Literary Thrillers to Read in the Summer 🌞🌊🍒🌸

Do you find yourself in the sticky situation where you enjoy gloriously sunny days in real life, but your book tastes are on the sadder or darker side? If so, me too! To prove that you are not alone in this, I have gathered some literary thrillers to read in the summer. They are all books that I love, and they all have a dry atmosphere that matches the season perfectly. But I have to warn you, the plots get increasingly thrilling and Gothic as you continue reading. Are you ready for my summer literary thriller recs? Well, ready or not, here they are!

1. Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng (2014)

We see a Chinese-American family living in 1970s small-town Ohio. Lydia is the favourite child of Marilyn and James Lee, and her parents are determined that she will fulfill the dreams they were unable to pursue. But when Lydia's body is found in the local lake, the delicate balancing act that has been keeping the Lee family together is destroyed, tumbling them all into chaos. 

2. Can You Hear Me? by Elena Varvello (2017)

1978. Ponte, a small community in Northern Italy. An unbearably hot summer like many others.

Elia Furenti is sixteen, living an unremarkable life of moderate unhappiness, until the day the beautiful, damaged Anna returns to Ponte and firmly propels Elia to the edge of adulthood. 

But then everything starts to unravel. Elia's father, Ettore, is let go from his job and loses himself in the darkest corners of his mind. 

A young boy is murdered. 

And a girl climbs into a van and vanishes in the deep, dark woods. 

3. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters (2009)

In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, its owners —mother, son and daughter— struggling to keep pace. 

But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr Faraday know how closely, and how disturbingly, their story is about to become entwined with his. 

4. The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock

In Knockemstiff, Ohio, war veteran Willard can't save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from a slow death by cancer, no matter how much sacrificial blood he pours on his 'prayer log'.

Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial killers, trawl America's highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. 

Preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick are running from the law. 

And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin, Willard and Charlotte's orphaned son, looking for answers.

5. The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley (2014)

Two brothers. One mute, the other his lifelong protector. 

Year after year, the family visits the same sacred shrine on a desolate strip of coastline known as the Loney, in desperate hope of a cure. 

In the long hours of waiting, the boys are left alone. And they cannot resist the causeway revealed with every turn of the treacherous tide, the old house they glimpse at its end.

Many years on, Hanny is a grown man no longer in need of his brother's care. 

But then the child's body is found. And the Loney always gives up its secrets, in the end.

6. The Fisherman by John Langan (2016)

When Abe and Dan, two widowers who have found solace in each other's company and a shared passion for fishing, hear rumours of the Dutchman's Creek, and what might be found there, the remedy to both their losses, they dismiss it as just another fish story. Soon, though, the men find themselves drawn into a tale deep and old. 

These were all my book recs for literary thrillers to read in the summer. Do you have any recommendations for me? Let me know in the comments! ❤🙏