Maybe more time on Alicia would have helped this novel feel more well-rounded and not so one-sided on the lame Doctor Faber with his creepy obsessions and daddy issues. The plot possibilities are just so fucking endless in that locale. More time in the psych hospital, as that is one of my all-time favourite settings.
More diagnosis, more information, more background. It pays off in the end, but literally at the very, very end when I found myself going: ohhhhh I see what’s happening.īut the rest of the book I was like: this guy is too crazy to be treating crazy people and I don’t care about who his wife is banging. While I get the whole thing with Theo and the twist and blah blah blah, the bulk of getting to that climax was uneven in terms of plotting. I see y’all and respect your position on this.Īgain I must say, (I have this complaint a lot it seems,) trying to make personal issues more interesting than a fucking murder doesn’t fly with me. Of course, it all comes together in the end in a way that will shock some readers and have other readers tipping their hats to the author – save for the few that hated this book. What I didn’t want was to be lurking in the park as someone’s dumbass wife gets nailed in the bushes. That’s a weird statement to make, but it works in context. I wanted to be in the psych ward with the crazy, silent killer. There were times following Theo around as he frets about his hot wife’s shitty affair, that I was a bit bored. I was expecting to be more involved in Alicia’s life and the mystery behind her husband’s murder. I was a little bit thrown by the fact that Theo is actually the main character of this story. This book is told from duelling POVs between Alicia’s diary entries and Theo’s perspective. But I swear to fuck, when he clips his toenails in bed I could really, truly smother him with a pillow until all the life drains from his body. I don’t know about all of you, but while I jokingly say I’d like to murder the shit out of my husband sometimes, I don’t really mean it. He takes a job in the hospital where she is locked up and starts his mostly one-sided conversations with Alicia in the hopes of getting her to finally explain why she did what she did to her husband, who by all accounts, she was madly in love with.
Theo Faber is a psychotherapist who is overly confident that he can crack Alicia’s silent nut, as it were. Locked up in a psych hospital, she hasn’t uttered a word in nearly 7 years. Shot him in the head repeatedly while he was tied to a chair, as a matter of fact. Michaelides.Īlicia, an artist, killed her photographer husband. I mean, it didn’t totally blow my tits off and it didn’t necessarily reinvent the wheel when it comes to thrillers with unreliable narrators, but, for a debut novel it’s pretty impressive and I had a fun time reading it, so one erection eggplant up for Mr. There was a lot of hype surrounding this book’s release, and for the most part, it was deserved. Plot Twisty-ness: A clever, tricky bitch. Main Character: Creases his jeans, eats oatmeal, probably. Opening Hook: You know how you want to kill your spouse sometimes?