Books Like How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates
by Shailee Thompson
How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates is built on one central, deliciously specific conceit: a cinephile rom-com heroine trapped inside a slasher movie who must apply her encyclopedic knowledge of romance and horror beats to survive. The novel combines speed-dating set pieces, rom-com tropes (meet-cutes, swoony misreads) and slasher mechanics (stalking, narrowed suspects, escalating kills) so the reader keeps toggling between laughter, swoon and genuine peril.
Readers may have come for different reasons: the genre-savvy, joke-laden commentary about how rom-coms and slashers work; the countdown structure of ten dates that creates a ticking dramatic rhythm; or the Final Girl arc in which an ordinary fan turns theory into life-saving practice. The picks below are organized to reflect those pulls — some emphasize dark humor and female friendship, others underline meta-horror and survivorship, and a few match the romantic or group-dynamics side of the book.
Recommended for fans of How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates
Final Girls
Riley Sager
Meta slasher thriller with survivorship, suspense, and sharp dark-humor.
Pick this if you loved the Final Girl-as-genre-reader concept; this is the closest tonal and thematic match for meta commentary about slasher survivors.
My Best Friend's Exorcism
Grady Hendrix
80s-set horror-comedy about female friendship and terrifying supernatural danger.
Pick this if you liked the book’s mix of humor and horror centered on a tight female friendship and don’t mind an 80s-tinged, earnest sensibility.
Kill Creek
Scott Thomas
Meta-horror about authors and fandom confronting a murderous house’s lore.
Pick this if you appreciated the seed’s genre-savvy interrogation of storytelling and fandom; Kill Creek tackles authors, mythmaking, and the danger of testing horror lore.
Horrorstör
Grady Hendrix
Pitch-black comedy horror set in a retail store — goofy, tense, and scary.
Pick this if you want horror that leans into absurdity and workplace satire — it shares the seed’s black-comic register and contained setting, though the retail-store premise is different from speed-dating.
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires
Grady Hendrix
Darkly funny suburban horror where ordinary women face monstrous violence.
Pick this if you liked ordinary women confronting monstrous violence with darkly comic results; this trades the rom-com element for suburban satire but keeps the blend of horror and humor.
Anna Dressed in Blood
Kendare Blake
YA slasher-ghost romance with a creepy final-girl/ghost-hunter vibe.
Pick this if you wanted the swoony-romance + slasher energy; it’s YA and ghost-based rather than a slasher in a social setting, so this is a mood-and-romance match more than a plot twin.
The Ex Hex
Erin Sterling
Romantic, witchy comedy with sharp banter and spooky stakes.
Pick this if you want sharp romantic banter paired with supernatural hijinks; it’s lighter on slasher mechanics and heavier on witchy rom-com playfulness.
The Cabin at the End of the World
Paul Tremblay
Intense home-invasion horror with claustrophobic tension and moral stakes.
Pick this if you want a much darker, intense home-invasion experience that mirrors the seed’s high-stakes peril but without the rom-com humor — it’s a tonal outlier and the loosest emotional fit.
Nine Perfect Strangers
Liane Moriarty
Group retreat turned dangerous; sharp humor, twisting suspense, and relationships.
Pick this if it was the ensemble-of-strangers-turned-dangerous-dynamics that gripped you; this one is a psychological, twist-driven group story rather than a genre-savvy slasher.
At a glance
Matches were chosen on four concrete dimensions present in the seed: meta-awareness of genre tropes, dark humor/tonal balance, focus on female friendship or survivorship, and a contained social setting (speed-dating/group retreat/retail store/house). Percentages reflect how many of those elements a recommendation shares with the seed.
| Book | First published | Pages | Closest match on | Match |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Final Girls Riley Sager | 2017 | 352 | Meta slasher survivorship | 94% |
My Best Friend's Exorcism Grady Hendrix | 2016 | 336 | Friendship amid horror | 88% |
Kill Creek Scott Thomas | 2017 | 414 | Meta-horror & lore | 82% |
Horrorstör Grady Hendrix | 2014 | 241 | Black-comedy confined horror | 80% |
The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires Grady Hendrix | 2020 | 415 | Suburban women vs. monsters | 79% |
Anna Dressed in Blood Kendare Blake | 2011 | 1 | Slasher-ghost romance | 76% |
The Ex Hex Erin Sterling | 2021 | 308 | Romantic spooky comedy | 71% |
The Cabin at the End of the World Paul Tremblay | 2018 | 137 | Claustrophobic, brutal stakes | 70% |
Nine Perfect Strangers Liane Moriarty | 2018 | 480 | Group dynamics gone wrong | 68% |
About How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates
How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates is a humorous, swoony, and terrifying slasher rom-com about Jamie Prescott, a cinephile who attends a speed-dating event and must use her knowledge of romance and horror films to survive a real murder spree and become a Final Girl. The book explicitly melds rom-com beats with slasher conventions and plays with genre expectations as part of its plot.
Frequently asked questions
I loved the meta, self-aware horror element — what else should I read?+
Final Girls is the closest match for meta slasher commentary and dark humor about survivors. Kill Creek also examines fandom and authorial lore in a self-conscious way, if you prefer horror that interrogates its own myths.
Which pick has the same mix of romance and horror?+
If you want both swoon and scares, Anna Dressed in Blood offers a YA slasher-romance vibe, and The Ex Hex brings sharp romantic banter with spooky stakes — though The Ex Hex leans more comedic-witchy than slasher.
I liked the book’s emphasis on female friendship — any similar reads?+
My Best Friend's Exorcism foregrounds an intense female friendship amid 80s-set horror-comedy, and The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires places ordinary women at the center of monstrous threats with darkly comic results.
I enjoyed the confined, escalating-danger structure (a single event or place) — which titles match that?+
Horrorstör confines terror to a retail environment, creating episodic but escalating danger; The Cabin at the End of the World is a tighter, more brutal home-invasion that mirrors the claustrophobic stakes, though it's much darker in tone.
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