User blog comment:Holly Bailey/Any Creepy Books Out There?/@comment-10502460-20180529030403

We Need to Talk About Kevin is a good real-life thriller novel.

Opinions on it are mixed, and some say it has a lot of purple prose, which it kind of does, but I listened to the audiobook (on Youtube, unlawfully, ahem) and it was very gripping. So I don't know about the plain text but in audio format it's very good.