If you liked
Books like Big Little Lies
by Liane Moriarty
Big Little Lies takes a death at a school trivia night and rewinds through the lies of three mothers to explain it. Liane Moriarty writes suburbia as a place where the funny and the sinister sit at the same table. If you want more domestic suspense with actual wit, these are the reads.
The shortlist
What to read next
Little Fires Everywhereby Celeste Ng
“Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng 2017 review. Two Shaker Heights families collide over the adoption of a Chinese-American baby. The novel that established Ng as one of the major contemporary literary fiction writers of her generation.”
The Silent Patientby Alex Michaelides
“The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides 2019 review. A forensic psychotherapist works with an artist who has not spoken since the night she shot her husband. The thriller debut that topped the New York Times bestseller list for over a year and became the most-discussed contemporary psychological thriller of its decade.”
Verityby Colleen Hoover
“Verity by Colleen Hoover 2018 review. A struggling writer hired to finish an injured bestseller's series finds an autobiographical manuscript in the family home. The Hoover thriller that broke out years after publication on BookTok and remains the most-discussed contemporary domestic thriller of the decade.”
In the Woodsby Tana French
“In the Woods by Tana French 2007 review. Dublin Murder Squad detective Rob Ryan is assigned to a child murder in the same woods where his two best friends disappeared twenty years earlier. The Edgar winner that launched the strongest contemporary literary-crime series.”
Broken Harborby Tana French
“Broken Harbor by Tana French 2012 review. A Dublin family is murdered in their half-finished suburban-development house. Fourth Dublin Murder Squad book and French's structural masterwork.”
The Plotby Jean Hanff Korelitz
“The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz 2021 review. A failed novelist steals a dead student's masterwork-plot and publishes it as his own. The canonical contemporary literary thriller about plagiarism and authorship.”
FAQ
Common questions about Big Little Lies read-alikes
- What is the closest match in the catalog?
- Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. It shares the suburban setting, the mother-versus-mother tension and the slow reveal of who did what, and it opens with a house already burning. Quieter than Moriarty, sharper on class and race.
- I want the mystery with more of a body count.
- The Silent Patient and Verity crank the suspense higher and the domestic realism lower. If you were reading Big Little Lies mostly for the whodunit, either delivers a faster, twistier hit.
- I want the same secrets-of-a-community feel with better prose.
- Tana French's In the Woods and Broken Harbor turn small Irish settings into pressure cookers of buried history. They are police procedurals rather than school-gate dramas, but the "everyone is hiding something" engine is identical.
- I want smart, funny people behaving badly.
- The Plot centers a writer who steals a dead student's story and spends the novel rationalizing it. It has Moriarty's dark comedy about ambition, with a literary twist to close it out.
The original