I'm waiting for someone to post a detailed timeline showing secret connections between all the books. Until then, I'll assume they're standalone and continue reading them in the order my local bookstore's staff pick shelf dictates.
I see some confusion online about whether 'The Other Mrs.' came before or after 'Local Woman Missing'. It's definitely before. 'The Other Mrs.' was February 2020, and 'Local Woman Missing' was May 2021. So the full, correct order is the debut in 2014, then annual releases through 2018, a break in 2019, and a return in 2020. She's been on a yearly schedule again since 2023 it seems.
Goodreads is your friend here. If you go to her author page and look at the 'Bibliography' section, you can sort the list by publication date. That'll give you the order they hit shelves.
It's a clean, simple method that avoids any websites that might be mixing up series order or including re-releases. I use it for almost every author when I'm trying to binge-read their back catalog in the right sequence. The community data is usually spot-on for publication dates, which is really all a chronological list is.
For a strict timeline of her writing career, page one is 'The Good Girl'. It's a library staple now. I found my copy in a little free library, which felt fitting for a thriller about secrets hiding in plain sight.
Okay, but which one is the best? The timeline shows evolution, but is later always better? I think 'Local Woman Missing' (2021) is her peak so far, but some swear by the raw twist in 'The Good Girl' (2014). The timeline gives you the data to have that 'early vs. late period' debate.
They're not connected, but there is a fun game you could play: try to guess the twist in each one before it's revealed.
Her books have a certain rhythm to the misdirection. After you've read two or three, you might start looking for the clues she plants in a certain way.
That's the only 'meta' connection between them—learning the author's tells. But the stories and characters themselves are wholly independent.
So read them in any order. The game is the same in each book: can you solve it before the characters do?