The Silent Patient Book Review

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For: Fans of mysteries that make you go “OH my god how did I not see that sooner??”

Verdict: A beautifully crafted mystery that will keep you guessing till the very end.

Length: 368 pages / 8 Hours 33 mins

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The Silent Patient Book Review
Pacing
Paraphrased Summary
Official Summary
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The Silent Patient Book Review

The Silent Patient is a fantastic example of a story exceeding expectations. The final quarter of the book had me so entranced, so gripped, I literally could not stop listening. It left my jaw on the floor, eyes wide in the middle of my office. That is no easy feat, especially because I am not normally an audiobook person. There are two separate voice actors for the two distinct narrators for this story, which helps immensely.

Alex Michaelides masterfully crafts a story that keeps you interested from the very beginning, once you hit part four of The Silent Patient, it straps you in tightly and refuses to let go. My coworker read the book before I did, and gleefully awaited my reading updates. Once I hit part five, I stood up and went straight to her office, hands on my head on shock. “You’re joking”, I exclaimed. She grinned at me. “You’re JOKING!!” I followed up. I was met with gleeful laughter, and a “you gotta finish the book today!”

This is one of those stories that sparks conversations wherever you go. Mention The Silent Patient and suddenly 2-3 other people are ready to sing it’s praises. Many hyped up books fall short of their gargantuan expectations. This is NOT the case for The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. It exceeds every expectation, and I daresay I’ll be chasing the reader’s high this story gave me for weeks to come.

Pacing

One small quibble with the story is near the beginning it can take a few chapters to get into. Once you get past the introductions and into the main mystery, The Silent Patient takes off like a shot. It kicks into overdrive at the end of Part four, and goes into ludicrous speed for part five.

Paraphrased summary

The Silent Patient is a mystery where psychotherapist Theo Faber tries to piece together the mystery of why famed artist-cum-possibly-murderess Alicia Berenson stopped speaking immediately after her husband was murdered. Many believed she killed him. Theo, however, is skeptical. For him, it’s all about unraveling the events that lead up to that fateful day, and hopefully, getting Alicia to speak again, somehow. Readers will get to go back and forth between Theo’s narration and Alicia’s point of view in the days before the incident, through her diary entries.

Official summary

“Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.

Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London. Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations―a search for the truth that threatens to consume him….”