Jessica Knolls new sexy thriller proves why she is the queen of dark beach reads

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Set us as preferred Bestselling author Jessica Knoll’s protagonists mostly follow a specific pattern: They are women who have learned Not.To.

Flinch.On the Shelf Helpless By Jessica Knoll Scribner: 320 pages, $28If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.And, apparently, neither does Knoll.

Talking over Zoom about her fourth novel, the erotic thriller “Helpless,” which is out this month, the author is blunt about the challenges it took to complete the book.“It takes a lot of skill to write good sex,” Knoll says.

“I relied a lot on feedback from my editor and from my book agents saying ‘this is hot; this is not.’”Knoll has written romantic scenes before, but “Helpless” needed to be enthralling and economic enough not to get her kicked off of Target’s bookshelves.In the end, the author says, “I went by what felt good and natural for these characters and maybe a little bit of the really unfiltered talk you have with your girlfriends after a couple martinis or are on a girls trip.” Knoll’s successful career as a novelist rests on her knack for creating provocative page-turners that depict the absolute worst things one person could do to another — but in such a sensational, tongue-prickling-sour-candy kind of way that her books come off as devilishly evil beach reads.

Since her debut bestseller, 2015’s “Luckiest Girl Alive,” — a master class in braided narration between a Machiavellian magazine editor and her younger self who endured so much emotional and physical trauma that it’s no wonder she grew up to be extremely calculating — to 2018’s reality TV-set “The Favorite Sister” and 2023’s “Bright Young Women,” a response to the public’s obsession with immortalizing serial killers while also not knowing the name of a single one of their victims.Knoll’s books are not onl...