Shadowing Practice: Thrillers for people with NO PATIENCE! - Learn English Speaking with Video

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This stack of books is for people who love thriller books but have no patience.

If you don't like the fluff, if you don't like waiting for a story to get good, these are for you.

These are fast-paced and they start out at 100 miles per hour.

I recently posted a short video featuring some thriller books that are really fast-paced and for people who just have no patience, they want their stories to start out fast-paced immediately,

and someone on that post asked me if I would do a full long-form video on this topic.

So I pulled a handful of really good thriller books

that I think are very fast-paced and don't make you wait for the story to get good, so let's dive right in.

Count My Lies by Sophie Stava.

This one starts out really strong and just gets more and more unhinged.

It's captivating in the very beginning

because it starts out on a scene where a woman is on her lunch break at a park

and she's observing a father and his daughter.

When the daughter is stung by a bee, she rushes over to help, claiming that she's a nurse and that she's very familiar with this kind of thing,

but the reader is very quick to learn that she is not a nurse and that she is actually a compulsive liar.

From there, the story just escalates to where she becomes a nanny for this family

and for this child based off of her lies that continue to escalate and get worse and worse.

She knows she's doing it, she just can't help herself.

The vibe of that in this story was consistent the entire time.

I'm surprised that this book is not talked about a little bit more.

I loved it.

An oldie but a goodie and perfect for someone who's newer to thrillers is Run on Red by Noelle W.

Eiley.

This is a book that 100% starts out at 100 miles per hour.

No pun intended because it begins with two girls who are driving on a very dark country road with no cell service.

It doesn't take them long to realize that there is a car behind them

that is following them and soon trying to run them off the road.

This one turns into a terrifying game of cat and mouse where they're trying to run from these people, they don't know who they are or what they want,

and they end up in a held captive situation needing to fight their way out.

There are no stopping points in this book.

The story just literally keeps going and it's crazy.

Definitely perfect if you're someone who has no patience and wants the story to just be a page turner.

To All Those I've Killed Before by J.L.

Hyde is one of my favorites.

Such an under-hyped book.

It deserves so much more recognition and love.

This starts out in the very beginning with a family learning that their beloved aunt is pretty much on her deathbed.

She makes the decision to spend her final days telling stories of her past to her young niece.

Stories of which she's never told anyone before because she's actually confessing to murders that she's committed.

This is such a good book and it's extremely short.

I loved every bit of this.

Still Missing by Chevy Stevens.

This is the type of story you really just can't look away from.

It's frustrating and devastating.

It's about a real estate agent who's kidnapped during an open house

and held captive in a very remote mountain cabin area by this man.

And the story is recounted through therapy sessions that she's having with her therapist.

So all of the things that she went through and everything

that happened to her are being recounted little by little

and it's like an incredible buildup of suspense

and disturbing details as you learn little by little what it was like for her during

that time and what the end result of it all was.

This one is a little bit more of a chunker.

It's not as fast-paced as the other ones

but I think what makes it still such a quick read is the content matter and how captivating it is.

Like you won't be able to look away from the story, you're going to want to continuously turn the page and find out what happened next.

You'll Never Know by Caleb Stevens is another one that starts out on an absolute bang.

It follows a husband and a wife who are driving up to the top of this trailhead

so that they can go on a little hike together.

When they get to the top and park their car, another car pulls up and kidnaps his wife, his pregnant wife, right in front of his eyes.

And in order to get her back,

the kidnappers leave him with a trail of riddles to solve that lead him one step closer each time to saving her, but the clock is ticking.

This book is also just incredibly layered and has a lot of emotional depth to the storyline.

Like there's a lot more going on behind the scenes than just that.

And this for sure is one of my all-time favorite books.

This was a five-star read for me.

I loved it a super super underrated book

that i hardly ever see anyone talking about is the first

day of spring by nancy tucker i need this author to

write another book i'm pretty sure this is her debut

and her only book if she does have another book i need someone to let me know

but yeah this one came out in 2021

so it's been a good five years now in the beginning

of this story we're introduced to an eight-year-old little girl named

chrissy who has just killed one of the neighborhood boys chrissy

comes from a very unloving home where there is no attention ever and hardly any food.

So when she does what she does to this little boy,

it's her very first sense of feeling something that is maybe like power over her own actions,

and she really likes that feeling.

It's such a creepy and disturbing story.

In the beginning, we kind of follow that segment of her life, but also in the story, we follow her 20 years later, where she's living under a new name, trying to hide from her past,

and raising a daughter of her own.

This is definitely such an underrated book, and I haven't read many things like it.

It's unique.

It just deserves so much more love this family lies by jm cannon

if you've been around on my channel at least for a

little bit you've probably seen me mention this multiple times it's one of my favorite books

and another one that i seriously just think flies under the radar

and just deserves it deserves to be viral in my opinion

but this follows a husband

and a wife in the very beginning they're in their southern louisiana home it's in the middle of the night

when intruders break into their home and shoot both the husband

and the wife point blank in the head the husband dies instantly

but the wife survives by a miracle however

when she recovers her memory is fractured she does not remember hardly anything about her own life

and because of this she now has to go

and stay with her husband's family while they help her recover

but according to the title the family just isn't giving her details on the questions that she's asking.

They're beating around the bush, they're obviously hiding things, and she is determined to find out

and get to the bottom of what her life was like before this incident, and she will stop at nothing to find those answers.

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The Butcher by Jennifer Hillier.

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This book is just savage.

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30 years ago, the police chief at the time caught and captured one of Seattle's most notorious serial killers.

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It's been 30 years since then.

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He's now retired and moving into a retirement home, he's leaving his old Victorian-style home to his grandson.

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And as his grandson is doing renovations on the house,

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they dig up an old chest in the backyard that has some items in there linking back to the serial killer.

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The serial killer was known as The Butcher, which explains the title of the book.

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But I'm telling you, this book is such an unputdownable read.

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I remember reading this one so fast and I love Jennifer Hillier.

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There hasn't been a single book of hers that I have not loved so far.

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I think she's coming out with a new one soon too.

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I can't wait.

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I love her.

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She's an auto-buy author for me.

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Then we have My Sister the Serial Killer and this is a book that I read in one sitting.

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It is a very, very easy book to read though.

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It's like chapters are like one to two pages long and it's just so incredibly fast paced.

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It starts out with a woman who is cleaning up a crime scene and like in the very first chapter

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we learn that the murder was committed by her sister who is a serial killer.

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But is she though? Is she?

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That's the thing about this book.

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It keeps you guessing in a way

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that makes you think like were these situations valid

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or does she just have a thing for wanting to take the lives of the people that she's dating.

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In the story, the sister has now set her sights on the main character's crush at work,

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essentially, and she's worried that if they become a thing, that he's gonna end up dead like the rest of them as well.

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It's just such a fun book and it's extremely quick and fast-paced.

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There is no fluff at all in this writing, so it's perfect for this topic of not having patience for books or waiting for books to get good.

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I think this one is 100% a great choice.

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50-50 by Steve Cavanaugh.

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I love Steve Cavanaugh and his Eddie Flynn series is one of my favorites.

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I have not read a bad book from him yet and I don't think that I will.

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This one starts off with a 911 call where a judge has just been murdered in his own home,

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and the only other two people in his home at the time were his two daughters, and these sisters are accusing each other of being the one who did it.

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This will keep you guessing to the very end.

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It's gonna go to trial.

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There's gonna be two sides of the story.

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There's gonna be lots of evidence that's uncovered.

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This is one of those books where your mind, like, starts playing detective on its own.

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I love a courtroom thriller and courtroom scenes are some of my favorite scenes in thriller books.

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This one is super well done.

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Last but not least, we have a classic, Strange Sally Diamond.

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If you have not read this book yet, I cannot recommend it enough.

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It is one of my all-time favorites.

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In this book, we meet Sally.

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She is one of the best female main characters I've ever read about.

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It's impossible not to enjoy her.

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She's a 43-year-old neurodivergent woman.

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She's lived at home with her parents for as long as she can remember since she was adopted by them, and her mother has since passed, but her father is now sick and on the verge of passing.

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He one day makes a joke that when he does die, she can just put his body out with the trash, and that's exactly what Sally does.

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She takes the things that people say extremely literal, so she really does put his body out with the trash,

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but this causes like a lot of attention from the neighborhood and from the media, and because of this they begin deep diving into her life and her backstory,

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which Sally herself has no memories of.

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So now with all of this attention, she's basically forced to confront her own past, and it's extremely dark.

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This is just such a banger.

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Liz Nugent is another author that never misses for me.

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I will buy and read anything that she writes.

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She has a new one out recently that it's not out in the US yet, but it has released in the UK.

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And I haven't read it yet

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because I really want the audio to go with it because I love her books on audio.

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And so I haven't read it yet, but I just love her.

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She's one of my favorites.

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There we have it.

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That's the stack of books that I had to go through for this video.

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Hopefully I made this video short enough to where the type of video

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that this is lines up with the theme of we don't have patience to sit around and here yapping.

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That was my goal for this video.

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Hopefully I achieved that.

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Thank you guys all so much for watching.

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If you've read any of these, please let me know what you thought of them.

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I can't wait to talk about these in the comments with you guys.

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Let me know what you think.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Thrillers for people with NO PATIENCE!”. This video has 172 sentences and 2252 words to shadow. The speech runs for 11:34. The speaker talks fast, about 195 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
thriller noun	/ˈθɹɪ.lə/	Something that thrills.
patience noun	/ˈpeɪ̯.ʃəns/	The quality of being patient.
captivate verb	/ˈkæptəˌveɪt/	To attract and hold (someone's) attention and interest; to charm, to entrance, to fascinate, to enchain.
escalate verb	/ˈɛs.kə.leɪt/	To increase (something) in extent or intensity; to intensify or step up.
fluff noun	/flʌf/	Anything light, soft or fuzzy, especially fur, hair, feathers.
kidnap verb	/ˈkɪdnæp/	To seize or detain a person unlawfully and move or conceal them; sometimes for ransom.
recount verb	/ɹɪˈkaʊnt/	To tell; narrate; to relate in detail.
disturb verb	/dɪˈstɜːb/	to confuse a quiet, constant state or a calm, continuous flow, in particular: thoughts, actions or liquids.
courtroom noun		The room where a judge presides over hearings and trials, sometimes with a jury.
underrated adjective	/ʌn.dɚˈɹeɪ.təd/	Not given enough recognition for its quality.
captive noun	/ˈkæptɪv/	One who has been captured or is otherwise confined.
grandson noun	/ˈɡɹæn(d)sʌn/	A son of one's child.
stack noun	/stæk/	A large pile of hay, grain, straw, or the like, larger at the bottom than the top, sometimes covered with thatch.
dive verb	/daɪv/	To swim under water.
backstory noun	/ˈbækˌstɔɹi/	The previous experiences and life of a person, specifically (narratology, especially in film, television) a character in a dramatic work.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
find out verb	To discover, as by asking or investigating.
start out verb	To emerge suddenly; to jump out.
clean up verb	To make an area or a thing clean; to pick up a mess; to tidy.
come out in verb	to be afflicted by (a visible disruption of the body)
come out with verb	To say (something) unexpectedly.
dig up verb	To excavate something.
end up verb	To bring to a conclusion.
go through verb	To travel from one end of something to the other.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	I've Killed · it's been · has just killed
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is stung · is not talked · is Run
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	people who love · people who just · someone who has

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 37 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, can't, gonna. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: thriller /ˈθɹɪ.lə/, deathbed /ˈdɛθˌbɛd/, therapist /ˈθɛɹəpɪst/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: patience /ˈpeɪ̯.ʃəns/, renovation /ɹɛnəˈveɪʃən/, crush /kɹʌʃ/
Long words — get the stress right: underrated /ʌn.dɚˈɹeɪ.təd/, neurodivergent /ˌnʊ.ɹoʊ.dɪˈvɜɹ.dʒənt/, unputdownable /ˌənˌpʊtˈdaʊnəb(ə)l/, renovation /ɹɛnəˈveɪʃən/, notorious /nə(ʊ)ˈtɔː.ɹɪ.əs/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like thriller, patience, captivate.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Thrillers for people with NO PATIENCE! - Learn English Speaking with Video

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