Book Review: The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

Only she knows what happened. Only I can make her speak.

The cover perfectly gives a gist of the book. Alex Michaelides beautifully portrays the whole story in the book. The flow in the book might seem to be distorted while reading it, but once you reach towards the end, it all starts making sense. About why Theo keeps mentioning Kathy repeatedly. The book is a suspense thriller, and while reading, one imagines all the possibilities of where this could end. But what actually shows up is the rarest of all. Throughout the read, there is not even a slight hint of the climax.

A few instances were quite annoying, where the author described things in too much detail and seemed unnecessary, but it helped the author shape the background of the characters, which could be used later. It took me around a week or so to finish the book; however, I read the majority of it in the last 2 days. Maybe because of the suspense that was being created. Speaking of suspense, the initial pages set up the plot, and the story progresses slowly, but after a certain point, the suspense starts rising exponentially. This is how the author has framed the story, keeping the interest alive and not rushing very fast. This way, you get to know each character and its role in the story effectively.

One thing that I was disappointed about was that the story involved a few side characters, and there was no closing statement on them about how they were linked to the final incident, and they were left open-ended. Not that it was necessary to do so, but if you try to summarize the story, it is difficult to define how their role was linked to the final incident. For the rest, I believe the story had very detailed descriptions about all the necessary events and characters. The story also included some romance, particularly during discussions of the two couples at various points.

I strongly recommend reading this book, because it feels like a warm hug, knowing about the relationship of Theo and Alicia, how one’s emotions can be projected on the other, how one’s childhood affects the rest of his life, and how one can get rid of their childhood trauma by performing actions in their adulthood.