Welcome back to Book Break! In this video I'm gonna recommend you some of the best books about
revenge, which is just such a wonderful theme. People have been writing books about revenge
since the beginning of time. And there are some wonderful revenge books to be found
amongst the classics. So you're probably already very familiar with The Count of Monte Christo
by Alexandre Dumas. This one's about a man thrown in prison for a crime he didn't commit,
and we see him plotting both his escape and his revenge on the men who imprisoned him. There
is of course Wuthering Heights where basically everyone is trying to get revenge on each other.
And maybe the ultimate revenge story is Hamlet by Shakespeare, which is the story of a man seeking
revenge on his uncle for the murder of his father. And then this love of stories about revenge stayed
with us through modern classics like Carrie, about a bullied schoolgirl seeking violent
revenge on her classmates. And even moving into this century we have really popular books like
Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and its very vengeful heroine Lisbeth Salander, and Gone Girl, which I
can't tell you anything about without giving you spoilers just in case you don't already know,
but just take my word for it: it is about revenge. Basically we all love stories about revenge,
and I'm not surprised, it's such a wonderfully evocative theme. So assuming you have worked your
way through all of the classic revenge stories, in this video I'm going to recommend you nine revenge
books that you may not already have read. Starting with The Melting by Lize Spit. This is a very
very dark book that you do need a strong stomach for, so be warned. It's about a woman called Eva
who grew up one of just three children born that year in her small Flemish town. Eva and the two
boys formed this very intense friendship that turned dangerous, and now, fifteen years later,
we follow Eva as she heads back to her hometown with a block of ice in the boot of her car,
determined to seek revenge. And even just this whole cover is so subtly sinister, so that really
gives you an idea of what you are in for with this book. The Harpy by Megan Hunter really plays into
the dark fairy tale side of revenge. So this is about a married couple called Lucy and Jake,
whose relationship is shattered when it's revealed that Jake has been having an affair.
So together this couple agrees that Lucy, the wife, can hurt Jake three times. He won't know
when it's coming, he won't know what form this pain is going to take, whether it'll be
emotional hurt or physical hurt. And as their relationship changes as they enter this very
eerie game of revenge, we also see Lucy herself undergo this transformation of body and mind.
The score and its sequel The Mark by Kiki Swinson is about a trio of con artists who are planning a
scheme to steal three million dollars. but they’re each also planning the ultimate betrayal of each
other. So throughout both books we watch these characters planning, trying to constantly stay
one step ahead of each other, and when they've been wronged, you've got no doubt they will
settle the score. If you've read any of the books by writing duo Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen,
you will know that revenge is a theme across all of their books, but the exact form that
this revenge takes would count as a spoiler so I'm not going to tell you too much about the revenge
aspect of the books. But I will recommend to you their most recent book You Are Not Alone. So
without giving any spoilers this is about a woman called Shay, who is really shaken after witnessing
the death of a young woman on the subway, and she ends up befriending this dead woman's circle of
friends. They really take her under their wing and help her sort her life out. But what starts off as
reassuring turns very sinister pretty quickly. The Treatment by Michael Nath is another very
dark story. This is about racism and hate crime, and it's told in the familiar style of revenge
tragedies like Hamlet. So the book begins when a Black teenager is murdered by a racist gang,
who then over the next 20 years continue to just gain power on the streets of South London,
seemingly untouchable by corrupt law officials. But not everyone has forgotten what they did.
Ok and then a thriller set in the sometimes terrifying world of social media, People Like Her
by Ellery Lloyd is about Emmy, a mommy blogger who is absolutely beloved by her hundreds of thousands
of fans, but isn't always telling the truth, as is revealed by her husband Dan. So in this book
we jump between the perspectives of this husband and wife, but we also hear from a third unnamed
narrator who is seeking revenge for something that Emmy did years before. It's really scary,
it might even scare you off Instagram - for a few hours at least. Dead Girls by Abigail
Tartellin is about a 12 year old girl seeking revenge for the murder of her best friend. And
this book was written in response to the terribly tragically high statistics of murder and violence
against women and girls. So this is a book that really acknowledges the injustices against women,
but also doesn't allow women to become just the victims. I actually did a video with the author
Abigail Tartellin so I will link to that below, so you can hear our conversation all about how
feminism and crime go hand in hand. But back to this book. Thera is this amazingly fearless
12 year old girl who has been cruelly awakened to what the world has to offer her, and decides
to take matters into her own hands, helped along the way by the spirits of other murdered girls. So
it's a little bit supernatural as well. A book to watch out for coming out in the summer is Fragile
by Sarah Hilary. This is about Nell, a runaway, a former foster child with a secret to hide,
now looking for a place to belong, and she takes a job working for an employer who turns out to
have a very rigid set of rules and plenty of secrets of his own. So this is really a story
about young people betrayed by the foster system, by each other, betrayed by their very desire
for a better life, it's about a husband and wife betrayed by each other in this increasingly toxic
relationship, and it's about how these characters who have been wronged are driven by revenge on
those they feel betrayed them. And finally I've got a short story collection here that's actually
called Revenge by Yoko Ogawa. Revenge is the English title, the original Japanese title is very
different. It can actually be translated roughly as “silent corpse, lewd funeral”. So two very
different titles there, and as the original title suggests not all of these stories do
deal directly with themes of vengeance, though some do. One in particular called Lab Coats
is specifically about romantic revenge. These stories are really really creepy and unsettling,
you can never quite predict the dark turns they're gonna take. Some of them are supernatural,
all of them are verging on horror, but what they have in common is they all explore the
darkest emotions humans can feel: hatred, anger, jealousy, and of course the desire for revenge.
So let us know what are your favourite books about revenge? And if you're looking for more books
about the darker sides of humanity, I will link here to a video we made before on books about
obsession. So do click through for even more recommendations and I'll see you next time!