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Book of the Month:
The Silent Patient By Alex Michaelides
April 2025
By BRittany amalfi
(Trigger Warning: This review contains mentions of domestic violence) Happy April, everyone! As we prepare for spring weather and longer days outside, it’s time to switch up the reading and dive into a new genre. I’ve decided to take a small break from the contemporary and fantasy I’ve been devouring for the past few months and dive into a few psy- chological thrillers. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides is a mind-bending story about a
woman’s act of violence to- wards her husband and the psychotherapist who wants to find out what really happened that fateful night.
Years ago, Alicia Beren- son’s husband returned late one night after a fashion shoot, and she shoots him five times in the face, and never speaks again. Theo Faber, an experienced criminal psy- chotherapist finally receives the opportunity to work with Alicia, and he’s determined to unravel everything that Alicia
is hiding. Of course, with Ali- cia's refusal to speak, Theo’s mission won’t be an easy feat. No one had heard her voice
in years. Why would Theo be the one to crack through her impenetrable walls and get her talking? Well, Theo doesn’t do things halfway, and his deep in- terest in this case won’t let him give up on Alicia Berenson.
Alicia Berenson had a seem- ingly perfect life. She was a skilled painter, married to a well- known fashion photographer, and loved by everyone around her. No one can possibly fathom why she would do this heinous
act of violence towards the man who loved her the most. There’s a reason The Silent Patient is a psycho- logical thriller, and Alicia Berenson is about to make the reader doubt everything they think they know about this wordless patient.
The Silent Patient had me hooked from the very beginning. Michaelides is a dynamic writer and knows how to keep the reader guessing until the very last twist. The rising tension throughout the whole story sets the pace for the unease the reader is feeling, and wondering who they should root for. As we learn more
about Alicia through her jour- nal entries, we start to wonder what was going on behind closed doors. Did she and Gabriel truly have the perfect marriage? What actually happened during her
childhood? By the time I got to a certain point in the book, I wasn’t sure if I should have been rooting for Alicia or against her—and that is why this book was phenomenal.
Theo Faber, our unreliable narrator, is also a huge driving force of this story. Like Alicia, we get a glimpse of his home life and learn that Theo Faber has many layers that need to be peeled back as well. As the mys- tery unravels, so does Theo, and by a certain point, the reader doesn’t know who’s telling the truth, and if this is all one big game to Alicia.
The descriptions and prose of this novel were excellent and kept me on my toes. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides is a must-read for anyone looking to dive into the world of psycholog- ical thrillers and wants a story that they simply cannot trust.
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