I finished The Silent Patient which was on my TBR for so long and honestly I feel it’s not bad but too hyped by masses.
Theo felt like a great character with his troubled childhood until he was not anymore, at some parts I felt narration was too wanna be deep from Theo’s POV. Narration didn’t mention the timeline for Kathy and Theo’s angle and I’m glad(slightly) for that since I could see from miles away what’s happening there, so it was more about how it unfolds because you already could sense what’s behind the unfolding. It was a back n forth ride for me getting in and falling back for whole book.
The last scene again felt wanna be deep, for me personally. I didn’t hate it but it was just okay. It gave me similar feels after reading “The Girl on Train”. Not bad. But not that “must” of a read.
I read this and The Maidens and it seems this author is a good writer and can start a story well, but the endings… like how does he consistently lose the plot??
! i finished this book about a week ago, the whole time i practically had no reaction I expected everything, wasn’t shocked. And then at the end of the book when the author shows a snipped of Maiden’s. I said to myself " really? why…
It’s really rare that I don’t remember anything about a book. But The Silent Patient was so unremarkable, I completely wiped it from my memory.
Exactly. It wasn’t the worst book I read, but it got hype for nothing.
Hated this book. HATED it. I vaguely remember the ending that everyone else is annoyed but, but the shoddy writing was really the downfall for me. Go back and flip through—every single chapter ends with the same cliche ending that goes like this…
Or does it?
Meh. I kind of hate this book for all the reasons you listed.
Same. A couple people raves about this book, insisted I read it. I couldn’t even get through it, it was so bad.
I bought this book while travelling just because I was seeing this name everywhere. But it turned out so bad.
I had similar experience with another book called “Normal people” by Sally Rooney(different genre) which received gazillion of awards and shit. That book suck. I no longer trust public opinion after this.
I read it because my mom really liked it and wanted my opinion on it, but I found it pretty meh. I don’t read much modern thrillers, and I liked it more than some I read, but it just wasn’t quite it. I didn’t really like Theo right from the beginning, simply because he was a psychotherapist, but he was continually rubbing me the wrong way so I wasn’t surprised by the twist. It just felt kinda cheap. I found it an easy read at least.
I based people’s book recommendations to me by the popular books that I dislike. OoOoOh so YOU love Silent Patient? That’s cool!! ((((Next)))).
I think this author is just. . .terrible. I read The Maidens and was agog at how poorly it was written, how dumb the plot was (so many illogical red herrings), and how badly drawn the characters were. I’m amazed he gets any hype at all.
one of the most misogynistic books i’ve ever had the displeasure of reading. also i guessed the plot twist so early on it was absurd.
I was painting a couple of rooms at the time so I listened to the whole book in one day. This was a bad decision because it meant I didn’t have a chance to forget or overlook any details. I wish I had. Instead, everything was fresh in my mind, so I completely understood everything that was going on at all times. As you would.
So at that key moment of the book, because of the dramatic pause alerting me, I actually put my paintbrush down, looked at my phone and thought: oh no, I hope that’s not why this book is so highly rated. But of course that is exactly it. The book has nothing else to it.
I had thought it was part of the narrative all along so the book fell completely flat for me.
Thanking you all for the feedback and scratching it off my list for now
Yeah i wasn’t a fan of the ending either
I thought this book flat out stunk
The unreliable narrator kind of became its own genre briefly - Gone Girl, Girl on a Train, Silent Patient - I hated all of them. As a reader it is super easy for the writer to just flat out lie to me, and then create this big shocking twist that everything I’ve been reading is a lie. It strikes me as lazy writing.
That said, the Silent Patient is even worse than that, because the lies were to poorly constructed that I picked the murder on page 9. Literally. As I was just starting the book, I said to my wife “if the killer turns out to be so and so, this book will suck.” And suck it did.
The lying somehow creates an illusion that the twist is there. Never have I thought of it in this way, you’re right. This made me doubt if this genre is actually for me.