If It Could Have Been Her by left you craving a decaying house that keeps rewriting its oldest crime, pick up The Only One Left by next.
Curated by NextBookAfter Editors. This read-alike match weighs tone, themes, pacing, character dynamics, and emotional payoff rather than genre alone. See how recommendations are chosen.
Buy on AmazonWhy It's Your Next Read
- A woman enters a notorious home where the past still controls every room
- A missing caregiver turns local legend into an immediate threat
- Family secrets surface through confessions, contradictions, and withheld history
- The gothic setting adds pressure without losing the domestic-thriller engine
- Every reveal makes the old story feel less settled than it looked
If It Could Have Been Her pulled you in with a stray thread leading back to a house full of buried secrets, The Only One Left gives that same pleasure a darker gothic frame. Riley Sager sends a caregiver into Hope's End, a cliffside mansion where an accused family killer still lives, the previous nurse has vanished, and the official version of a decades-old massacre starts to crack. The result is old-house suspense with a sharp domestic core: damaged women, inherited stories, and a home that seems designed to keep the truth from leaving.
This is the next read for Lisa Jewell fans who want the missing-person mystery, the psychologically loaded household, and the steady feeling that every room knows more than the people inside it.
Open the door if you want the family story to turn against itself.
What to read after It Could Have Been Her
Readers searching for adult books like or similar to It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell usually want adult fiction with qualities like old house secrets, missing woman, family secrets, and gothic atmosphere.
If your search is specifically for books similar to It Could Have Been Her for adults, this match keeps the grown-up stakes, voice, and reader payoff central rather than drifting into younger or purely genre-adjacent suggestions.
If you like It Could Have Been Her and want to know what to read next, start with The Only One Left. It is the closest NextBookAfter match for readers who want a book like It Could Have Been Her with the same core appeal.
The Only One Left is a similar next read for fans of It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell because it shares old house secrets, missing woman, family secrets, and gothic atmosphere while moving through psychological thriller and gothic suspense.
What Readers Are Saying
"This twisty Gothic mystery will leave even savvy thriller readers gasping." — JaymeO, Goodreads
What Readers Are Saying
"It had great gothic creepy house vibes which is perfect for a thriller." — Ali Goodwin, Goodreads
What Readers Are Saying
"its definitely a “just one more chapter” kind of story" — jessica yeung, Goodreads
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