The Silent Patient

Alicia Berenson is convicted of brutally murdering her fashion photographer husband. She is rendered complete mute when she is discovered next to the body of Gabriel who has been shot 5 times in the face. Silent throughout her trial she eventually finds herself remanded to a secure psychiatric unit called the Grove. This is where criminal psychotherapist Theo Faber, determined to help, finds her.

I don't read a lot of thriller but enough that I like to play along. The written form has proven immensely malleable and has given us some inventive takes in the genre. Here, Michaelides gives us an abundance of red herrings, more than a handful of likely suspects with plausible motives, (seriously, Alicia needs to find a better class of friends and acquaintances) some diary entries, and references to the tragedy of Alcestis from the ancient Greek playwright Euripides. You know with the economy of characters someone here is not what they seem and it's fun fitting different theories to the story as it progresses. This left me guessing til the very end and having a page-turning blast along the way.

Finally! A psychological thriller that hit the spot for me! I have been having back luck with books lately and none of them have managed to deliver what I was looking for until this book! Even now, as I type this, I barely had any sleep last night and that's what I should already be doing but I couldn't put this book down until I had finished it. Also, I loved that the main character is a psychotherapist, it's what I went to school for and I loved all the little insights and snippets into the psychology of the human psyche. I just couldn't put this book down for the life of me and it will be going down as one of my favorite books of all time and I will be reading everything that this writer writes in the future!

The Silent Patient, is about a psychotherapist on the quest of trying to help Alicia, a woman who was found guilty for shooting her husband and then reverting into herself and refusing to talk ever since. Now, as she's in a psychiatric facility, he makes it his personal mission to help her work through whatever is preventing her from talking facing what happened. First of, I don't remember loving a plot more! As much as I love domestic thrillers, I loved how psychological this one was and that it took place in a psychiatric facility. I thought it was genius and complex and there were so many intricate layers to it that it was extremely satisfying revealing the layers, one at a time. There was not a moment that this book dragged for me, there was amazing insight all throughout, even when nothing major was happening. Also, the fact that it goes back and forth between what Alicia wrote in her diary and what is actually happening at present time, that made it even more amazing and helped us put things together even more cleverly.

Further on, the characterization is mesmerizing to say the least. I got a deep look into the furthers recesses of the two main characters minds and psyches and I loved feeling and seeing what they were feeling and seeing as it was happening. We got to be able to spend time with the characters one on one, with them and their minds and souls. Such a complete picture was painted of them that it's hard to comprehend that these aren't real, living people and that they don't exist in real life. Also, I was able to relate to them on so many levels, I can't even express how relatable they were, regardless of whether they were what is considered “good” or “bad”. Brilliant!

Lastly, the writing is seriously my absolutely favorite. What a beautifully crafted masterpiece, through and through. The writing just made the story that much more memorable and it touched me to my very core. I felt one with this novel as I was reading it and the pages turned almost by themselves as I couldn't put the novel down. It was brilliant and sophisticated without being too complicated and taking away from the whole reading experience and the memorable plot.

In conclusion, this book is one that has deserved all the hype that it has gotten. I would recommend it to anyone who loves thrillers or suspense of just wants an amazing read that will stay with them for a long time after. I have been dying to get my hands on and read this novel for a really long time and I am so glad that I finally did! I will definitely be comparing all my future thrillers to this one because that's just how absolutely incredible it really was! No doubt about it- this book is a must read!

2.5

What a page turner! Would make a great movie.

Phénoménal. Du même gabarit que Gone Girl et The Girl on the Train à mes yeux. J'ai été très rapidement happé par l'histoire et j'ai dévoré la moitié finale en une soirée tellement j'étais pris dans ses méandres. Cette rencontre avec un psy qui se débat avec une patiente volontairement muette pour comprendre les circonstances du meurtre de son mari alors qu'il lutte lui même avec ses problèmes de couple était extrêmement prenant et parfaitement splendide jusqu'au final sans faute. Un splendide premier roman !

The story intrigued me from the beginning and I like how it's written. The back and forth between Alicia's diary and the narrator's voice is quite smooth. I know that at this point, Alicia still doesn't talk, so the diary is a way for us to know her past, but I feel like sometimes her writing doesn't feel natural. More like a way for the writer to give us, readers, information. Especially in part 2, it's quite constructed.

I feel like so far, the characters are quite complex and they all have a solid, deep and complex background. I hope that the writer is going to keep exploring their backgrounds and make them even more complex.

Also, I didn't realize that the book would be so focused on psychotherapy, but I like it. To me, it's not at all a horror book. But I might be speaking too soon...

Update: I finished the book. To start with, it's not a horror book but a pure thriller, and reads like a detective novel. I got hooked and pretty much read the book in one day. The ending twist left me so surprised, I didn't see it coming! I feel like after Alicia's confession of her version of the murder, the writing dropped a little, but I was still shocked by the reveal. It's like I need to reevaluate all that I read before! I really liked the ending scene, and I found it very poetic -him letting a snowflake melt in his hand, then another one. One for Kathy, one for Alicia.

Read and reviewed: 2020-10-10

This was the first mystery/thriller I have read and I really enjoyed it! I got about half way through in a few sessions, then once I hit that halfway mark I read the rest in 3 hours. I only read this book because my library chose this for the book club book, but I'm glad I read it! 10/10

”

Could have been a bit cleverer with the twist, retrospectively, but it's still a good paced mystery that I enjoyed reading.

Fun book. Reads fast and unfolds like exactly like a psychological thriller movie.

Well written, smart, keeps you hooked until the very end!

I'm listening to the authors interview at the end (I did this on audiobook btw, which was excellent) and Alex talks about how he read and took inspiration from Agatha Christie...which I've just picked up. And with my experience with unreliable narrators like Shirley Jackson, I think this was really easy to piece together the who-done-it. I like that these two characters are together, possibly fate. You feel uncomfortable that he is so willing to dig into her life but will not even address the problems in his own. The dynamic between the two characters will help paint a picture of murder~If you liked this you may also like [b:The Girl on the Train 22557272 The Girl on the Train Paula Hawkins https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1574805682l/22557272.SX50.jpg 41107568] or the authors of Agatha Christie or Shirley Jackson.

Was okay. Heavily twist-dependent, but if that's what you're looking for, it's worth the read.

pre twist theo is the most boring morally grey white knight EVER and the whole story up until the twist is a masturbatory narrative of a psychologist with professionalism issues and zero boundaries

post twist theo is a holier-than-thou megalomaniac with a saviour/god complex and 10000000x more interesting and i wish we had more of him bc he's... he's something fucking else, man

but also like i wish??? the twist was... idk built up a lil more? idk. like i saw it coming (eventually.) but i'm annoyed lol.

ultimately one of the main themes of this book is how dismissive, patronizing and terrible men are toward women. and none of those themes are ever really subverted which was disappointing tbh

alicia's character was so interesting and was not done justice at ALL. seriously. we start this book off w women being silenced and we end it with women being silenced (bc the truth came out too late). lame.

anyway men are terrifying but this isn't news so

The audiobook was a great way to read this book. The narrator does a good job between the two main characters: the silent patient and her therapist. It's a solidly good book, and I enjoyed the experience of it, but even with the shocking ending that didn't make up for the pretty mediocre beginning and middle.

I'm blown away, for real.
I finished this book in a day and it cured my reading slump. Also, it surprised the hell out of me. I genuinely didn't think that thrillers could surprise me anymore, but The Silent Patient proved me wrong.
Even if we don't talk about the plot twist, the book was beautifully written. I was genuinely attached to the characters and felt their pain (which is very weird thing to say about a thriller).
Anyway, read this book, please!

It was OK. I didn't like any of the characters and it just seemed to drag on.

This and my other reviews are on my site: Aspects of Me.

The Silent Patient is a mystery/thriller with a twist I did not guess. That's a claim a lot of PR tends to make only for it to not be true. There are a lot of books out there that I have guessed the endings to and while I was expecting something a little different to the standard cookie-cutter thriller (my theory in the first half of the book was it would be some sort of Shutter Island switch-up) the ending was well disguised.

Alicia murdered her husband and never spoke again; Theo thinks he will be the one to “save her” and get her to talk again. They both had a tumultuous upbringing with asshole fathers, which Theo believes gives him an edge to figuring out why Alicia stopped speaking. All the while, telling us about his unfaithful actress wife, Kathy. Some of Theo's white-knighting and general attitude towards women is frustrating and disappointing, although stick with the story as it feeds into the ending.

In between Theo's narratives we have entries from Alicia's journal that she began to keep in the weeks running up to the murder of her husband Gabriel. These offer us a glimpse into the character of Alicia who - present day - is silent. It's a clever mechanism to build up a rapport and empathy with a character that would otherwise be inaccessible.

There are plenty of little twists and turns in the story along the way that will keep you guessing at what's going to happen next. It's a great read, well written, paced and with good character development on both Theo and Alicia's part. As Michaelides begins to peel back the Big Reveal, and it starts to click into place, it'll have you thinking “Hang on a second...!” before hitting you with the full secret. Expertly done.

Great listen for a car ride, especially with 3 of us ranging from teen to young adult to middle aged. We had fun discussing what was going on as we listened. Initially, I was put off by the violent premise, but it doesn't dwell on that too much. There is more violence than that one episode, but it's not lengthy. It's a clever book that seems like it could be a movie, but there are elements that aren't believable. Still, if you just go for the ride, it may keep you entertained and using your brain too. .

Around the halfway mark I felt like there were a lot of things which were completely unnecessary and irrelevant to the plot and I was convinced I was gonna rate the book low because of this but then BAM! that twist came resolving all the issues and doubts I had.

Alright. So, I'm going to get a lot of flack for this. But, alas... this book was not as I intended it to. For making headway as one of “the best books of 2019” I really intended more hype for this. I'm gonna give it to your straight. There are 2 types of people in the world. People who have read this book, “The Silent Patient” first, and those who read “Behind Her Eyes” by Sarah Pinborough first. I'm gonna tell you, that book MESSED ME UP, but it was so much better developed, darker, deeper. I know that reviews should not be straight up comparisons, but sigh. I read this book in 3 days (do to adulting I could have finished it earlier). I'm left with a wanting for more. A deeper plot, a better organization (besides relying on a diary). I wish there were more characters that were unreliable, so that you didn't know who to trust. All deception seemed surface level to me. And FYI that's not to say this was a BAD book by ANY means! I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I ran through it rather quick. But do I think it contends as “Best Book of the Year 2019” ? Ehhhh......... no unfortunately. 3.75⭐️/5

Lots of twists toward the latter part of the book that I didn't see coming. I know it's a book of fiction, however I don't think the plot was very realistic. I don't think the characters around Theo would have been that ignorant and oblivious. I'm also not sure the timeline matches up, but I'd have to go back and reread and I don't want to put the effort into it. I have to say I just hurried through the last few chapters just so I could see how it all ended.

Cracking twist at the end but a long build up

Hoping my title hasn't ruined any plot spoilers but I imagine everyone reading this book understands there's a twist. The writing isn't phenomenal and there's not a vast amount of action - but the fact I read this book in about 36 hours is a testament to how gripping it was. It really kept me hooked in and made me want to know the answer which was left very smartly on tentative hooks until the last few chapters.

The twists are why we read psychological thrillers, and this twist lived up to its hype. It's the kind that makes you want to read it a second time with all of the information. There were some unresolved parts that make me wonder what will happen.

Spoilers ahead: Now that the police have the diary, will Max go to trial for rape? Why does Jean-Felix get to continue showing her work if they know she doesn't want her work there? Why is Kathy still with homeboy Theo, if she is still so depressed over Gabriel's death? Will Christian lose his license to practice psychiatry? Why did Diomedes disappear right after Alicia got injected? What will happen to Stephanie? Will Alicia ever wake up?

Overall, it was a gripping read. I lost track of time and didn't even mind.

Interesting twist, truly a good psychological thriller. If that's something you're into highly recommend.