The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides is a dark psychological thriller novel about a woman found guilty of murdering her husband via multiple gunshot wounds within their home. Due to her refusal to talk afterwards, she’s been transferred to a psychiatric ward. Years later, after her notoriety and publicity have come down a bit, psychotherapist Theo Faber has personally made it his mission to help Alicia not only speak again but to help her get to the bottom of the events that transpired that fateful night. If she was innocent, why had she not pleaded her case during trial? Why did she continue refusing to talk to years after the events? This was really the main selling point of the novel. Although the story got off to a really slow start, it quickly turned into a page-turner afterwards. Unfortunately though, the ending and explanation just felt off and unrealistic.

********** Spoilers ahead **********

There’s more for me to dislike than like in this novel. One of the weirdest things is Theo himself. Although it didn’t feel like anything was given away, it was obvious that something felt strange about his character. His troubled childhood you had to know was going to play a part later in the story. However, most disturbing is how he didn’t feel like a psychotherapist at all. We know he graduated university, worked at another institution, and got accepted into The Grove. However, there wasn’t much else to go on that highlights or reinforces his character as a psychotherapist qualified nor capable of handling Alicia. No previous patients of his popped up during the story, nor were any of his previous cases discussed to lend to his credibility.

Where Alicia was concerned, the whole not-speaking thing quickly got on my nerves. If that was the point, then good job. As mentioned earlier, the whole premise and selling point of the novel was this woman having murdered her husband and refusing to speak afterwards. This makes the readers believe that she was innocent. We find out in the end that she indeed was responsible for the muder of her husband. The whole thing about basing it on a Greek tragedy is a bit overdramatic and unrealistic for the most part, even if she was a creative artist. Like seriously, who does this? But I do give some points to the author for trying to at least be different.

Once it was revealed that Theo was the responsible person for setting everything in motion, the odd thing I caught was why Alicia, in her diary, made it sound like he had a sexual attraction to her when that clearly wasn’t the case according to Theo himself? More spectacularly, just how the heck was Alicia able to write down so much in her diary after having been overdosed with morphine in the end, and how was she able to hide the diary inside her painting afterwards? Lastly, we can only assume that Theo got busted in the end and will likely go to jail? However, the only evidence was the words of a “mad woman” via her diary vs. Theo’s. Is her diary even admissible evidence in a court trial? Or could it be that Theo would be able to worm his way out of the accusation since Alicia is in a coma, forever silent?