Name: The Silent Patient
Rating: 4.027666028097062 (3132 reviews)
ISBN: 9781432858643

Alex Michaelides

The Silent Patient

The instant #1 New York Times bestseller "An unforgettable—and Hollywood-bound—new thriller... A mix of Hitchcockian suspense, Agatha Christie plotting, and Greek tragedy." —Entertainment Weekly The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive. Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word. Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London. Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....

Marie Lynn

It leaves a sense of suspense you think you know what’s happening but everything you think you know is a lie

WITH OVER A MILLION COPIES SOLD, read the Sunday Times and No.1 New York Times bestselling, record-breaking thriller that everyone is talking about - soon to be a major film. 'The perfect thriller' AJ FINN 'Terrific' - THE TIMES Crime Book of the Month 'Smart, sophisticated suspense' - LEE CHILD 'Compelling' - OBSERVER 'Absolutely brilliant' - STEPHEN FRY 'A totally original psychological mystery' - DAVID BALDACCI 'One of the best thrillers I've read this year' - CARA HUNTER 'The pace and finesse of a master' - BBC CULTURE 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. THE SILENT PATIENT is the gripping must-read debut thriller of 2020 - perfect for fans of THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW by A.J. Finn and THE GIRL BEFORE by JP Delaney.

The Richard and Judy bookclub pick and Sunday Times Bestseller

read this a while ago but it's still one of my fav books and i genuinely recommend this to everybody i meet.. got me out of a reading slump so good. i shall reread soon

salma

I was able to guess the twist early on... but I think it's worth the read! It was good. 

estelle

I didn’t see where this was going till the very last chapter where it was all revealed - good but also nothing too crazy 

Anna Alberton

Silent Patient

vhstape

The instant #1 New York Times bestseller "An unforgettable--and Hollywood-bound--new thriller... A mix of Hitchcockian suspense, Agatha Christie plotting, and Greek tragedy." --Entertainment Weekly The Silent Patient is a shocking psychological thriller of a woman's act of violence against her husband--and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive. Alicia Berenson's life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London's most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word. Alicia's refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London. Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations--a search for the truth that threatens to consume him....

Joselyne V

Poppy Roberts

WHAT A TWIST, fabulous, absolutely loved it 

the greek mythology parallels carried it. the atmosphere was amazing but the twist was quite mid in the way it was pulled off. didnt make a whole lot of sense. felt like melodrama a good bunch of the time. not too bad though

Ahmer Nadeem

Marvelous maaZa

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides - I rate it 4.8/5. It’s a psychological thriller with a murder mystery twist. So engaging—I couldn’t stop reading until I finished it! I definitely recommend it to everyone.

The premise was pretty engaging, but I never fully clicked with the writing. It often felt overly explanatory and a little too determined to tell me what to think instead of letting the scene speak for itself.

The writing can constantly feel quite unrealistic and cliché, almost to the point of being juvenile. It reminds me of a nosleep story, honestly — Reddit armchair analysis of psychological concepts and all.

I also think the book would have been stronger as a character study built around the parallels between the two major characters, rather than hinging so much on the final twist. 

It's not a bad book by any means, but I have a feeling it won't be especially memorable either.

Francis Gatuslao

The premise was pretty engaging, but I never fully clicked with the writing. It often felt overly explanatory and a little too determined to tell me what to think instead of letting the scene speak for itself.

The writing can constantly feel quite unrealistic and cliché, almost to the point of being juvenile. It reminds me of a nosleep story, honestly — Reddit armchair analysis of psychological concepts and all.

I also think the book would have been stronger as a character study built around the parallels between the two major characters, rather than hinging so much on the final twist. 

It's not a bad book by any means, but I have a feeling it won't be especially memorable either.

ikkychan

Following the immense success of books like ‘Gone Girl’, ‘The Girl on the Train’, and ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’, psychological thriller has been the it girl (like, literally. Look at all these book titles) of contemporary pop literature. It’s not surprising when we look at what the genre has to offer: gritty narration, bloody homicide, dysfunctional relationships, manipulative egomaniacs, deep dark fears and the jaw-dropping, mind-bending plot twist. Oh the plot twist! The enchantment that has taken hold of each of us; the enormous satisfaction of having been tricked at, like watching an exceptionally good magic show and hearing those exclamations at the end: “Oh how blind I've been all this time! Of course he’s ‘the one’! I can’t believe I've missed it!”. As a matter of fact, we’ve all been so focused on the plot twist with such fixation that we tend to forget the rest of the narrative; the characters, the settings, the theme and the storyline themselves which were reduced to cardboard cutouts and plastic standees hanging in the background with no apparent weight to the story nor enriching its narrative. Precisely what happened in this book, ‘The Silent Patient’ by Alex Michaelides. The story was recounted from two different perspectives, Alicia Berenson and Theo Faber. Alicia was a talented painter of photo-realistic art and married to a high-demand fashion photographer Gabriel Berenson. They were both quite well-off and resided in a magnificent mansion with expansive windows that offered picturesque park panoramas, situated in one of the most coveted neighborhoods of London. Her seemingly flawless and enviable life came all of a sudden to a halt one night in August, when a neighbor heard shots coming from her house and police then arrived to find Alicia stood still in the dark and Gabriel’s body lying lifelessly whilst being tied to a chair, with gunshot wounds on his face. Her prints were found on the gun and a knife and it seemed as if it was set in stone that she was the sole murderer, but everyone was baffled by the fact that Alicia refused to speak a word to anyone. Not to defend herself nor confess to her crime. She just kept mum as though she wanted to carry the secret of what actually happened that night to her grave. That was seven years ago. To this day, the truth is still shrouded in mystery and Alicia has since been admitted to ‘Grove’, a prison-psychiatric ward. The mass media frenzy which followed the case in the past has also subsequently gone down to a mild interest among the public, but not for Theo Ferber, a young therapist who has taken a keen interest (which was an understatement. To be exact, it’s more of an, you know, obsessive and worrisome attachment) in Alicia's case and he is determined to get her to talk and shed a light to the truth. I found most of the characters to be unbearably insufferable from the get-go. All of the female characters, including Alicia, are major letdowns. They're stereotypical and abhorrent, often portrayed to have either unwavering idolization or ceaseless hostility towards the men around them — sure yeah, the only two purposes women have in life. Alicia is described as someone charming, which was highly questionable as she has no friends. Elif only exists to violently grunt and shout because according to the book, that’s how mentally ill people behave. Theo, who was occupying the majority part of the novel, bores me with his constant whining about his unhappy childhood or his emotionally unavailable wife. Well, either that or he’s busy acting as if he’s better than everyone and deliberately violating the rules in the name of <s>egocentrism</s> science. The numerous assembly of characters like Gabriel, Kathy, Christian, Jean-Felix, Lydia, even Professor Diomedes all have flat and one-dimensional performance, as though they were summoned into the story for a singular purpose: to serve as mere props that the two protagonists utilize to advance their storyline. The way the characters were written either through descriptions or by ways of dialogue has failed to portray them as real, authentic people, someone I can sympathize with and relate to. Michaelides claimed that the story takes place in London — a statement that I find hard to believe as there is no supporting evidence or strong proof, neither in the descriptions of the settings nor the way the people talk. The author has attempted to capture the overall essence, mood, or unique qualities associated with a specific location or setting but unfortunately was unsuccessful to do so as mere descriptions of rooms and houses barely emphasize the emotional and sensory experience evoked by a place. The time and place that the characters are in stays vague like a lifeless backdrop, giving no sense of identity to it nor ambience. As far as one is concerned, this story could have taken place anywhere or nowhere, but specifically in the USA, considering the manner in which all the characters speak. Typically, I do enjoy books that skillfully blend Greek mythology or classical references into the narrative, like in “American Gods” by Neil Gaiman or “The Penelopiad” by Margaret Atwood. Unfortunately, that was not the case in this book as the transparent symbolism and overt-exaggeration didn’t quite yield the desired result as the author really, really wanted it to be. You can see how he repeatedly compares the characters to a statue (“she was a statue; a Greek goddess comes to life in my hands.” , “he looked like a Greek statue”, “the actress playing Alcestis looked like a Greek statue”), has Alicia boldly claims herself to be a tragic heroine in a Greek tragedy (“casting herself as a tragic heroine”, “my fate was already decided—like in a Greek tragedy”) or —even better — includes a Greek professor placed as a mere filler character to intensify just how Greek everything is only inadvertently reveals the lack of subtlety and the forced comparisons in the narrative, ultimately undermining the authenticity of the theme — which was quite ironic as the writer himself is Greek. The only way this book is going to work is by tricking its reader, a method which, unfortunately, was not executed very well either. When we got to the point where the twist was unraveled, for instance, you might be surprised. But after a period of astonishment, you might start to rethink all of the events leading up to the big revelation and find some gaping, massive hole in the plot. If Alicia has recognized who Theo was, for example, [spoilers removed] The twist also renders all of Theo’s actions, behavior and motives towards Alicia completely meaningless and nonsensical. His ‘interview’ questions would all serve no purpose as he already knows what had happened to Alicia and he hasn’t forgotten what he had done either. It would make much more sense if the book was written as confessional from the very start or alternatively if it was written along the lines of “The Talented Mr Ripley” by Patricia Highsmith or “Lolita”, by Nabokov where the suspense is not placed in what the character had done but on the possibilities of them getting caught or if they would do something much worse later on. Overall, it might not be the worst book I’ve ever read — it’s not a complete nightmare for me. However, similar to “The Silent Daughter” by Amarti Claire, I strongly feel the urge to shake everyone by the shoulders and implore them to 'get a grip' and 'stop taking yourself too seriously' because frankly, at this point they are so disappointing it’s hilarious.

This was a pretty good book. It kept me hooked the entire time.

My only issue was that the central motive felt a little too basic. There was so much potential for the plot to go darker, and I think it could have explored deeper psychological manipulation as well. The writer was already heading in that direction, but I found myself wishing they had pushed it further; made it darker, more twisted, and more intense.

I was hooked throughout, which is why I’m giving it the rating I am. But because it held my attention so well, I also felt it had the potential to do more. To genuinely rattle me. 

I did gasp when I finally arrived at the twist though. So there’s one full star for just being able to surprise me. Quite gripping. I finished it in two days. 

Yashmi Adani

This was a pretty good book. It kept me hooked the entire time.

My only issue was that the central motive felt a little too basic. There was so much potential for the plot to go darker, and I think it could have explored deeper psychological manipulation as well. The writer was already heading in that direction, but I found myself wishing they had pushed it further; made it darker, more twisted, and more intense.

I was hooked throughout, which is why I’m giving it the rating I am. But because it held my attention so well, I also felt it had the potential to do more. To genuinely rattle me. 

I did gasp when I finally arrived at the twist though. So there’s one full star for just being able to surprise me. Quite gripping. I finished it in two days. 

Jill

This was my most anticipated read of the year and for good reasons too! This, this is the reason why I keep on reading thrillers. Alex Michaelides’ writing was engaging, thought-provoking and keeps you on the edge of your seat. There are a lot of little surprises along the way that I enjoyed until the last chapter and even if you figure out the big twist early on, I think you would’ve enjoyed the journey nonetheless. This is a story of recrimination, loss and redemption that was written beautifully. Also, there have been talks that this is being considered for a movie adaptation. Is it weird that I pictured Benedict Cumberbatch’s face the whole time? I believe he will be perfect for Theo’s character and will surely portray him brilliantly. If you’ve read this, who do you think will be perfect to play Theo and Alicia?

Amanda

This was a surprisingly intense read. The way the Theo's story entwines around Alicia's without giving up the entire plot/answer was very well written.

 Great book to say the least. The plot revolves a psychological murder mysterby regarding the psychiatric patient who is accussed of murdering her patient and is unwilling to speak up while the protagonoist, a psychotherapist tries to help her and make her confess. The starting gives us alot of insights regarding people and psychological behaviors while the second half was a page turner and extremely gripping. The characters weren't appealing enough however I did get alot of insight regarding human psychology. Alex Michaelides has not studied psychology as his major but he has surely done his research very well.

Aarush Arora

Definitely recommend it to anyone who is looking to get their mind blown. You won’t see it coming. 

Somi Patel

Alicia Berenson's life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house overlooking a park in one of London's most desirable areas. One evening, her husband, Gabriel, returns home late from work, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face and then never speaks another word. Alicia's refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure psychiatric unit in North London. Criminal psychotherapist Theo Faber is captivated by Alicia's story and jumps at the opportunity to work with her. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a path more unexpected, more terrifying than he ever imagined -- a search for the truth that threatens to consume him. Bestseller. 2019.

Jennifer

Interesting, clever, unique plot twist that I didn’t see coming. Would make a great movie. I just didn’t feel a lot toward the characters.

I have so many questions regarding other characters. Like, it would've been nice to hear their side after that big revelation. 

The Silent Patient

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