THE SILENT PATIENT BY ALEX MICHAELIDES: DOES THIS BOOKTOK SENSATION STILL HOLD UP?

Released in 2019, The Silent Patient took the entire online book community by storm. This story went on to become so popular that even today, it is considered one of the biggest psychological thrillers in online and offline book discourse.

Alicia Berenson, a famous painter, is happily married to Gabriel, an established fashion photographer. But their perfect life takes a dark turn when one day Gabriel returns home late from his shoot, only to be shot dead five times in the face, and his murderer is none other than Alicia! After this incident, Alicia refuses to speak again. Her silence raises many questions, with the most important being why she killed her husband. This mystery garners public interest and introduces readers to Theo Faber, a man who is fascinated by Alicia and is also a criminal psychotherapist who applies for a job at The Grove, a forensic unit for criminalised patients, with the intention of treating her. What starts as a murder mystery soon turns into an exploration of both Alicia's and Theo’s psyches, revealing some unexpected secrets about their past trauma, family drama, and dangerous motivations!

Part of the reason why this book grabbed so many eyeballs after release is the presence of an unspoken character. After all, how are the readers supposed to discern the motivations behind Gabriel’s murder when Alicia refuses to speak? In the book, this becomes a challenging task for Theo as well, as he can only rely on public records and the testimonies of her friends and family, which becomes complicated as they try to guard their own secrets.

This story adopts a dual POV approach with Theo’s primary narration and Alicia’s diary entries, making her the epistolary narrator. Theo is a compelling and well fleshed-out character who tackles his personal baggage throughout the story, but if I'm being completely honest, I wasn't particularly interested in his story. I understand how it made sense for the narrative to consistently keep Alicia shrouded in mystery to maintain momentum, but even with all the fancy psychological anecdotes and quotes, her character didn't seem as layered and complex as the story claimed. Also, the fact that I saw the BIG TWIST coming halfway through the book didn't help either. But as mentioned before, while I wasn't interested in Theo's story at first, he turned out to be the most fleshed-out character in the book. Even though his backstory is quite cliched, it ended up adding some much needed context to the book's overarching events. When I read the book for the first time, I was on the edge of my seat from the beginning till the end, but with this revisit, I felt like the story was stretching its logic a little too thin, to make its big twist work. I think I'm being a little too critical with this book, because reading it for the second time allowed me to focus on things I didn't before knowing the ending.

Nevertheless, aside from my personal opinion, this book still holds up as an enjoyable thriller for new readers. Haunting and mysterious, I would like to give this story a rating of 3/5.