Disturbing Novels I Couldn't Put Down

Some books you read with awe. Others with a sense of satisfaction. And then there are the books you read that make you deeply uncomfortable.  This post is about that.

Every now and then, I like to read a book that pushes me way out of my comfort zone. I have a vague, unresearched feeling that challenging my brain in this way is good for me - in a way that might ward off dementia? These are the types of thoughts you have when you get older.

These three disturbing novels that I’ve read recently pushed me out of my comfort zone and forced me to test the nuances of my values - both confronting and compelling, I couldn’t put them down, even though I wanted to!

Tampa by Alissa Nutting

A disturbing novel of forbidden desire

The overwhelming majority of defendants in child sexual abuse cases are men—white men.* That grim reality is widely recognised. Which is what makes the premise of Tampa by Alissa Nutting so confrontational. The novel is told entirely from the perspective of Celeste Price, a beautiful, glamorous middle school teacher - who also happens to be a paedophile.

What makes Tampa so disturbing is not only the subject matter, but the clinical detail with which Celeste plans and executes her abuse, constantly calculating how to avoid being caught. The prose is razor sharp and darkly funny – should we even be laughing?

The story begins with unsettling humour and grows steadily darker, pulling the reader into a place where compassion unfurls not only for the boys she exploits, but—more disturbingly—for Celeste herself.

This is where the novel draws its power: it denied me the ease of simple condemnation. Celeste is not just monstrous but profoundly, irreparably unwell.

Tampa is dark, audacious, and unflinching. It offers no tidy conclusions, no safe moral ground. It stands as one of the most disturbing novels I’ve ever read.

One Yellow Eye by Leigh Radford

A Disturing Novel of Love

Leigh Radford’s debut is, at heart, a love story told in the language of horror. In the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, scientist Kesta Shelley hides her infected husband, Tim, in their spare room. Rather than surrender him, she chains and sedates him while desperately searching for a cure.

The dissonance lies in her care: tender, intimate, deeply loving, yet delivered in monstrous circumstances to a pathetic, inhuman remnant of her husband. It’s appalling and moving at once. 

One Yellow Eye is a love story recast as horror, confronting us with the terrible, human lengths to which love can drive us. It’s a reminder that disturbing novels don’t always shock with gore alone — sometimes they disturb by forcing us to question what we might do ourselves in impossible circumstances.

Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh

A Disturing Novel of Cruelty

Ottessa Moshfegh has never shied away from the grotesque, but Lapvona takes her vision to new extremes. This medieval village is a place of famine, superstition, and cruelty, where even faith is rotted through with corruption. The characters are almost uniformly unlikeable, yet written with such precision you can’t look away.

At the centre is a protagonist who is, quite plainly, a psychopath—shaped from birth by cruelty and neglect. His brutality feels inevitable, made more chilling by his complete lack of self-awareness.

There is no redemption, no growth, no hope. That absence is the point: in a world this corrupt, violence doesn’t end, it only repeats.

Lapvona is bleak, unrelenting, and frequently horrifying—but dazzling in its precision. It doesn’t console or transform; it simply stares into the void. Among disturbing novels, it stands out for its relentlessness and lack of hope — there’s no comforting arc of redemption, only the grim certainty of cycles of cruelty.

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* Centre of expertise on child sexual abuse. (2025). Child sexual abuse in 2023/24: Trends in official data. CSA Centre.https://www.csacentre.org.uk/app/uploads/2025/03/Child-sexual-abuse-in-2023-24-Trends-in-official-data.pdf