Books with just one POV?

First person POV? Sure. Third person POV? Not so much but entirely doable.

C'mon, Norm --

Are you kidding me? The classics are written from the POV of just one, whether it's a character in the story or the omniscient narrator. The multi-POV claptrap is a recent pretension, ostensibly used to impart the attitudes and emotions of more than one character. This is something the great writers did using only one POV. Of course it can be done.

Yes, I employed the multiple-POV artifice in one of my stories as an experiment. I didn't find it any more effective than anything else I've tried, just for the heck of it.

Now, what is your real motivation for starting this discussion?

JP

I'm aware that many classics do it. I can even think back far enough to some of them. I'm more interested in modern trends. Almost all of the books I read here and elsewhere use multiple POVs. I mentioned the genre (supernatural thriller), since I've never written one and there may be best practices to follow that differ from sci-fi, which is what I've been writing. Even the best-selling sci-fi novel of all time, Dune, which was written in the 60's, used multiple POVs.

True.

My favorite classic, Dickens 'Tale of two Cities' is a masterful weave of many different POVs. They come together like an orchestra piece (like Dune).

The 'strictly stick to a single POV'  guideline' is a modern invention. A safety net.  It has been defined for the $50 Creative Writing for Dummies courses. It is like the other 'rules' that ban the use of adjectives, the word 'suddenly'  and long sentences etc.

It is designed to get the untrained writer up and running quickly and simply because unstructured, (unintentional) confusing 'head popping' POV switches are a common trait of the novice author. The rule is imposed for early-learning purposes to instill clear and structured prose before the functional etiquette of a POV within creative writing can be fully understood and mastered... like the correct employment of adjectives and long-sentences.

That old adage, 'you need to learn the rules before you can break the rules' applies here.