Reviews tagging 'Murder'

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

1234 reviews

loudonuts's review

dark tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

had me in the first couple of hours but THE SILENT PATIENT quickly lost me after that. i guessed the twist quite early in, which sometimes isn’t a bad thing, but i ended up just being frustrated because it never surprised me. several random hooks are thrown in seemingly “just because”, and you can tell after you’ve finished it and thought about it. unfortunately disappointing.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Blood, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Self harm, Misogyny, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Alcoholism, Drug abuse, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Addiction, Child abuse, Stalking, Violence, and Infidelity

bammys's review

challenging dark emotional mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Stalking, Domestic abuse, Murder, Suicide attempt, Infidelity, and Death of parent

Moderate: Car accident

meganeliz_1214's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Drug use, Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Self harm, Grief, Suicide attempt, and Death

lucykae's review

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Medical content, Mental illness, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Gaslighting, Murder, Stalking, Infidelity, Car accident, Gun violence, and Death of parent

the_reading_italian's review

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

I'd like to start this by saying I don't typically read mystery. Or horror. Or anything remotely related to the genres. But wow. I binge read this in a single day, and I am very impressed. The writing is amazing, and I love that I just grew to hate the characters more and more throughout the book. The plot is really impressively hidden from the readers for basically the entirety of the book (so beware!), and as much as I usually dislike unreliable narrators, it was honestly very interesting to read. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness and Stalking

Moderate: Murder, Suicide attempt, and Gore

Minor: Self harm and Violence

maddie_can_read's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

Interesting beginning. I almost stopped at 15%

because I wasn't sure if the author knew absolutely nothing about psychotherapy and accidentally made the made the main character extremely inappropriate and incompetent as a therapist OR if the main character was supposed to be weird, inappropriate, unethical, and incompetent. I decided to keep going but just double speed because I wanted to know what happened and realized it was the latter

I found it kind of a slog in the middle and it wasn't great to have to spend so much time in the mind of the main character who I found extremely unlikeable/ incompetent/ inappropriate. But it really picks up at the end and the end really saved the book for me.

One of the most annoying things about the book is that a lot of the mental health stuff doesn't really make a lot of sense. like lol, no one ever tried painting one on one with her??? And he's just wandering around yaking with absolutely everyone and anyone about his patient, does he have any other patients?? There's no cameras on the unit?? She has borderline personality disorder but literally doesn't speak?

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Mental illness, Sexism, Gun violence, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Self harm, Stalking, Forced institutionalization, Suicide attempt, and Toxic relationship

sup3r_xn0va_maya's review against another edition

dark emotional medium-paced

3.5

💬: “Perhaps some of us are simply born evil, and despite our best efforts we remain that way.”

― Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient

📖Genres: mystery, thriller, psychological thriller, suspense, mystery thriller, psychological thriller

📚Page Count: 336

🎧Audiobook Length: 08h 44min

👩🏾‍🏫My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - 3.5/5 
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The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides is a psychological thriller about a woman who shoots her husband and then she becomes silent, refusing to talk to anyone. Alicia Berenson is a famous painter and she's married to a photographer, Gabriel. One night when Gabriel came home late, there was an altercation and he was then shot 5 times in the face. Criminal psychologist Theo Faber is determined to figure out the mystery to Alicia's story, he starts seeing her in sessions so he can unravel the mystery. 

The story took too long to get exciting, I didn't care about any of the characters or the storyline until about 55% of the way through. I found myself not really caring about any of the characters until I was a little over halfway through the book. Things felt very slow and they didn't feel really thrillers like until halfway through the book. I didn't DNF this book because I was reading it so I could discuss it with a friend, if I had read it on my own I might have DNFed it for taking so long to get interesting.

That ending was really good! I was trying to figure the mystery out before the story told me and I could only figure one part of the mystery out. I was so surprised by the time I got to the end, I had to rewind the audiobook a bit so I could make sure I heard what I heard. That was such a good ending, I'm disappointed that the majority of the book was lackluster. 

Overall, the novel was okay. I think it could have had more thriller like elements in the beginning of the story. The ending of the book was definitely a surprise, I didn't guess it at all! I'm giving this 3.5 out of 5 stars. 
⭐️⭐️⭐️ - 3.5/5  Stars

I listened to this for free on [LibbyApp.com]

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Stalking, Violence, Alcohol, Blood, Chronic illness, Cursing, Death, Gore, Grief, Gun violence, Self harm, Suicide attempt, Infidelity, Kidnapping, Confinement, Injury/Injury detail, and Murder

coobugz's review

mysterious sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Murder, Death, Suicide attempt, Infidelity, Self harm, Gun violence, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Alcohol, Cursing, Death of parent, Stalking, Blood, and Car accident

mae_dexter_author's review against another edition

challenging dark informative mysterious sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This was one wild ride. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Blood, Body horror, Car accident, Death, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, and Murder

Moderate: Gaslighting and Stalking

kingjk2002's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

 ending literally had me gagged

everyone on ig said they were shocked by the ending and when he got the job to work with Alicia I jokingly compared it to a movie I saw about the lawyer with Keanu Reeve actually being the one to commit the crime not his client who was like the son of the woman he was having an affair with and is partially why he killed him because he didnt want to be found out... AND THEN I WAS RIGHT AND IT WAS THE THERAPIST LIKE I KNEW SOME OF THOSE SCENES WERE TOO SIMILAR

I do think like it's not 5 Stars because like so many loose ends

like I feel like it can be chalked up to Oh he was only focused and obsessed on what she knew about him and absolving his guilt but like he made such a fuss about like the art collecter being obsessed with her art and the cousin who borrowed money and the shitty aunt and like even called out the BIL for assaulting her and then said ahh the pieces are in place take the bait but like then what how would that have played into his plan and what he needed why was that important idk it felt like filler but with no substance because it would seem to be character interactions but we never see her with any of them post murder so they feel unimportant to the current storyline

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Violence, Stalking, Kidnapping, Death of parent, Car accident, Death, Murder, Mental illness, Forced institutionalization, Emotional abuse, and Drug use

Minor: Suicide and Sexual assault