Reunions Gone Bad: Mystery and Thriller Reads For Fans of 'The Afterparty'
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer is only good advice if you can tell the difference between the two. The Afterparty, streaming on Apple TV+, is a comedic murder mystery that unfolds on the night of a high school reunion. Each episode is told from a different character's perspective as detectives try to suss out the truth from the friends/ enemies/ frenemies at the reunion afterparty.
Reunions have become a popular setting for mystery and thriller books and often incorporate a "closed circle mystery" literary device as a small group of people, each with motive and opportunity, seek to uncover the truth—often revealing long-buried secrets along the way. Below is a selection of thrilling reads which all take place at a reunion. If these books are any indication, there are a lot of reasons to never attend a high school or college reunion besides worrying that you didn't keep up with the Joneses.
Shiver by Allie Reynolds
In this propulsive locked-room thriller debut, a reunion weekend in the French Alps turns deadly when five friends discover that someone has deliberately stranded them at their remote mountaintop resort during a snowstorm.
In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead
Returning to Duquette University for her 10-year reunion, ready to flaunt her achievements, Jessica Miller soon discovers that someone has set an elaborate trap to catch the real killer of her friend Heather 10 years ago and close the cold case for good.
Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero
The surviving members of a forgotten teen detective club and their dog reunite as broken adults to embark on a wacky effort to solve a terrifying cold case that ruined them all and sent the wrong man to prison.
Friends Like These by Kimberly McCreight
Five college friends meet up in the Catskills ten years after graduation, bringing their shared past, betrayals, and secrets with them.
The Girls Are All So Nice Here by Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
Receiving ominous threats during a 10-year college reunion, Ambrosia and her best friend discover that they are being targeted by an unknown adversary who would exact revenge for a dangerous secret from their past.
Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl
A former in-crowd member returns to her hometown a year after graduating from high school to investigate unsolved questions about her genius boyfriend's shocking death, only to be approached by a mysterious stranger who challenges her circle of friends to make a harsh decision to avoid becoming trapped in time.
They Did Bad Things by Lauren Forry
Twenty years after college, five friends are trapped inside a crumbling, secluded mansion on the Scottish isle of Doon; and must fight each other—and the unknown mastermind behind their gathering—as they confront the role they played in their former housemate’s death.
The Reunion by Guillaume Musso
Follows the reunion of three former friends from an elite prep school who try to figure out what happened to a glamorous classmate who disappeared twenty-five years earlier.
Gaudy Night: A Lord Peter Wimsey Mystery with Harriet Vane by Dorothy L. Sayers
Gaudy Night takes Harriet and her paramour, Lord Peter, to Oxford University, Harriet’s alma mater, for a reunion, only to find themselves the targets of a nightmare of harassment and mysterious, murderous threats.
The Girls Weekend by Jody Gehrman
Old grudges between high school classmates resurface at a baby shower on an estate in the San Juan Islands where the mother-to-be goes missing and no one has any memory of what transpired the night before.
Fierce Little Thing by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore
Five estranged friends receive threatening letters demanding their return to a former cult or the terrible thing they did as teenagers will be revealed. From vastly different lives, they return to confront their blackmailer and reckon with the horror that split them apart. How far will they go to bury their secret forever?
Black Chalk by Christopher Yates
One game. Six students. Five survivors. It was only ever meant to be a game played by six best friends in their first year at Oxford University; a game of consequences, silly forfeits, and childish dares. But then the game changed: the stakes grew higher and the dares more personal and more humiliating, finally evolving into a vicious struggle with unpredictable and tragic results. Now, fourteen years later, the remaining players must meet again for the final round. Who knows better than your best friends what would break you?
The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley
A group of thirty-something Oxford friends celebrates New Year's Eve in the Scottish Highlands as a historic blizzard hits, trapping and isolating them, only to discover one of them is a murderer.
Summaries provided via NYPL’s catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through to each book’s title for more.