If you love twisty psychological suspense books, here’s the book for you. Check out my review of The Silent Patient! And check out my links to crossovers between The Silent Patient and The Maidens, and my links to spoiler discussion posts for both books.
Originally published in November 2019, this post has been updated in 2024!
Jen’s Quick Take on The Silent Patient
- A really great psychological thriller
- But also uses a classic detective story format
- Plenty of twists and turns
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides
Published on February 5, 2019 by Celadon Books
I read this book as a library read in 2020.
Review of The Silent Patient
The Silent Patient is part of the Big Twist category of psychological thrillers. I didn’t know that going in, and because I was reading off duty, I just sort of went with the story. There were definitely aspects of it that made me go “hmmm, I wonder why this is in here.”
The Silent Patient has murder mystery elements, but it’s primarily a psychological thriller about obsession.
Theo desperately wants to work with notorious murderer Alicia Berenson, even to the extent that he quits his job and takes an open position at The Grove, a psychiatric hospital that is supposedly in danger of being closed.
Alicia hasn’t spoken since she murdered her husband, a famous artist. Theo is convinced he’s the only one who can get her to talk. He’s also discovered a disturbing secret about his own life, one that is distracting him.
In some ways The Silent Patient is set up in classic detective story format. In his desperation to crack Alicia’s silence, he starts tracking down and questioning people from her past. He wants to know more about her relationship with her husband, so he talks to her husband’s brother as well as Alicia’s family and friends. He makes tiny strides getting through to Alicia in the hospital, and then there are a lot of setbacks. Then she starts talking to him, and … wow.
The ending really did surprise me. The only problem I have with endings like that is that you then have to go back and mentally re-read the book to make sense of things.
There were definitely red herrings in here, as there needed to be. The character development also wasn’t (and couldn’t be, with so many characters with questionable motives) the most amazing.
The timeline was a little shady, but overall I did enjoy The Silent Patient and definitely recommend it to fans of psychological thrillers and twisty stories.
If you’ve read this, PLEASE come over to my Spoiler Discussion for The Silent Patient. Then, for even more fun, check out this post:
Are you curious about the connections and crossovers between The Silent Patient and Michaelides’ new book, The Maidens? Come right over to my post, where I will discuss crossover characters, places, the joint timeline and more. You can find the post here, The World of The Silent Patient and The Maidens.
Curious about possible movie or TV adaptations of The Silent Patient or The Maidens? Check out my post with all the details.
Ohhh I think I signed myself up for this book at my library but I changed my mind. Now I’m kicking myself. I love the sound of this story, and well, asylums are pretty freaking creepy to begin with add a murder mystery? Dude. I’m so in. Oh, and that twist??? YAS.
Yes, Joy!!! Read it!!!!
Oh man. sorry to hear this wasn’t as fleshed out as it could have been to give all the characters more depth. Glad to see that you still enjoyed it though. 🙂
In books like this, I think that can be sort of necessary to make the book work. I mean, there is one aspect of that I was unsure about. If you read it, check out my Goodreads review where the spoiler is protected.
I loved this book and was very surprised by the end. I loaned my copy to a coworker in May and haven’t seen it since — I think it’s being passed around the building!
Same! I was just reading for fun and wasn’t really trying to figure it out and … wow!
Hey! Where is the spoiler discussion for The Silent Patient? I can’t seem to find a link?
So sorry about that – it is here. I did it after the Maidens came out and I think by then most people had read it – so not among my most popular!
Spoiler Discussion for the Silent Patient
My post on the shared world of the books (timeline, characters) etc is here:
World of the Maidens and the Silent Patient
Thank you! I just finished it today and would love to read the discussion!
Well… unfortunately WordPress has comments off as the default for pages and it looks like I forgot to toggle them on. So there is NOTHING. I am sorry. I’d love to know your thoughts anyway. Just turned comments on. UGHH blogger fail I thought I’d double-checked all the pages but may have to check them again.