The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

 

Alicia Berenson has not uttered a word since she allegedly killed her husband. That has to mean she is guilty, right? Who wouldn’t defend themselves if they were innocent? But why would she do it? She is a successful painter married to an also successful fashion photographer and by all accounts they seemed happy and in love.

Theo Faber, a psychotherapist, has decided to make it his life’s mission to get her to talk. But to do this he needs to get a position at the institute she is in and somehow make her trust him enough to open up. After being accepted at the Grove, Theo starts to do his own investigations into what happened and finds something out that he thinks the police might have missed. She may have been stalked just before the murder.

So… I was pulled in by the hype and the promise of a blow-your-mind thriller. It started off well and got me thinking, but then it got to the point where stopping to think or question something made me annoyed because it pulled me out of the reading. And it was happening far too often.

You have the story told via Alicia’s diary entries (very odd entries as she records conversations word for word and in direct speech, and even when she thinks her house is being broken into, she is still filling in her diary) and Theo’s experiences. This supposedly adds to the teaser on the way to the twist but so much doesn’t actually align.

Then in the story you have psychiatrists changing meds randomly without a withdrawal process, no real policies and procedures regarding patient care, dodgy medication sales that barely get attention, mental disorders being called illnesses, and medical staff calling patients “bitches” and “crazy”.

There are loads of little sub-plots meant to direct you in certain ways but they become irritating when they don’t get finished. And then simple things like “action sequences” where someone gets hit over the head with a baseball bat and suffers no injuries or someone gets injected with enough meds to drop a rhino but still finishes managing to write an incriminating document. Just no.

I did not like the stereotyping throughout, not only of appearances, but also personality traits.

I do love a good psychological thriller and this was definitely not one of those. Closer to the middle the answer is obvious and I found the tie in connection to the painting very, very thin. The reason she was silent is just not believable and when you turn the last page you are left wanting.