Book Club June 2020- The Silent Patient

By: Alex Michaelides
Published Year: 2019
Publisher: Celadon Books
Pages: 325

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Summary (Provided by Goodreads): 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... 

What I thought

I love a good thriller but I haven’t read one in quite a while. I was looking forward to checking this one out.

Alicia murdered her husband and stopped talking. She hasn’t said a word to anyone in years. Theo is a psychotherapist who believes that he can help her speak and heal.

This book was interesting! The first half was a bit slow to me. I was curious about Alicia, of course, and Theo was interesting as well. But it wasn’t until I hit the 50% mark that I felt like I couldn’t but the book down and started to fly through it.

There’s a lot of backstory that happens in the book and it does alternate between diary entries from Alicia right around the time of her husband’s murder and present day Theo working with Alicia at the mental hospital. With Alicia being silent it’s a bit difficult to really connect with her except through her diary entries, where she feels like a very untrustworthy narrator.

Without saying too much, this book was well written enough that I didn’t figure out what was happening until shortly before it was happening. I did feel like something was off but they got me. I don’t know if I enjoyed the solution to the mystery as much as I enjoyed getting there, but it was a good read.

I struggled with rating this book on Goodreads because I enjoyed the second half so much more than the first, and I feel like I’m going to end up forgetting I read this book. But it’s one of those that if someone asks me about it and if I’ve read it then I would recommend it.

What Book Club Thought

Book Club was spread across the board with how we felt about the book overall, but it sparked a TON of discussion. I think we talked about this book for a solid 30 minutes. We all agreed that it was a quick read, but there were some who really enjoyed it, and some who felt like they had pretty much hate-read the book. I fell somewhere in the middle, but I really enjoyed how much it brought to discuss. We talked about pretty much each character, all of our theories, and how we felt at the end. While it’s not my favorite book, and I will likely forget about it in a few months, I would definitely recommend it as a book club read.