Books like Behind Her Eyes — picked by fans

Like many people, I’d heard so much about this classic that I was braced for disappointment the first time I read it.

But no, du Maurier’s rich, atmospheric prose gripped me from that famous first line. While I agree about the power of the iconic cast, such as the infamous Mrs. Danvers, I feel that the setting itself is just as powerful a character. I especially love du Maurier’s way of personifying the setting, so that things such as trees, and plants, and buildings come alive with malevolence.

The opening pages, for example, immediately fill you with unease despite the narrator talking about nothing more than the driveway leading up to the house on the estate! From the woods that “crowded, dark and uncontrolled” and the beeches with “white naked limbs” to the hydrangeas “rearing to a monster height without a bloom, black and ugly” and the nettles that “choked… show more.

I adore reading atmospheric adventures of mystery, supernatural, and ghostly powers; this book has these values in abundance. Noemi’s alluring character is smart, savvy, and admirably vulnerable. Loved her. At High House in the Mexican countryside, Noemi discovers ghostly entities repeatedly forming blisters across the walls. How mysterious and threatening; I was fascinated.

The best part of the novel for me was the emotional intelligence of the characters because their behavior is both suspiciously rational and heart-stopping clever. Gripping as all heck. This family was obsessed with a relentless desire to rule and control their destiny at all costs via Otherworld powers. Absolutely compelling. I was breathless along with Noemi at every step as she was drawn into the dangers and treacherous family secrets that threatened to kill her.

I find that Frankenstein transcends eras by posing critical questions about the ways we develop and use new technology.

I first read a comic-book version in elementary school and have returned to Shelly’s novel over the years because it stimulates my critical thinking about technology, particularly the current rise of AI and our response to it. Frankenstein raises a fundamental ethical question about technology in real life: just because humans can create something, should they actually create it?

For me, the novel also creates the opportunity to explore questions about how we engage technology once we choose to invent it. Dr. Frankenstein abandons his creation, and the creature becomes an angry monster. I ask myself, is this an allegory for our own response to technology?

This book didn’t start out in the usual way. That in itself grabbed my attention. It’s a thriller, so I expect the first paragraph at least to pull me in. It didn’t grab me the way most do; it slowly sucked me in until I found myself not wanting to put it down.

The two main characters seemed to be at odds. One wanting to help and one refusing to speak. I don’t understand not trying to find answers that keep me silent. It must be the curiosity that kept me reading. Because the woman could speak. At least she could at one time. Either it was something traumatic, or it was just plain stubbornness. Or was I missing the entire point? Always an option. 

The book is better than the movie, and the movie is amazing. I love how the author manages to create a dense feeling of female suffocation, gaslighting, hallucination, panic, satanism, conspiracies, deception, and paranoia while simultaneously describing the ordered and neat lives of New York City's emerging glitterati through detailed descriptions of the housewife’s sphere of choosing the right material of towels and the right hue of wallpaper when nesting.

Rosemary’s personal limits and borders, both physical and psychological, are challenged as she becomes a vessel of something unknown, but only unknown to her. An amazingly dense yet easily accessible book.

I really don't know how Catriona Ward manages to balance the languid sadness and unrelenting tension so well.

Ward's profound empathy for every single character, no matter how flawed, is what twists your heart. At the same time, you feel as though you're on a roller coaster barreling at breakneck speed through pitch-black tunnels.

I wasn't always sure I understood what was going on from moment to moment, and that seems very much by design because, wow, what a twist! And the deeply felt depiction of the characters never made me feel like I was truly lost. I will indulge a great deal of mystery as long as it is presented by such a steady and skillful hand.

The novel opens with a tragic hit-and-run. Jacob’s mother lets go of his hand for a few seconds – and in that moment, her little boy’s life is cruelly taken. Jenna, reeling from Jacob’s death, moves away for a fresh start, but her past soon catches up with her. This story completely turns on its head following the big twist halfway through the book and it made me go back to the beginning to re-read! At times harrowing, at times uplifting, this story will stay with me.

A child is taken. A family is shattered. But this plays out a little differently than most missing child cases. I definitely did not expect that epic twist. It’s well written and you’ll tear through the pages with the song 99 Red Balloons playing in your head the whole time.

I recommend this book as often as I can. Edgier and more disturbing than the film adaptation, Heller’s novel offers not one but two women doing terrible things.

Sheba is the art instructor hiding her illicit meetings with a student and running around like a teenager in what must be one of recent literature’s more reprehensible midlife crises. Barbara is the cynical older woman, the veteran teacher with a busy schedule and a barren personal life.

Sheba appeals to Barbara as a friend, to keep her secret. Barbara responds with feigned concern, then with affection, desire, jealousy, and a malicious desire to control Sheba, to jerk her chain and watch her dance. For sheer emotional power dynamics between two women, this book is hard to beat.

Golding is an excellent stylist and manages to combine the detective story with the fantastical element of Irish myth: the Selkie. Is the young mother truly a seal longing to return to the sea? Who is not fascinated by a creature from another world? I know I am. Like her, I have sometimes felt that I am only a visitor here, yearning for my true home. Maybe we have all known something of that feeling, and that’s why we know that on some level, the Selkie is real. The audiobook narration is superb.