The Silent Patient
Ratings1,238
Average rating3.8
I don't understand people who say this book was overhyped. It was worth the hype and I devoured every second of it. The plot twist came out of nowhere in the sense that you have a brief thought about it and let it pass until you actually find out and you're like OH now it makes sense. A very enjoyable read for something to get you out of your reading slump. Happy this was the book to jumpstart my year of reading!
3.5 / 5
the ending didn't gag me but I liked the writing and how quickly everything happened.
Good read. Quick read. Couldn't put it down. The twist was really good. I thought I had it figured out and was totally wrong. Very good read. Would recommend.
I'm going to start this review off by saying I came across this book in the same way most of its readers did.
... Through the power of social media.
It was everywhere you looked, advertised more frequently than a BetterHelp sponsorship on YouTube. And to be honest, I think I would have gotten much Better Help from them than I would if Theo Faber were my psychotherapist. And that's saying something, considering I'm still debating which platform was more aggressive with their notifications, BetterHelp or Duolingo.
“The Silent Patient” by Alex Michaelides was, in retrospect, a pretty good premise. A woman, Alicia Berenson, is convicted of murdering her husband has gone mute for a few years, hasn't spoken a word since the event, not to or in her own defense. Theo Faber, the main character and narrator with exception to the diary entries of Alicia, is a psychotherapist who is hired for The Grove, a mental institution that houses some of dangerous and mentally unstable patients.
His goal? To get Alicia to speak again through the use of talk therapy. And learn exactly what happened that fateful night of August 25th, the night her husband, Gabriel, was shot five times.
I thought this was a spectacular premise with a lot of promise, the chances to go in multiple directions. Psychological thrillers entice me, and I enjoy the ones that are meant to make you think, put the puzzle pieces together, and keep you involved and invested in the characters along with the story. After all, you can't have a compelling story without fully fleshed out and relatable characters. Right?
Well... that seemed to have been the mark missed in this story.
I'll be frank and brief: the only characters I came to care about somewhat were Alicia and Theo. And I think the only reason was due to the narration being from their point of views. The story is mostly told from Theo's perspective, but there is too much separation between the reader and him, his analytical mind. He tells us about his traumatic past and upbringing, his tumultuous relationship with his parents, but I didn't feel anything in relation to that. I'm not sure if it was the way these elements of the story were written, or Theo was an overall a character I could not like.
Alicia I could relate to on some level due to her narration and point of view being closer to mine than Theo's. I'm not a psychotherapist, I'm not big into psychology, and the only exposure I have to true crime is through the documentaries and YouTube videos I watch. So Alicia, who was not of a psychological and analytical mind, who was emotional, moody, and impulsive, much like myself. Along with her own problematic upbringing and traumatic past, she felt more real, more fleshed out, compared to Theo. There were more layers to her, more to learn about her and know, from the first diary entry to her last in the novel.
But these are the only two characters I could bring myself to remotely care about. And there is a whole cast of characters that play important supporting parts. Alicia's husband, Gabriel, the victim in the horrific murder, who is portrayed as a doting husband from Alicia's perspective but from the testimony of others, was annoyed by her and distant. There is Kathy, Theo's wife, who is depicted as a loving and affectionate woman, the focus of Theo's entire world and happiness, who is playing the stereotypical trope of the unfaithful actress wife.
There are a slew of doctors, attendants, and staff members in the institute that you learn and interact with, but they come across as two-dimensional. Even the brother-in-law to Alicia came across as flat and two-sided as a piece of cardboard. It didn't feel like a character-driven story, and without the fleshed-out dynamic characters, the actual story seemed fall flat on its face.
Then the ending... I don't want to give spoilers, but I truly felt that the ending was a watered down version of “You” by Caroline Kepnes. The twist was unexpected, I was not thinking the elements of that ending would happen, but the events leading up to it were fairly predictable. And the final chapter of the story was unsatisfactory, to be honest. A build up to a final end that didn't come, a form of karmic justice served that felt, to be fair, anticlimactic.
So you may be wondering by now why I give this book 3 stars if these are all the faults I felt about reading it. And I'd be happy to answer it: the premise, and the integration of the different timelines were, in my opinion, brilliantly done. And there was a line in the story that really struck out to me that I felt summed up the entirety of the storyline in one beautiful statement: “... We were crashing through every last boundary between therapist and patient. Soon it would be impossible to tell who was who.”
If it was just the characters, the writing, and the sequence of events that brought the story to its pivotal end, I would give this a hard 2.5 stars. Not the worst story I've ever read, not the best, and the furthest thing I would consider a masterpiece. The hype was not worth the story, to be frank. But the premise, the idea, the framework, and the timelines, pushed it to a good 3 stars.
Very well written prose that moves quickly and benefits from a well laid out story structure. The refined number of players allows for proper character development and the unfolding of the story - while somewhat linear - is by no means predictable. Further, the happenings, reveals and the ending itself, are all superbly done with any of the detours eventually tied in a nice (and worth it) bow.
Oli kyllä mukaansa tempaava trilleri.
Jotain 3-3,5 väliltä ehkä. En osaa oikein sanoa, miksi en koe, että tämä olisi ansainnut enemmän tähtiä. Loppuratkaisu tuli suhteellisen yllätyksenä, mutta ei täysin shokkina.
Ymmärrän kyllä, miksi tämä on edelleen suosittu.
I...am so dissatisfied????? There's no way the answer to THE question of why Alicia is silent is the one that I read??? My eyes might be tripping because no way it's this lame and vague
I love the way this book had me running in circles to figure out the story only to rip the rug out from under my logic at the end! A very good read.
I really had no idea where the story was going. I was captivated from the beginning and wanted to know why Alicia was silent. I'm not entirely satisfied with the answers we were given, but it is definitely a page turner.
This book deserves five stars and was worth all the hype! I love when a book throws me for the biggest loop ever.
Alicia Berenson is found standing at the scene of her husbands murder and from that day on doesn't speak again. The entire book is told from the viewpoint of Alicia's new psychotherapist Theo and his tactics and research to get to the bottom of Alicia's husbands murder.
It's very rare I'm blown out of the water and left speechless with a ending but this one did it!! I did not see the twist coming at all, I had so many theories and not one was what happened. I highly recommend this book and here to say BookTok was right!
It was an okay book for me. The story was quite engaging but the resolution was too crazy for my liking.
Excelente historia, fácil de leer y me mantuvo enganchada hasta el final. El giró del final me gusto mucho, tenía varias teorías pero no me acerque para nada y eso es lo que busco en un buen thriller.
First of all holy shit the plot twist of this book is amazing. At first I started to get a bit bored but the minute that chapter came i literally screamed. How could I have not seen it coming . Theo as the psychopath made complete sense. It was so beautifully plotted.
Ha estado entretenido y el suspense está interesante, pero me esperaba algo más la verdad. El plot twist me lo veía venir y me ha faltado un poco más de emoción y de profundizar, pero bueno, para pasar el rato está bien.
rating-4/5
honestly i don't know how to rate thrillers anymore; somehow the end/twist sways my entire rating up or down. In this case, i'm conflicted about that too.
Wouldn't say it was INSANE or anything, but i didn't expect it at alll.
(spoilers from this point onward)
For one, unreliable narrator is pretty much the first thing i think of now, because of how often it is used. But to the author's credit...or not?, I did dismiss the thought immediately because of how inane it was. I thought it was highly unlikely that they'd portray her therapist as a stalker because I thought the entire book was about trying to help people through therapy and everything yk? Eitherway I was sorta kinda disappointed, but that didn't take away from the frenzy of reading as fast as I could, theorising and trying to find out who this ‘supposed man' was or if there even was a man. That was funn, hence the rating.
Although I did have a few problems with the book; starting with the ‘psychotherapists and psychiatrists' with malpractice suits waiting to happen (except for indira, love her) and improper research because sir- you lowered the drug dosage of an highly unstable patient from 16 mg of Risperidone to 5 mg overnight with absolutely no health problems or side effects? are you okay? like i don't even need an undergraduate degree to tell you that is not right.
I'm always of the opinion that if you're doing something, might as well do it right? it's not that hard to get the facts right you know? same with the end: you're telling me an IV drug strong enough to put her in a coma gave her enough time to write ALLL that down AND hide this diary? even if i let that slide for the sake of plot.. coming to the plot itself:
There was most certainly potential. I didn't even think of the Kathy-Gabriel connection so honestly props to the author. But sorry not sorry, the plot was very contrived, to say the least. Red-Herrings and loose ends and just a whole lot of mess in order to confuse the readers. There was just WAY too many dead ends. Like.. the max assault, paul debt, lydia, christian; everything felt sort of cluttered?? At first I didn't see where the Kathy sub-plot was going but that seemed to tie-in well. I just wished all that ^ added up to something or lead somewhere as well you know? Because why do I know that Jean felix cares only for her paintings and Max is in love with her etcetc other than to distract from said ending. I don't know, could've been done better I think.
Despite all that, good pacing, the writing flows well and captivates the reader. The Alcestis parallel was really interesting and i liked how the author construed that into a ‘psychic death'. Not bad at all for a debut novel I think. I was hooked and read it in one sitting pretty much. you should definitely give it a chance.
Lo terminé nada más porque ya le había dedicado mucho tiempo. Qué libro taaan tedioso, una gran parte donde no avanza absolutamente NADA, el plot twist cero sorprendente, el final... mñe.
Siento que te quiso contar muchas cosas, meter a miles de personajes, ponerte muchos sospechosos y todo eso hizo que en general se sintiera predecible. Esperaba mucho más, la premisa sonaba buena. Una lástima.
I would've given it 4 stars had it not been for the twist in the end. It starts off a bit slow but picks up pace afterwards. Certainly a page turner...
Ha estado bien pero el giro de guion lo he descubierto en las primeras 50 páginas.
SpoilerI feel oddly calm. I thought the ending was going to be something much more suspenseful, but it wasn't, and I liked it that way. I like the ending. It's not a very clear ending, but also not one that's too open-ended? (I hope I'm making sense, it's 5:05 AM right now.)
I genuinely don't know how to describe how I feel about it at the moment, maybe I'll write about it when I wake up tomorrow, that is, if I end up getting any sleep after this. This book had be interested from the very beginning and managed to keep it that way until the very end. It hasn't been that long since I started reading books, but the ones I did read didn't really stick with me. I liked some of the books I read, and some I didn't. But never before did a book leave a hole in my heart after I finished reading it. A hole that I want to fill desperately by reading something like this again, and experience this feeling of wanting keep reading something, practically being unable to stop yourself once you're in it. I am a big anime fan, I've watched my fair share of it—enough to have own opinions on it at least, more than 600 shows to be more specific—and I remember feeling the same way as I am feeling now after I finished watching Shinsekai Yori (Eng title: From the New World)
I know I'm way off-topic now, but I just wanna keep writing about it now, and I will. Maybe this is it, the answer to how I can fill this hole. To do it I'll have to try out something completely different. Like how I experienced this again after reading a book, not after watching an anime. To this day, no other anime had managed to leave me as thirty for just a drop more as Shinsekai Yori had, but this time a book—a novel—had managed to do it. Anyways... I really liked this book and it's an experience memory I won't forget.