A review by _pauline
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

dark mysterious
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix

3.75

I‘m a little torn bc I love the premise & the alternating perspectives with the diary + it kept me guessing - everything a good thriller needs (though it’s more about finding out what already happened than acutely tense/dangerous situations); but there were a lot of plot holes & side plots that didn’t really lead to anything:
  • Max assaulting Alicia + Tanya being afraid of him
  • Paul borrowing money/lying + attacking Theo bc he “thought he was a burglar“
  • Gabriel not believing Alicia ab her stalker (great husband constantly gaslighting her)
  • Jean-Felix acting strange 
Am I missing sth or was the sole purpose of all that to make them unlikeable so we’d suspect them? 

  • Alicia being “drugged out of her mind“ after attacking Elif, yet perfectly able to talk 
  • police didn’t find any evidence of Alicia having been tied to a chair, including the wounds on her ankles? it’s explicitly mentioned she was bleeding from the wire cutting into her
  • her “indecipherable“ diary (paragraphs in different directions, connected by arrows, covered by drawings) - presented as a perfectly coherent story. Ig the former was supposed to depict her insanity & the latter to keep it readable - but still: could’ve been achieved differently
  • where did the gun in the kitchen cabinet go? and did Theo know where the glasses were from stalking them through the window?
  • why would Alicia talk to Theo out of all people?

HOWEVER a lot of that might be excused bc
the narrators being unreliable is a major plot point
; and it didn’t keep me from enjoying the story.
 
Right from the beginning, I was unsure how Theo’s 2 storylines (The Grove & Kathy) were related time-wise - whether they really took place simultaneously - as well as how they‘d tie together; + Theo being the stalker quickly became an obvious possibility - but sth always kept me guessing. I‘m just not sure if that’s a good thing or the result of loose ends


Not my favourite thriller but still good
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