Taking into consideration the thriller book genre for this month’s Halloween vibes, the two books for this month’s reading are based on the backbone of the genre: secrets and lies. The Margot Affair and Three Perfect Liars show the causes and effects of what their secrets and lies do to their lives. Junior Hannah Olson, a dedicated reader of all genres, comments on her thoughts about the common things that occur in the thriller genre: “I believe the genre is based on secrets and lies because those always lead to something bad in the book.”

  The Margot Affair, written by Sanaë Lemoine, focuses on how a secret daughter will suddenly ruin the lives of very important people and people that are closest to her. Margot Louve is the secret child of an overly influential French politician and a well-known stage actress. All of her life, Louve has wished to be seen and heard but always manages to stay in the background. During the summer of her seventeenth birthday, she meets a respected journalist who gives her the chance to expose the private lives and public faces with the lies that have encompassed her for her entire life. However, as Louve is entering the life of an adult world, she begins to realize how one impulsive and selfish decision can ruin someone’s personal life as she threatens a family’s love with some very powerful news. This novel exhibits how sharing the truth behind long time secrets can outweigh the cost of keeping secrets. 

  Three Perfect Liars, written by Heidi Parks, spotlights the lives of three determined women after a horrific fire turns their lives upside down. The aftermath of the fire destroys a successful advertising agency and threatens to expose a tangled web of lies. Laura, an employee of the Morris and Wood advertising agency, decides to return back to work after her maternity leave and discovers that her replacement does not plan to go anywhere. Although Laura has a close relationship with her boss, Harry Wood, she feels sidelined as she has to juggle motherhood and the demands of her job. Mia, the replacement of Laura at the advertising agency, was meant to only be a temporary employee, but she becomes indispensable to everyone except Laura. With Laura heading back to work, Mia is desperate to keep her job. If people knew the real reason why she wanted her job so bad, then they might not want her to continue working at the agency. Janie, the wife of Mia and Laura’s boss, has always done everything she could to support her husband and his successful agency but having her own dark secret will cause her to go to any lengths to protect it. So, the real question is: who is actually responsible for the fire at the agency? Was it arson? If so, why and what would it have gained for the person responsible?

  Although these books have different portrayals of secrets and lies, both show how they can destroy someone’s life and many others in the process. As one takes the view that secrets and lies are better to have than to let out, the other talks about how secrets and lies can lead to huge “accidents.” Make sure to read these two books this month for two reasons: to get the Halloween “scary” vibes going and to develop more thoughts on how secrets and lies help to portray the storyline of thriller books.