By Alex Michaelides

ISBN: 9781250301697

Most readers either love this book and think it comes together brilliantly at the end or hate it and question everyone’s sanity. I am somewhere in the middle.

Synopsis

“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’s to like

This books offers a nice thriller. While I did not really like any character, I still wanted to keep reading to find out what happens next. The plot twist in the end ties together all the lose ends and is well done.

As mentioned, I found the characters to be weird and strange, but I think that is the point of the book as I doubt that there was even one character who could claim complete sanity. May be that is the undertaking that Michaelides undertook, to develop very complicated and complex characters with various degrees of mental challenges and issues.

What’s not to like

*Spoilers ahead*

At some places, I found Alicia’s diary entries in the book to be wonky and unpolished in the flow of the story, even nonsensical. For instance, Alicia hears a possible intruder in the house and continues to sit and write about it instead of worrying about her safety and finding out who it is first. Similarly, Alicia writing about being injected with morphine instead of making a fuss and bringing everyone’s attention to it so that the person is caught, she writes about it in the diary in the hopes that the diary will end up with someone so the killer will be exposed.

Why did Theo return to Alicia her diary? It had evidence against him so why not destroy it?

Lastly, it completely eludes me why almost all male characters were obsessed with Alicia. In general, I think this book is a tad bit overhyped.

NOTES:

Book Review Rating: 3/5
Content Warnings: Death, mental health issues, suicide and extra-marital affair. Age advisory 18+