A review by jayisreading
The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

dark mysterious fast-paced

1.0

Well, this was an infuriating read. I honestly don’t know what I was expecting, other than knowing this book got a lot of hype for some reason, but it was definitely… not what it ended up being.

First of all, Michaelides should be crowned King of Red Herrings because holy fuck, does he love and overuse them. It was incredibly annoying, especially when they’re all set up the same way. I also felt that this made it obvious who the culprit was from the beginning. Second, and if I’m using the idiom correctly, his characters are cut from the same cloth. The overwhelming majority of them have parental issues of some kind. I hated the way he wrote women. They were treated like objects, sexually assaulted (in such a casual manner too), and they’re given little to no personality. This was even the case for the protagonist, Mariana, who I found unbelievably frustrating. And with her, I get that one would be bereft after the loss of their spouse, but Mariana had such an unhealthy obsession with her husband before his death that the way her grieving was written really rubbed me the wrong way. Third, I was not a fan of was the way Michaelides used trauma and mental instability as shock factors, which I would argue includes the twist at the end. There are so many ways to surprise the reader without further stigmatizing and/or belittling something so sensitive and personal.

In relation to all of the above is this weird… smugness, I want to say, about how intelligent Michaelides comes across with all the pseudo-psychoanalysis (conveniently done through the protagonist being a group therapist) and use of Greek mythology and tragedies as the driving force of the story. And, don’t get me wrong, I will hand it to Michaelides for taking the time to make careful connections between what was happening his story to the Greeks. Of course, this was all done through the “charming” Professor Fosca, who happens to be an expert on the topic. It all came off as trying too hard to impress, though, and it got tiring a few chapters in.

Initially, I thought maybe I should have read The Silent Patient to understand the hype, but I probably won’t considering how annoyed I was with The Maidens.
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