I looked forward to reading this book after reading the synopsis but found it a bit of a slow burner. Alicia has killed her husband but is now not speaking to or with anyone and what really happened on the night of the murder is unknown. Theo is the young psychotherapist who desperately wants to help her and try to get her to tell the truth. It is engaging but slow and I wondered if I would be able to complete the book. However, I carried on with it and at the end and found the twist a bit disappointing. Clearly the author had some experience of clinical psychology, had done his research, but did not impress.

There has been a lot of hype regarding Alex Michaelides’ debut novel and, in many ways, it lives up to this. I enjoyed the story of Theo Faber, a psychotherapist, newly appointed to The Grove; his fascination and dedication to helping Alicia, a patient, who’s silent. Theo is a therapist who is prepared to do anything to get Alicia talking, where others have long since spgiven up.

The story is told from Theo’s perspective and is interspersed with extracts Fromm Alicia’s diary. It’s not only about the unit and its patients but also focuses on Theo’s private life and what went before.

In many ways, this is an intriguing story - one of many of a similar ilk. However, it is also cliched and formulaic - particularly the way chapters end and the ludicrous things that Theo evidently gets away with. Anyone who knows anything about mental health and health care will know that any misdeamours are taken extremely seriously and, in the real world, I don’t think Theo would have been at The Grove for long.

It’s a good read but somewhat clunky in places. Without ruining the ending, there is a clever, if not implausible twist, but that’s up to the reader to think about.

I was really keen to get my hands on a copy of this book and I have to say that it is definitely going to be a contender for my favourite books in 2019 - I loved it from cover to cover!

The story is very well developed, it has a great plot line and it is clear that the author has done research and has knowledge on the topic. The characters are very well developed and I really enjoyed getting to know them as the book progressed. I thought that the ending was great and I really didn’t see the final twist coming.

Definitely five stars from me for this one, it is a very enjoyable story, well written and it is most certainly a page turner that is hard to put down – very, very highly recommended and for me it really does live up to the hype!

After finishing THE SILENT PATIENT by Alex Michaelides I completely understand why it is on everyone's lips because this is a haunting, hypnotic, and devastating story of hurt and betrayal.

When forensic psychotherapist begins his new job at The Grove he is determined to break down the walls that Alicia Berenson has built around herself ever since she was found guilty of her husband's murder. She hasn't spoken a word but Theo knows that he can get through to her if she will let him, for Theo's abusive past is the reason he became a psychotherapist and he feels a connection with Alicia who he is convinced is still there, hiding beneath the medication. What drives someone to kill the person they love? As Theo digs deeper and deeper into the case, he starts to question Alicia's guilt at all but when the truth finally becomes clear, it will be unlike anything you could believe.

The characters draw you in slowly and gently and soon you find yourself completely consumed with this story and desperate to find the truth. Alicia is fascinating and I found my opinion of her changing throughout as I doubted myself and what I thought was happening. The author has a way of drawing a curtain of tension around the reader as they read and I found the hair on the back of my neck rising at times and glancing out of the window to check for the stranger on the street, which is a powerful talent that Alex Michaelides has.

THE SILENT PATIENT by Alex Michaelides is perfect for psychological thriller fans and I would love to see it on our tv screen someday, and I'm certain it will be on every 'best books of 2019' list at the end of the year.

This is a fast read tale about a pschotherapist, who seemingly becames obsessed with his patient - a woman who has not spoken since the murder of her husband. The "silent patient" has been confined to an institution, after being found guilty of the murder, but did she actually commit this crime or not?
The story goes along at a good pace and has an interesting twist, that I did not see coming, which was a nice surprise.
However, sometimes a plotline works better if the guilty party actually gets away with their crime and I think this would have made for a more satisfying end here. For me, the conclusion was too contrived and rushed, and spolit the ending of the book.

Off the basis of the sampler, The Silent Patient has really drawn me in. There are a range of interesting characters and it's clear the author has done their research on psychotherapy.

I'm curious to know if the ending is the one I've predicted or if I'm completely wrong. I've got a feeling I'm going to be completely wrong and I'm 100% OK with that!

Amazing book! Twisted gripping story! You get to know from the beginning about the main character and what she had done ... but did she!? The story is so well told it is addictive! I would happily read this story again!

This book has only been out for 10 days and having just read it, it is easy to see why it is already a best seller and No.1 New York Times bestselling list. Not bad for a debut novel!

A very clever, well plotted, psychological thriller with a twist that will have your head spinning, I doubt many people will have that ending pegged, I certainly didn't!

Alicia Berenson is a fascination character, made more so by that fact she is a woman of few words, no words to be more specific. From the moment she is found standing in front of her husband's body, covered in blood after shooting him at close range five times to his face, right through the trail and even now years later in the high security unit for high risk patients she still has not uttered one word.

Then along comes Theo, a forensic psychotherapist who believes he will be the one to bring her back, to get through to her and break her silence. Will his own troubled childhood and his own experiences help, making him more relatable to Alicia?

Some chapters are entries into Alicia's diary/journal which bring a whole other depth to the story, shedding new light with each entry.

What did really happen on that night? Had there been warning signs? What caused her to tie her husband to a chair and shoot him?

Compulsively addictive and a trip inside some disturbed minds this is an excellent read, tense and unpredictable and I absolutely loved it and have raved to friends about it for days!

This is one for anyone who loves thrillers, it will have you guessing till the very end.

Sorry its only a brief review, I have done this as I don't want to give away spoilers so I don't ruin it for future readers! Am my advice is, make sure you avoid spoilers at all costs!!

Thank you to the author Alex Michaelides, publishes Orion Publishing Group and NetGalley for my digital copy of this book in exchange for an honest and independent review.

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Okay, so this book is all over Twitter and elsewhere, leaving a host of swooning and excited reviewers in its wake. Normally, having been scarred by two books that had a similar amount of adulation last year, I wouldn’t have read this. But I did. And what a little treat it was. I thought this was one of the most perfectly weighted, tense and engrossing thrillers I have read of late, complete with one of the best twists in the narrative that had me sitting back on my seat, thinking jeez, that was clever…

Michaelides builds the relationship with damaged, and seemingly non-responsive patient Alicia, and her would be knight in shining armour psychotherapist Theo with such stealth and empathy. Along with Alicia’s account of her life garnered from her diaries, and our growing sympathy with Theo trapped in a faithless marriage, the story begins to tease out each character’s points of weakness. Theo sees unlocking Alicia’s psyche as not only the greatest challenge of his professional career, but also revealing his utter fascination with the crime she committed and how this has locked her into her silent world. Very slowly, as Theo starts to break down this non-communicative barrier, with his one-to one sessions with her, against the advice of practically everyone, there comes to light a dark tale of obsession that holds many surprises, of which I will tell you…nothing…

I really enjoyed the level of psychoanalytic detail that Michaelides incorporates in his account of Alicia’s treatments in this private facility, The Grove, on the brink of closure and whose treatment programmes operate at the whim of financial spreadsheets. Aside from the intensity of the relationship between Theo and Alicia, the book is peopled with an interesting, sometimes sympathetic, sometimes not, characters that bring a vibrancy and energy to the claustrophobia of the main plot. There are surprising peeks into the lives of others, and the book retains a balance of seriousness, and mordant humour so essential to those that treat individuals with extreme mental disturbance.

There I will leave it, as to reveal anything more would cut your enjoyment of this by at least 99.9%, but take it from me, this is well worth your time, and did I mention the twist…

Recommended.

The Silent Patient is a highly original, complex and intelligent psychological mystery thriller.

The premise grabs you initially but there are multiple layers of intrigue and red herrings along the way to sustain your interest and grip your attention. There are also some interesting points about psychology and psychotherapy and it’s always good to learn something as well as being entertained!

Alex Michaelides bring his characters and scenes to life in vivid colour, just like one of Alicia’s paintings; he keeps you invested in their actions and feelings but provokes equally strong emotions in you the reader.

And yes, the twist is bloody marvellous. I did have to put my kindle down for a few minutes at that point just to think it through! The plot is sound throughout though, and the writing strong so the book is much more than ‘just’ a good twist (but – again – it is a good one!)

This is an excellent psychological thriller and I really hope there is more of the same to come from Alex Michaelides.

A controversial choice perhaps but alas, I am sorry to say that The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides was disappointing. *braces self for angry mob* I requested a sample of the book through Netgalley and I was surprised to see I had actually been granted the full book. Result! Alicia Berenson adores her husband, which makes it even more shocking when one day, she shoots him multiple times in the face. No one knows why, as she hasn’t spoken since that eventful day. Theo Faber, a psychotherapist with a keen interest in Alicia’s case, thinks he can be the person to make her speak. But why? I don’t have the energy to write a full review, but I still wanted to share my thoughts on this book. On reflection, what disappointed me most about The Silent Patient was the wasted potential. When I first began to read the book, I was instantly drawn in. The unique plot coupled together with an engaging writing style ensured an addictive start to the story. I couldn’t stop myself from reading “just one more chapter”, as I desperately wanted to know why Alicia had shot her husband, and why Theo was so determined to make her speak. It was all going well, and in my mind, I was awarding 4*… until I got to the plot twist. Now, I am not going to talk about the twist as I fully appreciate that there will be others due to start reading this book or who are currently reading it, but the more I think about the plot twist the more uncomfortable I feel. If you have read the book please feel free to slide into my DMs so I can explain. Based on the twist, I wouldn’t recommend this book but at the same time, I can’t deny how much I was enjoying the book up until that point.

This is a review that I do not know if I can write. When a book has been given so much hype as this book, you wonder will it deliver? Well by jove it did and so much more!

The story which follows Alicia (Fantastic name by the way) is found to have shot her husband Gabriel in the face, but no one knows why she did, she has not spoken a word since that fateful day. We are guided through her journal leading us to that day.

Theo, is a psychotherapist, and he wants Alicia’s case, he thinks he can break her silence, that she has kept for years.

This book really is mindblowing and rather quite shocking. I will not talk about the plot because like most books I read you have to go in blind. The book hooks you in with the past and wants to keep a tight hold of you as we travel through the dual storyline.

I feel nervous throughout the whole book, I was not sure where I would be lead. Would the silence be broken? Do I want to know the truth? Will we all make it out alive? Will I now become silent? (Haha as if this could happen!)

I was fascinated by Alicia and her silence, the pages just flowed and I did not and could not give up on her. I was captivated and I had read this in two sittings (Life got in the way). I think I caught a fair few flies when reading this too! I mean jeez!! It is a dark thrilling and uncomfortable read but well worth the time invested into it.

I have had this on my kindle for a while and i was desperate to read it but i also didnt want to read it too soon before release because i knew this would be something i would want to share with everyone.



Alicia murdered her husband, she shot him and then never spoke again, to the police, the justice system and everyone else around her – it really is as simple as that. You can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped. However, Theo thinks otherwise, he wants to help her, to rescue her and believes he can help her find her voice.


One problem? Theo is nowhere near Alicia, so when he spots a job at the Grove ( a sinking ship in terms of an institution) he applies for it – although its apparently career suicide and long term jobs is really not what it is going to provide, however, he has to get it and crack this case.


We follow Theo as he starts the job and realises 1. he is not even working with Alicia and 2. how is he going to get to her? Theo is not to be beaten though, and works at getting everyone one side to allow him to help her. However, it soon becomes clear does Alicia even want to be helped?


The Silent Patient is split into parts, and told from mainly Theo's perspective and partly from Alicia's as we start to piece together what actually happened on that fateful day. As a reader you are given the picture, not all the truth and fragments of what is happening leading you to start to piece it together. Yet, it's not as clear cut as it seems and I didn't piece it together until I was physically told what was happening. Whilst those are the main two characters we are introduced to several people around the pair who all have had an influence on either Alicia or Theo.


I never fully trusted all the characters in this, I felt they all had their own motive and as a reader it made for fantastic reading – was everyone telling the truth? This was written so well, I flew through it, I wanted to stay up late to finish it, I was reading it every break at work and giving my colleagues updates of what place I was at (I mean I doubt she was even that interested but – hey I had to share it with someone!) I got to the point yesterday where I paused a film I was watching to actually finish the last 1% and had everyone around me in silence. The pace was fast without scooping you up and leaving you feeling like you can't take it all in.


I knew from the minute I saw the hype on this book I had to have it and I am so grateful that I was granted an ARC to review and I have held of reading it for a while because I knew I would adore it and want the world to have it and so by waiting until it was released I new I could then recommend it to all those around me.


Trust me – the hype is real and this is by far one of the best thrillers I have read and is going to take some beating!

The Silent Patient is one of the most hyped crime novels of the past few years and for once all of the hype and hysteria surrounding it is as real and accurate as I've ever experienced before. Many of us seasoned readers know that quite often excessive advance praise can be overcompensating for something that is lacking, but not here.

I cannot recommend this highly enough - it's such mindblowing debut novel, and I highly recommend it to crime fans and those who appreciate masterful writing and exquisitely crafted tales full of enough thrills and excitement to satisfy even the most discerning crime reader. This book has it all - twists and surprises galore, fascinating characters, a super-tense, ominous atmosphere which underpins it all and more depth and substance than the majority of novels in this genre; something I always appreciate. This is a masterpiece and a book that will feature in my end-of-year list for absolute certain.

There are not enough fantastic words to say about The Silent Patient, so do yourself a favour and go grab a copy and get started right away. You'll simply not be able to put it down. One of my favourite reads ever. If you only read one book this year then make it this one; anything else would be sacrilege. You will not be disappointed, and like me, you won't want it to conclude either. This is one of those occasions rarer than hen's teeth when awarding five-stars feels ludicrous to me. Nothing short of phenomenal.

Many thanks to Orion for an ARC.

I received this book in a giveaway so this review is for the whole book, not just the sampler.

This book was an incredibly wild ride. A good one for the most part, but the ending kind of disturbed me a bit. If you like that sort of disturbing thriller, then that's fair enough, but I found it rather creepy. I don't want to give it away too much, but I feel like the way that power was abused was just a bit much for me.

I also felt like the handling of mental health was a bit off. For psychotherapist, working with mental illness, the narrator, Theo talked rather a lot about seeing "madness" in people. Including himself. This felt kind of insensitive. I can maybe put some of it down to the character, but it's hard to say. It's just not okay to talk about people with mental illness being mad or having madness inside them. We can joke about it in relation to ourselves, but this was different. This just felt more offensive.

The plot was really gripping though. From the first page, I was entranced by this book, speeding through it to find out. It was definitely written to engross and intrigue the reader.

Definitely a page-turner, but some of it made me really uncomfortable.

This book was out of this world amazing. I was utterly engrossed in the mystery and never saw the twist coming. It was more than a twist it was a snow globe that shook the whole story upside down. I know this story is going to be one I go back to and read again looking for hints and foreshadowing. If I could give this book more than five stars I would.

There has been so much hype around this book - Orion have done a fantastic job building the anticipation so when I got sent a copy a couple of weeks before publication I was so excited!
The story centres around Alicia Berenson who is a well known artist who is ensconced in The Grove, a secure psychiatric unit, where she is held for shooting her husband 5 times in the head, 6 years previously. Since that day, she hasn't uttered a word.
Theo Faber is a forensic psychotherapist who starts working at The Grove. He is convinced he can successfully treat Alicia where everyone else has failed. Obsessed with investigating her crime, Theo speaks to the people who knew her best before she killed her husband to try and discover her secrets and get her to talk.
I was completely engaged from the moment I started this - almost immediately we are introduced to the shocking details of the crime. There were no apparent problems between Alicia and Gabriel when she murdered him which makes her crime even more shocking. Theo's interest in the case borders on obsessive. The story revolves around Theo's point of view - his one sided conversations with Alicia and his discussions with the people who know her best. We also get to see Alicia's diary entries in the run up to the murder.
I found the setting of a psychiatric unit really interesting and for most of the book I truly had no idea where it was going. I don't want to say too much more about the plot because you need to discover the hook for yourself but it a real page turner and I read the second half of the book in one sitting. The execution is perfect and it is a fantastic read! I predict this will be the book everyone is talking about in 2019!

Wow I loved this book . Alice is a famous painter and “happily” married to Gabriel so why would she kill him and then never speak another word ? I was as intrigued as Theo ALicias psychotherapist who is obsessed with the case and wants to fix her . So you need to read it to find out if he managed !,! 5 stars and my thanks to netgalley and th publishers for my chance to read

I treasure it so totally, completely, sometimes it threatens to drive me crazy.
Sometimes I think-
Yes, I will write about that.

What can I say that many wonderful and comprehensive reviews haven’t already discussed about The Silent Patient?

Never had silence sound so deafening.

Oh, my. What a read! This novel is an intricate game of minds but reads so easily that you get lost in the plot, absorbed by the pages, before the end of the opening. Snippets of diaries from a woman, Alicia. The winding path of a psychotherapist, Theo. And noise. Noise all around that keep you on your toes. But you can’t hear it. You feel it. Alex Michaelides’s writing is more than brilliant. I didn’t get the movie feeling while reading his work. My brain and all my senses were alert. I smelled mystery, I felt fear, I heard the inaudible, I tasted blood, I touch coldness, I saw reality. Different realities, actually.

A couple of times in the past, I have had issues connecting to a novel involving therapists, which is weird because they make wonderful characters to dissect, they often pick up interesting details and are useless when it comes to their own issues! But far from the hollow cliché protagonists I encountered before, Theo is a fascinating main character. Yes, he is a psychotherapist, but I didn’t hold it against him. I truly enjoyed seeing events through his eyes, following his train of thoughts to come to conclusions I might not agree with but which made sense. I was so engrossed in the events slowly revealing themselves to me that I did not see the signs…
Why was he so keen on working a dead case? What spurred him to want to enter the mind of a woman everyone else had given up on? With brio and the perfect skill to put down into words the complicate relations between a psychotherapist and their patient, Alex Michaelides intertwined two lives for the journey of a lifetime.

Alicia. An artist, a wife. Well, no, more exactly, a widow. Let’s not forget that at the core of this novel lays the body of a man shot dead with his wife standing before him. Right away, I wanted to jump into her head and find answers. The entries of her diary are so mysterious, filled with love, fear, worry, and hidden thoughts even paper can’t take. I could relate to her finding solace in writing. I have a similar habit, except I then publish them. And I haven’t been suspected of killing my husband. Massive difference between us here!

But better than looking for clues to solve the how her husband died, Theo goes on a quest to save Alicia, whose voice died the same day as her beloved one. This is a two-way quest, though, and we learn as much about Theo as we do about Alicia, like balls on parallel lines bumping into each other, colliding in the strangest, strongest, and most intimate way. They say that when you look into the abyss, the abyss looks into you. Well, while Theo tries to break Alice’s walls, she carefully dismantles his own safe house.

The closer Theo gets to getting Alicia to speak again, the more dangerous it becomes. But for who?

Only I know what happened.
Only the author can speak.

Yes. I was speechless. A massive wave washed over me as I was nearing the end, taking me away from sanity and shaking my head in disbelief, biting my lip as one of the most incredible twist played with my mind and nerves, making me reach for the next page faster, with an urgency I didn’t know I was capable of.

Many of my fellow bloggers had warned me I would love this novel. I didn’t love it. I adored it. There is something so satisfying in giving an author your time and attention, to be rewarded with a unique and thrilling voice in your head, whispering the story of characters that will haunt you for a long time.

I usually think I'm quite good at seeing where a storyline is going despite any twists and turns but not this time. I found the characters intriguing and realistic. A book not to be missed.