**4 Goodreads Starsn (3.5 stars rounded up)**
Alex Michaelides’ The Silent Patient begins with a fascinating psychiatric case: a woman, Alicia Berenson, has gone completely silent – refusing to utter a single word – after being accused and convicted of brutally murdering her husband. Theo Faber, a criminal psychotherapist, hears of her story and decides he will take a risky job at a failing psychiatric institution to try to break Alicia’s silent spell.
Theo’s work is complicated by drama taking place between himself and his wife. His wife is growing more and more distant from him, which results in Theo plunging himself even deeper into his work at the institution. As his home life unravels, he discovers that some of the doctors at the institution have suspicious connections to Alicia and her now deceased husband, connections that may shed more light on what happened the night Alicia supposedly killed her husband.
I wasn’t a huge fan of the writing style, and the characters, at times, felt flat or disingenuous. What kept me reading was wanting to know what happened the night Alicia murdered her husband and if she truly did commit the act. I was leaning towards a 3 star review, but the final twist of the book (and discovering how the characters were all connected) made me round the score up to a 3.5/4 stars.
Thank you to the author, Celadon Books, and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy of The Silent Patient.
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