Domestic Thrillers: Why I Can't Read Them, but Women Apparently Love Them.

Women share reasons why they enjoy thrillers that occur in domestic settings

As a forensic psychologist, it might not surprise you that when it comes to books, I’m a complete fan of the thriller and horror genre. I’ve always liked police procedurals (but they must be good; otherwise, they can be boring as hell), I’ve enjoyed suspense thrillers, and I enjoy the darker side of the imagination that can conjure up scary, creepy, and gory tales of terror. Did it influence my career choice? Possibly. The same goes for horror and thriller films. I’ve always enjoyed them. All of them.

Until recently, that is.

I can pinpoint when this happened, and I can now tie it down to a specific book, too. I didn’t realise it then; that clarity came somewhat later. I was reading The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean. It’s an excellent book, well written and quite tense. But it was possibly too well written. I will try and explain without spoiling the book (I'm not too fond of spoilers, myself). The book is basically about a woman being held captive by a man on a farm, and it’s not a pleasant experience. It’s a claustrophobic psychological thriller that contains actual and threatened violence, both physical and sexual, and there is the added stress of a baby born out of sexual violence and another woman being held captive inside the house. It’s all very intense, and as far as psychological thrillers go, it’s excellent. It delivers on what it promises.

But I struggled to get through it. I had to take two or three breaks and read other books. And for a long time, I couldn’t figure out why. I didn’t know if I was bored or just wasn’t interested. This seemed strange because I enjoyed the way it was written, and I was especially impressed with how well the main character was written, considering that the author is a man. I eventually finished The Last Thing to Burn, and (if you give a shit) I rated it five stars on Goodreads and then didn’t think about it much more. Until very recently, that is.

I have just finished reading Dear Child by Romy Hausman (which, if you must know, I’ve rated four stars on Goodreads), and during the first act of the book, I realised I was having a similar experience to that of reading “The Last Thing to Burn.” This time, though, I wasn’t taking breaks and reading other books in between, but I did find that I was reading Dear Child rather slowly and that it felt like a chore despite the premise being engaging. Which I thought was so fucking weird.

And without giving too much away, I finally figured out why I was struggling.

I was struggling with the fact that part of the storyline is about a woman experiencing significant and traumatic violence at the hands of a man, but in a domestic situation. This reminded me of the woman’s experience in “The Last Thing to Burn.” From this, I made further connections to books I have enjoyed but had a sense of heaviness and lethargy when reading them. For example, Blood Orange, a book that involved a woman having an affair with a man that wasn’t nice and treated her like shit (a book, by the way, that had the most out-of-left-field ending I’ve read in a long time; but I won’t say too much about that). And it started to make sense as to why I was ambivalent about reading books like It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover, which is also about (I think) domestic violence, and potentially anything by Lisa Jewell (I can’t confirm this, but all her books look like they involve tension in the family, some of which could include infidelity or violence between domestic partners). And so, from reading Dear Child and being able to understand my experience of reading The Last Thing to Burn, I now realise I have a mild to moderate aversion to a sub-genre of thriller novels known as the “domestic thriller”, a sub-genre I didn’t know existed. I now realise makes sense as it’s own genre seeing as there is usually a handful of books of this kind in this some or other form of bestseller list. According to the magazine Mystery & Suspense, a domestic thriller (also known as “chick noir”, “domestic noir”, or the “mommy thriller”) is a “subset of a crime fiction written with a psychological flair that focusses on interpersonal relationships and their outcomes” with the plot lines “set within homes, families and spousal relations and delve into the dynamics of trust, mistrust and suspicion.”

I think the reason for my aversion to this genre of books will be pretty obvious (to me at least – I am not expecting the same level of awareness from you): I spend quite a lot of time in my day job talking to women who have experienced some form of domestic abuse. The details are not necessary for this blog, but the heaviness that I can feel when I read their trauma histories or they share excerpts from those periods of their lives can be pretty intense to hear. At the same time, however, the fact that they no longer have those experiences – that they are in the past – makes it somewhat easier to deal with. The books, on the other hand, whilst I know they are fictional (and in some cases written by a man), offer me an insight into what it might be like to go through that kind of experience, almost in real-time. Which, seemingly, makes it quite challenging to read. I will admit, of all the ways I thought my job would impact me, how I read thrillers about domestic tension and violence was not one of them.

Which made me curious about how women would feel about reading domestic thrillers. Not necessarily because all women who read domestic thrillers will have had experiences of domestic violence and abuse, but rather because they are women reading about other women having these horrible experiences, which are common enough to be experienced by 1 in 4 women. I wondered how the ability to empathise with women’s experiences would impact women’s decision to and enjoyment of domestic thrillers. Interestingly, though, another blog I read highlighted that women seem to prefer and lap up domestic thrillers. Which I found curious.

But, as always, I like to find out from people their views on things, and seeing as I have a predominantly female/woman following on my Instagram account, I thought I would ask them. I was interested in how many women enjoyed domestic thrillers, and if they did, why? So, I put out a poll and a follow-up question box. Of the 191 women who voted as to whether they enjoyed domestic thriller novels or not (see image below), 35% said they “fucking loved them” (67 votes), 40% said “they’re not bad (76 votes), while 25% thought they were “pretty meh”. This means that overall, 75% of women voters thought that domestic thrillers were in some way enjoyable.

In trying to assess why women enjoyed this genre or book, I had a slightly smaller qualitative response (17 in all), which was also limited in detail as I only used the standard Instagram question response. But, seeing as this isn’t a fucking academic paper and just for my own (and possibly your) interest, that kind of data seems reasonable enough. I wrote out all the answers I received and popped them into ChatGPT and asked it to find me the most common themes (which, by the way, while it’s not at all a verified means of doing a thematic analysis, is excellent for a general overview of themes). I asked ChatGTP to compile a list of the top five themes, which I have further merged into the following:

1. Relatability and Recognition of Similar Experiences: some readers appreciate domestic thrillers because they reflect relatable experiences and actions, providing a sense of connection with the story. This is something noted in the second blog post I found while reading up on this topic. The blog highlighted the characters in these books are relatable because they could be any of us. We are all, in some respects, a partner or family member of some kind or have some connection to a domestic context. And while we might not necessarily be able to recognise aspects of characters within ourselves, we might be able to recognise things in other characters – even the villains of the story. It was also noted in my poll that this contributed to how engaging the mystery of the books is.

2. Investment in Character Dynamics and Relationships: additionally, readers are drawn to domestic thrillers due to their focus on character dynamics and the depth of character development, making them care about the characters and their relationships. Which, again, feeds into how relatable the books are. There is often a lot of time spent thinking about the relationships between people, and often the books will be written from multiple perspectives, and usually in first-person (think Gone Girl, where you read from both main character perspectives), which means we as a reader get to know the characters thoughts and fears and intentions. This is where the “psychological” aspect of these kinds of psychological thrillers comes from. For some, this aspect – the exploration of people’s internal world – as well as helping us relate to and generate investment in the characters, is fascinating from the perspective of understanding human nature and behaviour and serves as a motivation to read these kinds of books.

3. Empowerment and Focus on Women: the final theme that emerged from those who contributed to my poll highlights that some women enjoy domestic thrillers because they often feature strong female protagonists who come out on top, providing a sense of empowerment and representation. As one contributor noted: “The woman ‘wins’, which is not something that happens often. As noted in one of the blogs I read for this, “Most of these stories feature heavily with women being hurt – kidnapped, stalked, attacked, abused, and taken advantage of… What people who don’t read the genre may not realise is that we don’t just read these stories to see how they [the women] deal with the wrongs being done to them but how the women SURVIVE.”

So, there you go. Who would have guessed, huh? But, given the above reasons for why women might enjoy domestic thrillers, and given that women are more likely to read books than men, it makes sense that these kinds of thrillers that appeal specifically to women do so well in terms of sales. For me, though, I might still try to steer clear of them for a while. Or I might try to keep in mind that the women win, and that might motivate me to keep going with them.