The 6 Most Deceptive Marriages in Fiction

Almost Missed You, by Jessica Strawser
Strawser’s debut novel is one of those perfectly-plotted, fast-paced thrillers that quickly establishes an idyllic life, only to tear it down with gleeful intensity. Violet and her husband Finn were “meant to be.” and are annoyingly happy on their first family vacation with toddler son Bear. Then Finn leaves Violet on the beach, takes Bear, and leaves, without explanation, and forces Violet’s best friend, Caitlin, to assist him with the application of a little blackmail. Violet is sent spinning down a rabbit hole of revelations and secrets that expose her ideal marriage to be much darker and more complex than she could have imagined. If you’ve ever had a moment of happiness in your relationship and wondered how you got to be so lucky, Strawser’s book will make you pause and wonder if maybe you aren’t as happy as you think.

The Couple Next Door, by Shari Lapena
Lapena’s debut set a standard in deceptive marriages with Anne and Marco Conti. On the surface, they are the perfect young couple: successful, loving, blessed with an adorable baby daughter. The first hint that they’re not that perfect is their decision to leave baby Cora alone for the evening when the babysitter cancels on the night of a party. Arriving home late and inebriated, they discover the front door open and the baby kidnapped. The investigation slowly picks apart their perfect image, revealing rot and lies, building towards a series of revelations that make it clear just how much of a deception the marriage really was.

Behind Closed Doors, by B.A. Paris
Paris answers the question, “what would it be like if your spouse turned out to be a sociopath?” in grand fashion, offering up the marriage of Grace and Jack Angel as the answer. From the outside, they’re perfect—good-looking, successful, happy. They even throw great dinner parties, with Grace the perfect hostess. But Grace never answers the phone and never goes out alone—in fact, she is a prisoner in her own home, punished for any disobedience and tortured on a daily basis by Jack’s insane rules. Worse, Grace’s teenage sister Millie is planning to come live with them, and Jack has made it clear he has similar plans for her. Behind the facade of the ideal marriage is a nightmare, and the story of Grace’s desperate race to save her sister makes for gripping, tension-filled reading.

Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier
Du Maurier’s classic novel of suspense has at its heart not one, but two deceptive marriages. The first, between wealthy Maxim de Winter and his first wife, Rebecca, seems to be one of devotion from a husband to a departed wife who died as the result of a tragic accident. His devotion is shared by the staff at his estate, and is so powerful, Rebecca seems to haunt every aspect of the place, with her possessions and personality preserved. The second is between Maxim and his new wife, who contends not only with the memory of her predecessor and the hostility of the servants, but with the dawning realization that Maxim’s devotion to his wife—and her death—isn’t at all what it seems.

How to be a Good Wife, by Emma Chapman
The term gaslighting is everywhere these days, and Chapman’s tense, disturbing novel is therefore an ideal read. Marta opens the story as a vaguely dissatisfied housewife suffering from an empty nest. She and her husband Hector seem solid, if not precisely passionate for each other. But Marta stops taking the medicine Hector has always insisted she have, and little things begin to seem … off, especially her murky memories of life before Hector. As Marta begins to pull at threads that have been in place for 20 years or more, everything about the placid life around her begins to unravel.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, by Edward Albee
No, we’re not talking about Martha and George, the fighting couple who anchor this thrilling dark comedy. We’re talking about Nick and Honey, the young couple invited over for dinner. Initially, Nick and Honey seem like a sweet couple horrified at the behavior of their hosts, but as they’re drawn into the drunken, emotionally abusive events of the evening, they are slowly revealed to be just as deceptive. By the end, it’s pretty certain that Nick married Honey for her family’s money, Honey used a pregnancy scare to trap him into committing, and that Nick attempted to sleep with Martha but couldn’t—because he’s too drunk. And that’s all in the course of a few hours.