Welcome back to Book Break! In this video we are talking about books with sensational twists. I
have got 21 book recommendations for you here. I'm not going to give any spoilers as to what
the twists are, but I know some people do consider even knowing there's a twist a spoiler, so it goes
without saying if you don't even want to know there's a twist in the book you're reading,
maybe don't watch this video, because I am going to reveal that all of these books have amazing
twists that will have you searching back through the pages to find all the clues that you missed.
I absolutely love twists that pull this off. So to dive straight in. One of the first books I read
with a really major twist like this was Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. I'm sure you have already heard
what the twist is in this book because it was absolutely huge and the movie was absolutely huge
but just in case I'm still not going to spoil anything for you. So this is a missing person
story. Nick's wife Amy has gone missing and he is a suspect, and we flash between
hearing his point of view and reading Amy's diary in the time leading up to her disappearance. And
these two accounts tell very different stories. So this is really the book that got me hooked on
this whole genre, and next I've got here As Long As We Both Shall Live by JoAnn Chaney,
which is very much a Gone Girl successor. This book even references Gone Girl and it takes that
twist and twists it even further. I literally never knew what was coming next with this one.
So it's another missing person story. Matt's wife is missing presumed dead after a tragic hiking
accident - at least it seems like an accident, until it comes out that Matt's first wife
also died in mysterious circumstances. Then I've got The Imposter by Anna Wharton. So this is
about Chloe who's a newspaper archivist who gets really really obsessed with the story of a young
girl who went missing many many years ago and whose family never gave up hope of finding her.
And then Chloe sees an ad advertising that this family are now looking for a lodger.
So it's the perfect chance for her to get even closer to this case that she's so fascinated
by. And again there is a huge twist. I really did not see it coming. Just when I thought I'd
figured out what was going on everything changed. The Favourite Sister by Jessica Knoll is a book
with multiple twists, so this is about a reality TV show following the lives of women who run
their own businesses who are entrepreneurs. It's pitched as this feminist TV show, but in reality
it is just about stirring up drama between these women and pitching them against each other.
And by drama I mean we find out from the beginning that the latest season of this show will end in
murder. And the twists just keep coming in this one, literally nothing is what it seems. Then
there's The Cutting Season by Attica Locke. This is about Caren who is the manager of a historic
plantation house in Louisiana where one morning a dead body is found. And the body is of a woman,
an illegal immigrant worker, and the culprit is believed to be one of Caren's employees.
And then we also have this historical subplot woven throughout which is the story of a murder
featuring one of Caren's ancestors, Jason, a freed slave. And the way these subplots weave together
is so clever and there are twists aplenty. Can You See Me Now? by Trisha Sakhlecha is a book that's
on my TBR so I don't actually know what the twist is going to be yet, but it has been described as
shocking and spectacular so I can't wait. So this one is about Alia who is a woman working in the
Indian government with secrets in her past that she doesn't want to come to the surface. And we
also flash back and meet her as a young girl when she went to this elite boarding school and fell
in with a group of very wealthy rich privileged girls. And everything in this book is apparently
building up to this shocking twist which leaves you flipping back through the pages to spot all
of the clues so I can't wait. The Wife Between Us by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, on the
surface, is about a woman preparing to marry the man that she loves, and a jealous ex-wife obsessed
with her replacement, but on closer look nobody is quite what they seem. And this is one of my
favourite types of twists where the book never lies to you, but when the twist is revealed you
realise that you are the one who's been getting it wrong the whole time. And you get a similar format
in I Let You Go by Clare Mackintosh. This book has one of my favourite halfway twists of all time.
Again the book never lies to you, but once it's revealed you realise how many assumptions
you'd been making and I actually couldn't resist when I got to that halfway twist with this one,
going back and rereading some of the earlier sections and seeing them in a whole new light,
a much more terrifying light. The October List by Jeffrey Deaver is a very clever one in that this
book is told completely backwards. So we start at the end of the story with this very dramatic
scene where Gabriella is waiting in her house for news of her abducted daughter. And then the
door bursts open, but it's not the FBI, it's the kidnapper, and he has a gun. And then from there
we go backwards, every scene takes us back to find out what happened immediately before,
so it's this really clever format where the whole time we're trying to piece together
all the information that we have, but we know that we're waiting to find out what actually happened
to kickstart this whole chain of events. In Monday's Not Coming by Tiffany D Jackson,
Claudia's best friend Monday has gone missing and nobody except her seems to care or even notice,
even Monday's mother and sister are being no help, and nobody seems to be able to remember
the last time they saw her. And the book flashes back and forth between the before section which is
when Claudia is first realising that Monday has gone missing, and the after which is after she
knows what happened. And Tiffany D Jackson is very good at her twists and this one is no exception,
but be warned it might emotionally destroy you a little bit. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier is a
Gothic classic about an unnamed main character who has just married a much older man whose beloved
legendary wife Rebecca died less than a year before, and the new wife feels like she just can't
live up to the memory of Rebecca, and obsession and paranoia starts to completely take over until
massive secrets are suddenly revealed. The twist in Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough is so
massive. This book was actually marketed with the hashtag #WTFThatEnding and seriously WTF.
At first this one seems like a domestic thriller about a woman getting involved with a married man,
but it is so much more than that. So if you're looking to read something totally different from
pretty much any thriller you've ever read before and are willing to go in with an open mind this
is your book. And there's now a Netflix adaptation which has got everyone buzzing about it all over
again. Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson is about a woman with anterograde amnesia, so she
wakes up every morning with no recollection of what happened the day before. Ever since she had
this terrible accident she has got no new memories at all. So every morning she has to rely on her
journal, on photos, and on help from her husband to piece together the information about her life.
But not everything that her husband is telling her seems to add up so she decides to do some
digging herself and what she finds out is a shocker. Another memory loss thriller which
the genre I have a huge soft spot for is The Good Son by You-Jeong Jeong. So in this one
Yu-jin has suffered seizures all his life which often lead to big gaps missing from his memory,
and one morning he wakes up to find that his mother has been murdered. He doesn't know what
happened, but he has a faint memory of hearing her call his name. But was she calling out for help
or was she begging for her life? So the next three days we follow Yu-jin as he tries to discover what
happened, and truths about himself and the family will be revealed. Another one that I haven't read
but was recommended as a book with a great twist by Sophie Hannah who is a thriller queen is The
Secret House of Death by Ruth Rendall. Apparently this is one where even to the last line you don't
quite know what's happening, and the very last line will reveal quite how much you've been
fooled. So I love that kind of thing. The book is about a murder and Sophie Hannah said that the
murder itself is the twist which won't make sense until you've read it, which is so intriguing! But
it's not just thrillers that can pull off huge twist. The Man Who Didn't Call by Rosie Walsh is
a romance with a mystery and a massive twist. So in this one it's about a woman who meets
the man of her dreams, they have this whirlwind romance, they can really see a future together,
and then he never calls. Her friends say that she's just been ghosted but she is sure that
something else is going on and she's right. Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo is a very moving
literary fiction novel about a marriage. It's about a Nigerian couple who are trying to conceive
while facing pressure from their families for the husband to take a second wife,
which is something they've always said they didn't want to happen. And there are so many twists, so
many secrets and lies that these two are keeping from each other that you really never know what's
going to be revealed next. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro is a sci-fi literary fiction blend
about a group of children being brought up in an English boarding school where they know almost
nothing about the outside world, and the twist in that one is actually revealed pretty early on. But
I'm not going to give you any more clues because it totally changes the book that you think you're
reading. Everything Everything by Nicola Yoon is a YA romance with a pretty controversial twist
that was definitely unexpected. So this one is about a girl who has such severe immunodeficiency
that she is unsafe to leave her house or have any contact with the outside world. She actually
hasn't set foot outside her home in 15 years. And then a gorgeous boy moves in next door. We Were
Liars by E Lockhart, you know throughout the book that you're waiting for some big reveal. Again
the marketing was very tailored towards this, urging readers “if anyone asks you what happened
just lie”. So this is about a very rich privileged family who holiday each year on a private island,
but two summers ago one of the girls Cadence suffered a traumatic head injury so severe
she's got no memory of what happened, and nobody wants to talk about it. So through flashbacks we
slowly piece together what actually happened and I didn't predict it at all. And then finally I'm
going to recommend a comedy because twists can be used really effectively for comedy as well.
So Anxious People by Fredrik Backman is the story of a bank robbery gone wrong. It ends
up that all of the viewers who are present at an open apartment viewing are all accidentally held
hostage. It's completely absurd, it's a lot of fun, and there are loads of twists along the way.
Some of them are very funny, some of them brought tears to my eyes, Fredrik Backman is very good at
that, and some of them will just make you laugh to realise how wrong you've got it. So I would love
to know your recommendations of books with massive twists that you didn't see coming in any genre,
do leave your recommendations in the comments below, but no spoilers on what the actual twists
are please because I would love to discover them for myself and I'm sure everyone else would too.
And I will link here to a playlist of loads of our other reading recommendations. See you next time!