Six Great Thrillers Featuring Manipulative Mom-Friends at Their Best

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Mom-friends. If you are a woman with children, then you’ve probably found yourself in this particular kind of circumstantial friendship. Would you be friends were it not for the same baby-and-me schedule during those long, tedious infant months? Or if your children hadn’t started school at the same year in the same neighborhood, each of them wailing at the drop-off gate for the first three weeks of school? Perhaps not, but this is what makes mom-friends such interesting territory for (cynical) domestic suspense writers like me: these new friendships can look like lifelines on the surface, but underneath there is just enough room to plant the toxicities we love best—lies! envy! revenge!—between mothers who would do just about anything to protect their children, yes, but also their own reputations. Here are some stand-out thrillers featuring manipulative mom-friends at their best:

Cutting Teeth by Chandler Baker
(publishing July 18)

Chandler Baker takes us to a truly wild place in one of this summer’s hottest reads about a group of preschool kids who crave blood (toddler vampires!). When the classroom teacher is found dead, the kids are suspects, but more so are three of their moms, who clamour to prove their innocence to everyone, and to each other. This is a sharp, page-turning, completely original take on the insanity of modern motherhood with mom-friends at the center, and it’s so much fun to read. 

Dirty Laundry by Disha Bose

What group of mom friends is complete these days without a social media influencer in the mix? Bose’s debut, a Good Morning American book club pick, features one such friend who holds the envy of all the others—until she ends up dead in her home. This twisty novel reminiscent of ‘Desperate Housewives’ explores conflict between three mom friends caught in a tangle of envy and judgement, desperate to preserve their reputations and their families. 

Everyone Here Is Lying by Shari Lapena
(publishing July 25)

In this latest from the long-reigning queen of domestic suspense, a precocious young girl goes missing after school, and while her father was the last to see her alive, it’s the neighborhood moms who are left scrambling to get their families off the growing suspect list, as they each point fingers at each other. Panic grows, tempers fly, and everyone becomes unhinged (bonus points in this one for manipulative children!).

The Herd by Emily Edwards

Edwards’ debut pits a group of mom friends against each other over the very timely topic of vaccines, after a harmless white lie at a child’s birthday party has catastrophic consequences for everyone. Edwards does a skilled job of pitting mom against mom in a way that will make you see all sides of the story. This book asks big moral questions and the emotional tensions are high—the perfect pick for a book club of mom friends who want to go deep.

The Other Mothers by Katherine Faulkner
(publishing December 5)

This one isn’t out until December, but I just had to include it—it’s well worth the wait! Perfectly described as ‘next-level mum noir’ and ‘grown-up mean girls,’ Faulkner’s sophomore novel begins with new mom and struggling journalist, Tash, joining a local playgroup for her son. She finds herself invited “in” to a posh group of close mom friends that have a connection to a young nanny who died several months prior under mysterious circumstances. Tash can’t help but probe further. But who is really investigating who in this web of new friendships? 

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty 

Safe to say nobody does mom friends and suburban noir like Moriarty, and this list just wouldn’t be complete without mention of Madeline, Celeste and Jane, the three moms at the center of this now-classic schoolyard scandal that turns lethal. Although we’ve probably all read the novel or watched the brilliant HBO adaption, I won’t spoil the ending that’s made this one such a favorite—except to say that it’s the mom-friend-ties-that-bind that win out in the end.

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