Book Reviews and Plot Twists: Friends or Foes?

Here at abcreads, we're always on the lookout for new books, and reviews can be helpful and hurtful in the search for our next read. Why? Book spoilers. For those of us who enjoy the element of surprise or like to discover the culprit on our own, plot summaries in reviews sometimes tell us more than we want to know. Recently, the Washington Post's fiction editor, Ron Charles, wrote about the dilemma of how much to reveal when writing a book review (spoiler alert! don't read this if you want to stay in the dark about Boy, Snow, Bird). In it, he contemplates the questions: How much is too much? Does revealing a plot twist enhance or hurt the reader experience?

Plot twists can break our hearts, blow our minds, and cause us to question everything we've read in the last 300 or so pages. All-in-all, they give us the irreplaceable feeling of "what just happened?!" If you enjoy a well-crafted plot twist (and haven't already heard about these endings), here are some of our suggestions:

Gentlemen & Players by Joanne Harris

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (ebook)

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (ebook)

Atonement by Ian McEwan (ebook)

The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton

Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk