[Note from Frolic: Today, we welcome author Ashley Winstead to the site. She’s sharing some of her favorite romantic thrillers with us. Take it away, Ashley!]
What’s better than a killer thriller? A sexy killer thriller, maybe even one with a romance you can root for. When it comes to books, I love romance and murder in equal measure, and I know I’m not alone. Sigmund Freud argued sex and death are entwined in the human imagination—he, and many theorists who came after him, believed they’re the two primal drives that compel human behavior, often explaining, at a deep-rooted level, what we’re attracted to and why. Death is even built into a French expression for orgasm, la petite mort, or the “little death” (which literary theorist Roland Barthes said is also the experience readers should have after finishing a good book).
Unsurprisingly, crime fiction has a lot to say about love and sex: noir is famous for the trope of the alluring femme fatale, domestic suspense often takes the complications of marriage as its central plot point, and of course there’s romantic suspense, an entire subgenre devoted to mixing romance and high-octane plots. Whatever the angle, romance in thrillers is all about high stakes. By design, it often wrestles with darkness and comes with plenty of angst and longing, so if you’re into that sort of thing (I am!), I humbly suggest adding these thrillers to your TBR. Some I chose because they have romantic subplots I couldn’t get enough of, others because even though the romance is ultimately toxic, the sexiness is off the charts. I can’t guarantee a happy ending, but I can guarantee you’ll love the ride.