Reviews tagging 'Suicide'

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

526 reviews

zm_gl's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

If you love metaphors and analogies, or parallel stories then this book is perfect for that. It has a challenging plot to follow emotionally but it is hard to truly predict what happens. 

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pupaebug's review

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adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

This book both entertained me and infuriated me. From the very beginning, I absolutely could not STAND Theo. He speaks with this air of entitlement that makes me feel physically ill. He felt partially like an incel and partially like a self-aggrandizing asshole the entire time. I hated how he felt like he knew Alicia personally, and how he could change her because the two of them were so similar. It was so clear from the start that Theo had a crush on Alicia
and hated Gabriel
.

I also really did not understand how Theo kept getting his way. Is he charismatic? I didn't feel that he was. Why did everyone at the Grove just keep letting him do what he wanted? Why did they trust a new psychoanalyst (not a doctor) about medication but not Christian, a medical doctor with experience with patients such as Alicia and far more mental health training than Theo? Why was Theo so easily able to become Alicia's psychiatrist?
Theo is not some mastermind, he's a creepy impulsive guy
. It was not realistic to have him be able to get his way like this not only in the Grove, but also around the people who knew Alicia like Max, Jean-Felix, and Paul. 

Another thing that infuriated me about this book is Alicia's journal. I've written in a diary on and off for my entire life, and I keep a regular diary now. Alicia's diary is not how normal people write. Normal people write about their own experiences from their perspective, which is distorted by their feelings on the matters they discuss. Diaries are stream-of-consciousness style. No one writes lines of perfect dialogue in their diary followed by novel-style narration. It completely took me out of it and made me think that the diary was fabricated as part of the mystery. That would have been interesting. Even Alicia's diary written in a stream-of-consciousness way, with unreliable and distorted perspectives, would have been interesting for the novel. But alas, we got none of those and it turns out Alex Michaelides just does not know how people keep journals. 

I honestly also just think I've had enough of this incredibly simple, friendly style of narration I see in books published since 2015. This book just sounded like a guy was talking to a friend, and my personal preference is for writing that requires some mental dissection and thought. Theo plainly stated every single thing that he wanted to get through to the reader. While this isn't a bad thing, it made me feel like I was reading a book written for ten-year-olds who haven't developed the ability to understand other people's emotions yet. It was almost insulting as a reader, do I need it spelled out to me that Theo felt sad when he found out Kathy was cheating on him? Am I not trusted to infer a single thing on my own? 

All this aside, the book was entertaining and kept me wanting to keep reading. I was confused by how short the chapters were,
but the twist made it make sense, and I found that satisfying and interesting.
The
nonlinear storytelling
of the novel was cool and made me want to go back and understand just how it was done
. I like how the author played with our assumption that Theo was going to work with Alicia and then home to find out about Kathy cheating, although if you think about it, Theo never mentioned his job at the Grove in the home chapters, and never mentioned the Kathy cheating part in the work chapters.
It was cool.

The twist was interesting. I liked it, and I didn't see it coming. I did kinda jokingly predict that Kathy's lover was Gabriel, especially because we never learned a single thing about Gabriel's life outside of Alicia, and that was fishy. But the actual reason for the murder wasn't great. So Alicia chose to kill her husband because he put his own life over hers with a gun to his head, which reminded her of when her father said something similar when they were kids, causing Alicia to shoot him SIX times in the face and then slit her wrists and never speak again? Girl just get a divorce!!! And she never spoke again because she was inspired by a play she saw ONE WEEK before she killed her husband? not plausible. I will say that at least in the end, I felt vindicated for my hatred of Theo from the start. The entitlement toward Alicia makes (a little bit) more sense when it is revealed that he knew he could get her to talk merely by who he is.

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reiowashere's review

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

Really good book! Really hooked you in with the storytelling and hooks. Highly recommend listening to the audiobook, actors were very good and really sold the emotions of their characters. I did see the final twist coming about 2/3rds into the book, but that doesn’t take away from it in my opinion. 

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bri4589's review

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dark emotional mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.5

Really enjoyed the story. Big plot twist but the end leaves something to be desired. 

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jessicakisiel's review

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

THE TWIST?! Genius! I had the tiniest bit of an inkling, but it was still absolutely shocking.

Throughout the whole book I was wondering why he was so adamant on ‘helping her’ & it all makes so much sense. I questioned why he (Theo - the narrator) was playing detective, again, it all makes sense now. There were a few other parts where he was just annoying, a little off - again, it all makes sense.

This was such a fast read for me, the short chapters made me say ‘just one more’ often, when in reality my ‘one more’ was about ten more because I was so hooked on the book. It was a solid 4 throughout, and that ending bumped it the extra star for me. 

The story, the characters, the twist - amazing 😍 

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hue's review against another edition

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mysterious
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No

1.0

I found it too over written. Instead of it being a "only I can make her talk" sorta story it ended up being pint fed with infidelity.
That being the entire plot eventually and the twists and so didn't spark any interest in me. Perhaps I just don't care for stories where cheating makes shit go around.

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cinnamonroll42's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


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reayboi's review

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

That twist had be gagged.
A little unrealistic.
Not a huge fan of the writing style.
Page turner.

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tabea1409's review

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challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25


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toadette07's review

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


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