Confessions on the 7:45

Psychological thriller is a popular subgenre of thriller in which the narrative style reflects the characters’ psychological landscape. There are often unreliable narrators, multiple points of view, events described out of chronological order, and concealed identities, all of which give the reader a sense of disorientation and uneasiness. The reader must piece together subtle clues to determine who the characters really are and the order in which events actually happened. There are often surprising twists and satisfying endings where the pieces fall into place.

Though these thrillers often do involve solving a mystery, they are not strictly in the “mystery” category because they involve domestic situations among spouses, close family members, and friends. The tension between characters and their emotional distress creates a sense of dread, often causing the characters and readers alike to question what is real.

Lisa Unger’s Confessions on the 7:45 has many of the hallmarks of the genre: The story unfolds nonlinearly, and the perspective shifts often. Several of the characters go by more than one name, and the reader has to figure out who they are and understand their different personas. One of the novel’s themes is that men are monsters who cannot be trusted; the women like and respect each other’s power and intelligence, even when they are on opposite sides of a conflict, but many of the men are manipulative, childish, violent, or a combination of those traits.