Pretty much if the English departments of the world consider it must reading I consider it annoying at best.
One English Class standard I think you’d like is Wilkie Collins’ 1860 novel ‘The Woman in White’. The first ever ‘page-turner’ or thriller. Not that other novels before it weren’t suspenseful or thrilling but Collins made that his primary goal...keep the reader in suspense in regards to a mystery taking place in the here and now and investigated by the main characters. It’s been imitated constantly.