new home, and begins to feel a strong connection with Nina, the therapist who lived there before.

Alice becomes obsessed with trying to piece together what happened two years before. But no one wants to talk about it. Her neighbours are keeping secrets and things are not as perfect as they seem…

What did you think of these 10 thriller/mystery books? Is there any you would have added? Let me know in the comments, it’s so exciting to get more recommendations…