A review by violagirl25
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

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

3.5

I really, really wanted to like this book because of all the hype it’s been getting, and I generally enjoyed the mystery. Up until about the last fourth of the novel, I was absolutely riveted.
My mind wasn’t blown by the plot twist like everyone else’s seems to have been. In order for a plot twist to be truly good, in my opinion, you need to be able to look back at the rest of the story and see the clues that led up to it that were innocuous before but now all make sense. This book just throws the plot twist in and retroactively changes the timeline of events to make the twist more shocking, which just seems lazy to me. I understand that it’s supposed to be a big, dramatic reveal, but it completely changes how we view the characters and their whole development up to that point in the story. None of Theo’s motivations or questions make sense after the reveal. Why was he trying to determine what happened if he already knew the answer? I know it was a cover to the other characters, but this was apparently Theo’s personal writing. Why would he be writing deceptively about something he already knew? The twist just kind of ruined the whole rest of the book for me because it wasn’t foreshadowed and changed everything that came before it in a way that seemed rather lazy, if extremely creative.
Overall, a good thriller with an intriguing plot, but the twist ending certainly left something to be desired. 
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