The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

5 Stars from me

A polished and captivating thriller, The Silent Patient had me utterly spellbound throughout.

The story follows the shocking murder of Gabriel Berenson with his beautiful wife firmly in the frame for his murder – she is by all accounts an unlikely culprit as the couple were young, talented, in love and envied by many… however when the police arrive she is stood over his dead body, only her finger prints are on the gun and she has attempted to take her own life – a classic murder/suicide?

Alicia evades jail by refusing to speak – she appears lost within herself and utters not a single word in her defence, in fact she does not speak for years and is instead sent to a secure psychiatric unit, The Grove.

We also follow the life of Theo Faber, who – like most who enter the field of mental health – has had a less than perfect upbringing and in fact is having issues within his marriage. We see a broken Theo who discovers his wife isn’t all that she had seemed and we see a Theo who is a talented pyschotherapist, determined to get through to Alicia and help her to come to terms with what has happened – and to speak again.

The Silent Patient is the perfect thriller, it has everything and I loved it!

Blurb: 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…