The Last One at the Wedding

Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses domestic violence and sexual abuse. 

Domestic thrillers are a subgenre of psychological thrillers. Like psychological thrillers, domestic thrillers use mystery and suspense to explore complex psychological issues and generate feelings of anxiety and suspense. Domestic thrillers are additionally characterized by their specific focus on daily life, domestic settings, and fraught family relationships, and they often explore the impact that those situations have on individuals. The situations depicted in domestic thrillers, because they so closely parallel everyday life, create an especially familiar (and often tense) atmosphere. Their narratives are “closer to home” than espionage thrillers, police procedurals, or novels that focus on large-scale government intrigue.

Domestic thrillers often feature themes that explore the impact of secrecy, lies, and deception on families, but they also depict issues such as work-life balance, infidelity, troubled marriages, the difficulties of parenting, and sibling rivalries. They sometimes delve into darker topics such as intimate partner violence, childhood trauma, sexual abuse, and even murder. Domestic thrillers are typically character-driven, featuring a cast of figures who are complex and round. Because they so frequently explore the nature of familial relationships, domestic thrillers offer a window into at least one character’s emotional state, motivations, and drives. Many domestic thrillers feature female protagonists, but The Last One at the Wedding is a notable example of a domestic thriller told from a male point of view. Frank Szatowski is a complex character presented not only through the lens of his working-class identity but also his fraught relationship with Maggie. The novel engages with the quotidian parental struggles of helping children to navigate complex situations while remaining objective and attuned to the darker aspects of their children’s personalities. 

Domestic thrillers have exploded in popularity in recent years, and Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl is often cited as one of the genre’s key exemplars. The novel uses an unreliable narrator to reveal the underbelly of a seemingly perfect marriage, and although it is different from The Last One at the Wedding in plot and scope, it shares with Rekulak’s novel an interest in marriages that are not what they appear to be on the surface. Freida McFadden is another prominent writer of domestic thrillers. Her novel The Housemaid, although an exploration of a domestic worker’s relationship with one family, shares with The Last One at the Wedding an interest in social class and on the impact of secrets on families. B. A. Paris’s Behind Closed Doors reveals the cracks in the façade of a “happy” marriage and, like The Last One at the Wedding, explores its characters’ complex psychology in an effort to explain “deviant” behavioral patterns. Sarah Pekkanen’s recent novel House of Glass also showcases fraught family dynamics and uses dramatic cliffhangers, unexpected plot twists, and foreshadowing to create an atmosphere of anxiety and suspense. Shari Lapena is another key author within the domestic thriller genre. Her recent novel Everyone Here is Lying shares with The Last One at the Wedding a plot featuring the disappearance of a female character and a focus on obfuscation and deception.