The Silent Patient - Alex Michaelides

[goodreads]

Title: The Silent Patient
Author: Alex Michaelides
Genre: Suspense
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 339
Date read: July 2024

Alicia Berenson lived a seemingly perfect life until one day six years ago. When she shot her husband in the head five times.

Since then she hasn't spoken a single word.

It's time to find out why.


I'm having a really hard time deciding what I thought of this, and it is basically impossible to review it properly without spoiling parts of it. I found it captivating, and the writing style drew me in right away. It seemed awfully disjointed at times, but not in a way that felt jarring, I was just puzzled how it would all fit together.

I only started to suspect the twist a few pages before it was revealed - and it changed everything. I really wonder how the book will read the second time around - if there are any hints earlier on. And my problem is that I can't figure out what I thought of the twist. It seemed half clever, half a cop-out, leaving me feeling somewhat unsatisfied with the whole thing - despite the clever writing and the way it completely drew me in right up until the last few pages.

Basically - if you enjoy an unreliable narrator, this might be a book for you. If not - give it a miss.