Is This Relationship Toxic or Just Complicated?

Crime Fiction Featuring Ride-or-Dies, Emphasis on the Die

There’s a reason we joke that a real friend is someone who’ll help you hide a body. We all need support, especially in our darkest hours (like when we’ve just strangled a violent husband or devoured the handsy high school football quarterback). But committing crimes together can cause tension, sometimes with fatal results.

And often, the people we choose as friends aren’t healthy for us to begin with. In my novel When I’m Her, Mary is equally fascinated with and envious of Elizabeth, and wonders if they’d even be friends if it weren’t for their uncommon ability to swap bodies with each other. This weak foundation crumbles after one brutal Halloween night when Elizabeth betrays Mary. Years later, Mary gets her revenge by stealing Elizabeth’s seemingly perfect life—but it’s much more than she bargained for.

Here are six books featuring destructive, if not lethal, attachments.

The Summer We Buried by Jody Gehrman

Twenty years ago, Tansy cut the magnetic but unstable Selene out of her life after a traumatic night. Now Selene’s back, claiming Tansy owes her for the deadly favor she did her all those years ago. Selene thinks her daughter is in an abusive relationship and needs Tansy’s help to rescue her. Tansy wants to help the young woman, but also finds herself pulled back into Selene’s orbit. And Selene’s not one to let go easily…

Like a Sister by Kellye Garrett

Sisters are our first frenemies, supportive one moment and at each other’s throats the next. Lena has a complicated relationship with her half sister Desiree—in fact, they haven’t spoken in years—but when Desiree is found dead of a purported heroin overdose, Lena is suspicious. Desiree hated needles. Lena goes searching for the truth, but she may be in over her head. The novel stands out in its exploration of the specific, poignant grief of losing an estranged loved one.

These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever

Sensitive, artistic Paul is spellbound by Julian when they meet as university freshmen in 1970s Pittsburgh. Julian is charming, articulate, and wealthy—everything Paul isn’t—and they share a powerful intellectual connection. They become friends, then lovers, creating an obsessive world unto themselves…until a macabre game of imagined acts of violence escalates into reality.

Hot Springs Drive by Lindsay Hunter

Jackie and Theresa are polar opposites, yet become fast friends after they meet in the maternity ward (Theresa has just given birth to her only daughter, while Jackie is having the second of four sons). Years later Jackie, driven by envy and feeling consumed by motherhood, has an affair with Theresa’s husband that leads to Theresa’s murder…though not in the way you’d initially expect. This is an atypical book about friendship in that we don’t actually see much of Jackie and Theresa together on-page, but their increasingly twisted relationship colors everything that happens to the extensive cast of POV characters (including, in one chapter, the house where the murder victim lives).

Out by Natsuo Kirino

I have mixed feelings about the conclusion of this novel (read it and you’ll see what I mean, and also ALL THE TRIGGER WARNINGS) but you’ll be hard pressed to find a heroine with steelier nerves than Masako, who springs into action when her coworker Yayoi not-so-accidentally kills her awful husband and needs help getting rid of his body. The four central women characters, already desperate for various reasons, struggle to maintain solidarity against the consequences of their crimes and their society’s sex and class prejudices.

Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Lisa Sterle

Wildcard entry: in this YA graphic novel, high schooler Becca is thrilled to be accepted by the most popular girls at her new school. Even after she discovers their secret (they’re werewolves!) and is told she must be turned into one of them…or die. At first she revels in her new super-strength, even though it means she’s hungry all the time. Plus they only eat people who deserve it, so it’s chill, right? However, things spiral out of control after the squad makes one sloppy kill, then gets less picky about their targets and arouses suspicions of a serial killer.

Don’t forget to check out Sarah’s newest book here!