Google

The Silent Patient Book cover.

I have a lot to say about “The Silent Patient” by Alex Michaelides. First, if you want to start reading more and don’t know where to start, I suggest this book. It is a short read at only about 330 pages. The Silent Patient is a mystery/thriller book about a woman who shoots her husband multiple times in the face and never says another word. She attends a mental hospital and is treated by a therapist who knows more than he should.

When I first bought the book, I didn’t know much about it I just thought it looked interesting. I started reading it in school and was already interested from the first few chapters. As I read, page by page, chapter by chapter I knew this would be a favorite of mine from how I could not put the book down. I was right, this book was five stars and I rarely give a book that high of a rating.

The book was broken up into 4 parts, the story didn’t change it was just to separate the timelines. This book was very well written and kept me entertained the whole time. I’m not one to read books like this but for this one time I decided to stray from my usual genre and see if I’d like it. I didn’t, I loved it. I would definitely read more of this genre and for sure more from this author. Any book I read will always have its flaws and things I didn’t like but Alex Michaelides’ writing style was almost perfect that I found few if any flaws in this book or even things I didn’t like for that matter.

I think most people who read this book would agree that it was very good, on Goodreads 1,950,561 people rated this book and most of them were a rating of 5 stars, a little less were 4 stars, and only a few had 3 or lower and maybe that’s because this book isn’t meant for everyone and that’s ok but in my opinion, this was a great read.

To nitpick the things that I didn’t like would be a waste of time considering there was none. I was so surprised I liked this book because all I heard was bad things about it on TikTok. People said It was very predictable and boring but to me it was a shock to find out the major plot twist. I did not see it coming unlike others did and I certainly did not think it was boring.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and encourage people to give it a try. To quickly sum it up, Alicia Berenson, the woman who shot her husband in the face then never speaks again, was admitted into a mental hospital to be treated and eventually talk. She wasn’t easy to cooperate with, but Theo, her therapist tried his best. She got violent with him a few times but that didn’t stop the process. She eventually started communicating through paintings then she talked. Alicia always liked painting, it was her thing, and her best friend supported this hobby by building her a museum to hold her artwork.

Theo had his own life to live and sometimes got caught up in Alicia. His wife was into acting and would meet with friends to discuss new screenplays. One night when Theo’s wife was busy, he saw her laptop and found out she was cheating. He followed her one night to see if she was really meeting with friends or with her other man. She was in fact going to the man’s house. Theo visited the house a few times and occasionally seen a woman in the window he didn’t recognize. When she saw him too, he left.

Now this is where things get confusing, there is two stories as to what happens next. One of which makes Alicia guilty of murdering her husband, and the other doesn’t. From reading this you can probably guess that she was innocent, but I didn’t know that at the time and that make the book a whole lot better.

What really happened was the man who Theo’s wife was seeing was actually Alicia’s husband, and when Theo found out he killed him. He made it look like it was Alicia, and she was punished for his crime. That was the crazy plot twist that I did not expect. I really thought Alicia was guilty until I read from her point of view.

Overall, this book was a very good read and I believe there is a movie of it supposed to be coming out soon and I will definitely watch it and maybe reread the book a couple times.