A review by sashea
The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

dark emotional medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? N/A
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No

2.0

Well, this book had dark, and academia. With an interesting setting, and plenty of murders, this had the main ingredients down- just half-baked in execution.

Initially intriguing but quickly got repetitive and almost boring. Only the short length of the book made me finish it. The men presented as suspicious have similar backgrounds
of abusive fathers
and the narrator pushes her professional observations/unfounded assumptions on them, making none of them particularly likeable in the process. Also just tons of lapses in judgement that don't make sense
if you keep getting threats of a guy you know to be unstable "watching you", and notice a man consistently following you at night... maybe stop going out alone at night for a little bit? Stay in and read something, maybe? Let the police know? Honestly Henry's whole inclusion felt unneeded. It felt like the author had wanted you to assume he was there to kill Mariana when he finally confronted her at Cambridge because he had the knife, but that part resolved so quickly and he already had a history of self-harm to get her attention so in effect it felt more like just wrapping up the loose end of "hey is this guy ever going to get any kind of help since obviously it is not coming from Mariana?"
. 

The twist at the end (for the motivation at least) was surprising but there was no connection to any of the characters and too many heavy-handed obvious red herrings that I wasn't even interested enough to guess at
why Zoe did it. Zoe wasn't even in it enough to make me care about her being a killer, let alone her affair with Sebastian - though to be fair she did need to be out of the narrative view to be committing the murders so maybe not much to be done there
Even with the reveal it was less of a "WHAT?!? I can't believe I didn't see it!" and more of a "uh, okay then." 

In summary, this book is "Daddy issues and the (two-dimensional) women who pay for it."
Expand filter menu Content Warnings