With a bit of soapy dialogue, dark humor, luxury, and a thrilling mystery at its heart, The Perfect Couple evokes these 10 novels.
It was impossible not to binge Netflix’s The Perfect Couple, and now that it’s already been out for over a month, many of us are craving more than a new binge-watch. It’s also the season to sit by a cozy fire and curl up with a good book, and what’s better for the vibe than a mystery thriller like The Perfect Couple?
Luckily, The Perfect Couple is based on a book by Elin Hilderbrand, but if you don’t enjoy reading a story when you already know the ending, we’ve compiled a list of 10 other books you’ll unequivocally fall in love with. The Perfect Couple followed Nicole Kidman’s wealthy Greer Winbury, whose son is set to marry Amelia. But when the corpse of Amelia’s maid-of-honor washes ashore, the murder mystery takes over the impending wedding. With a bit of soapy dialogue, dark humor, luxury, and a thrilling mystery at its heart, The Perfect Couple evokes these 10 novels.
The queen of the “girl thriller” is Liane Moriarty, who has tapped into the perfect balance of darkness, romance, and page-turning distress. In Nine Perfect Strangers, nine characters attend a hyped-up, yet secretive, wellness retreat. In the Hulu series, Nicole Kidman plays the retreat’s leader, Masha, who turns out to be much more nefarious than anyone realized. But the book takes us inside each character’s head as truths are revealed during their life-or-death dilemma.
Just like The Perfect Couple, wealthy families are at the story’s center during a trip away from home. But the vacation in Do Not Become Alarmed takes place on a cruise, the perfect setting for a mysterious plot. Two families traveling together with four children go ashore for an excursion in Central America, but when the kids go missing, their vacation takes a sinister turn. From a beautiful occasion into a disastrous nightmare, Do Not Become Alarmed evokes much of what makes The Perfect Couple so captivating.
It would be silly to make this list without adding at least one of Elin’s other thrilling novels. Winter in Paradise is the first book in a TKTK trilogy following Irene Steele, whose perfect life takes an ugly turn when her seemingly perfect husband is killed in a helicopter crash. As Irene and her sons head to the Caribbean to sort out her husband’s affairs, they learn that he was leading an alternate secret life. Just as secrets come out in The Perfect Couple, Elin’s 20TK novel is all about the secrets beneath what appears to be an idyllic life.
We apologize for the plethora of Liane Moriarty novels, but she really does capture the essence of everything that The Perfect Couple embodies. One of her lesser known novels (perhaps because its series adaptation ended up on the lesser-streamed Peacock), Apples Never Fall probably shares the most similarities with The Perfect Couple. It follows a wealthy and successful family as they are torn apart by their missing matriarch, Joy, and the secrets that come out of the woodwork because of her disappearance. As the Delaney family reckons with what happened to Joy and if her husband, Stan, is guilty, their family drama is on display for the entire community to witness.
If you want a story about secrets, relationships, and affairs with a final unexpected twist, Siracusa is the book for you. As New Yorkers and writers Michael and Lizzie go on vacation with their friends, their story is told through different perspectives, flashbacks, and present-day scenes. The psychological thriller is set in a romantic spot with various unexpected twists, such as 10-year-old Snow’s involvement in the unfolding chaos of relationships, which is also at the forefront of The Perfect Couple.
The Perfect Couple has the touchpoints of a classic detective story while also capturing the terrifying thrill of a gritty crime series. The Unwedding achieves the same balance. When the recently divorced Ellery Wainwright goes on a resort vacation on what was supposed to be her 20th wedding anniversary, the resort happens to host a wedding. However, Ellery discovers the groom’s corpse floating in the pool, canceling the wedding and forcing the resort’s guests to solve what happened. The similarities to The Perfect Couple may seem obvious, but the twists are unique; plus, the guests are trapped at the resort without police assistance due to a mudslide, adding tension and urgency to the nightmare situation at hand.
A #1 Best Seller for over 15 weeks, The Girl on the Train followed a 33-year-old alcoholic named Rachel whose perspective grows increasingly unrealiable. But while the mystery at hand begins as a story of faraway observation, Rachel gets more and more intwined with the dark turn of events that leads to a missing woman, a dangerous man, and an unethical therapist. All of this culminates with themes of feminism and domestic violence along with how hiding aspects of ourselves from those closest to us can lead to the worst possible scenario.
A New York Times bestseller, Lucy Foley’s The Guest List adds to wedding-themed thrillers similar to The Perfect Couple. Like the aforementioned series and The Unwedding, the appearance of a dead body once again puts a halt to a highly anticipated wedding. But this time, the characters are in an island off the coast of Ireland and everyone at the wedding is a suspect. As we oscillate between perspectives and scenes from before and after the body is found, we learn more about the guests and their secrets … unveiling a dark secret by the end.
Although A Death at the Party doesn’t take place at a wedding, the festivities are still underway in Nadine Walsh’s summer garden party. The story starts with Nadine happening upon a dead body. (Why do all great thrillers start with the discovery of a corpse?) But in this case, the dark secrets come down to Nadine, whose memory of her indifferent husband and preoccupied children hint at something more nefarious underneath our protagonist. As her secrets come to light, we can’t help but wonder who’s really at fault here.
In Freida McFadden’s relatable novel, Sydney Shaw is a hopeless romantic who can’t pin down a man in New York City. But when she finds the seemingly “perfect” guy, a doctor at a local hospital, news of a serial killer who dates his victims before killing them makes Sydney worry that her new beau could have a much darker side to him. Like The Perfect Couple, The Boyfriend is a story of deception in relationships and how those we think we love may not be who they seem to be.
