The Silent Patient by Alex Michealides

Synopsis (from Goodreads) 

Pages: 320 

Publisher: Orion 

Released: 7th of February 2019 

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 Have to Say 

This book was an incredibly wild ride. A good one for the most part, but the ending kind of disturbed me a bit. If you like that sort of disturbing thriller, then that's fair enough, but I found it rather creepy. I don't want to give it away too much, but I feel like the way that power was abused was just a bit much for me. 

I also felt like the handling of mental health was a bit off. For psychotherapist, working with mental illness, the narrator, Theo talked rather a lot about seeing "madness" in people. Including himself. This felt kind of insensitive. I can maybe put some of it down to the character, but it's hard to say. It's just not okay to talk about people with mental illness being mad or having madness inside them. We can joke about it in relation to ourselves, but this was different. This just felt more offensive. 

The plot was really gripping though. From the first page, I was entranced by this book, speeding through it to find out. It was definitely written to engross and intrigue the reader. 

Definitely a page-turner, but some of it made me really uncomfortable. 

 My thanks go to Orion for providing me with this free copy for review.