Everyone Here Is Lying: A Novel

The thriller literary genre is known for creating feelings of suspense, horror, and anxiety in the reader. Over the last few decades, domestic thrillers have emerged as a popular subgenre of thrillers. Domestic thrillers focus on everyday life, familiar settings, and situations surrounding domesticity that hold psychologically tense undertones. In domestic thrillers, the horror and thrill lie in the concept that the situation the reader encounters in the novel is familiar and close to the reader’s reality. In the past, thrillers typically focused on outlandish concepts surrounding spies, detectives, and the supernatural. Yet the domestic thriller genre involves themes of tension with familial relationships, suburban struggles, and mistrust between spouses. Oftentimes, the protagonist is a woman who suspects something sinister about her husband’s life involving murder, infidelity, and family secrets. The novel Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, published in 2012, popularized this subgenre; Flynn highlighted the suspense in the novel through an unreliable narrator, revealing that things are not always as they seem in domestic spheres. Many authors since Flynn have emulated her style, drawing on the familiar to reveal something sinister and dark underneath. Critics sometimes refer to the domestic thriller genre as domestic noir, referring to the film noir genre, or as “chick noir” or “mommy thriller.” However, many authors consider the terms “chick noir” or “mommy thriller” to be condescending and misogynistic. Although the genre does not exclusively focus on women, most novels in the genre highlight women’s experiences, particularly in domestic spheres as wives and mothers.