The Silent Patient is a book by Alex Michaelides. It focuses on psychotherapist Theo Faber as he attempts to get through to Alicia Berenson (our silent patient) after she murdered her husband.

What’s good?

The best thing about this book is the twist at the end. I’ll try not to spoil it too much, although maybe knowing that there is a twist is spoiler enough? Either way it was unexpected to me. I can’t say I saw any signs for this. There could easily have been some but I was too focused on other plot points and red herrings to care. Speaking of which…

What’s bad?

There feels like a lot of this book that goes nowhere. Certain plot points are inserted to never be picked up again or have any bearing on the plot at all. I’m all for a red herring, but I also like to see threads tied up or continued, not just dropped into a chapter to make us think and then never mentioned again. In a book that is supposed to be about character motivations it does a bad job of fleshing out the motivations of anything but the lead characters.

Alicia’s diary entries are used to give more exposition to her life prior to the murder, given her current refusal to speak. This is quite a good idea, except the diary chapters seem to forget that they are diary chapters going into full blown conversations between characters, making calling them part of a diary pointless. Immediately after I read this book I read ‘The Thursday Murder Club’ (more on that soon), and that excels at diary chapters.

How much did I read?

I read the whole book. To be fair it was quite a short one.

Conclusion

I wouldn’t call The Silent Patient the worst book that I’ve read in my life, but maybe the most pointless. This book has won awards, so I’m sure someone out there got something from it. I would love to say it’s not for me but I do actually like a good murder mystery, but the only thing going for this book is a surprise twist that ended up feeling more like a cheap move given the rest of the threads setup.