Hello Beautiful People! Welcome to another Baddie Book Review! I hope anyone who checked out my first post enjoyed it, and if you haven’t given it a look yet it’s a review of The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty so if you’re interested I recommend giving it a look.
Now you may be thinking that I am a little late to the game at this point. The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides was a very popular novel when it was released in 2019. Like this thing flew off the shelves and was being talked about a lot. I will admit that I have had this on my good reads list since 2019, and there were a few of them at the thrift store the other day when I was there so I grabbed it. I did definitely enjoy this book, when it comes to books I always really like the ones that keep me guessing the whole time and thinking about different scenarios that could be the conclusion. This one definitely does that.
*Some disclaimers/ warnings for future readers*
– Themes of murder and suicide
– Includes intense stalking scenes
– Includes abuse from medical professionals
Band of characters:
- Alicia Berenson: Resident at the Grove, is there for being charged with killing her husband
- Theo Faber: Psychotherapist at the Grove, his client is Alicia
- Gabriel Berenson: Murked hubby
- Kathy Faber: Theo’s cheatin wife
I struggled a bit with the rating but I think a 7.5/10 is fair
Now the book starts off with Theo Faber a psychotherapist describing the sensationalized murder story of Alicia Berenson killing her husband Gabriel in cold blood, then trying to kill herself. Since then she has stayed completely silent. I instantly got weird vibes from Theo. He talks about his fascination with her story and his desire to help her so he takes a job at the Grove a secure center for people who perpetuate violent crimes and are not mentally well, where Alicia is, so he can work with her.
I got this weird god-complex vibe from him. Alicia had stayed silent throughout the whole trial, and every time anyone attempted to interview her, so I didn’t understand why he was so confident to think he could get her to talk. I also just thought it was creepy. He told a story where he went to go see her art (she was an artist before her arrest), and he obviously kept up with the case, so I just thought he was a little weird. Eventually, he starts to talk about how he sees himself in her and her experience growing up which was why he wanted to help her.
Theo starts up at the Grove and eventually meets Alicia for the first time. He starts talking about how he grew up with crappy parents and tried to commit suicide and his only real parental figure was his therapist Ruth. Alicia doesn’t speak to him. He finishes with her and starts reading her file in depth and trying to find out who is important to her. He also insists on her medication being lowered feeling like they are too high. When Theo brings it to Diomedes (the guy who runs the place) he agrees that it’s too high and lowers it.
We get these bits of Alicia speaking in the past through her diary. She speaks about her really intense love for Gabriel. I wasn’t entirely certain of the reasons for these. I mean I do see that Michaelides was trying to push the narrative that Alicia was so in love with Gabriel that she could never kill him, but then if she loved him as much as she seemed to why did she shoot him 5 times?
We get a look into Theo’s home life as he talks about his marriage to Kathy. He presents it to be this really passionate powerful love that means the world to him. After work, Theo stumbles across her laptop which has her email open. As you can guess that email was full of nasty email exchanges from Kathy and some mystery man. She’s clearly cheating on Theo and he’s livid. He goes to Ruth’s place to talk it over with her because he’s currently in the headspace of not talking to Kathy about it and is just seemingly freaking out. Ruth convinces him that he needs to tell her he knows and end the marriage, but he still doesn’t do it. This part kind of pissed me off. He was clearly already set on the fact that once he told Kathy he knew she was cheating the relationship would be over and he didn’t want this to happen. So why go cry to Ruth about it? He goes home sees Kathy and doesn’t say anything which is such an eye roll.
When Theo tries to talk to Alicia next she physically attacks him, but he keeps wanting to see her despite this. Theo goes to see Max Berenson who is Gabriel’s brother. At this part, I thought to myself “since when do psychotherapists go talk to the family of their clients?” because really though wtf. At this point, I genuinely thought Theo was in love with Alicia. I didn’t see any other avenue. He was obviously obsessed with her in a capacity that was more than general interest and I was certain it had to be romantic. Theo learns from Max that Alicia tried to kill herself when her father died. All in all, Max doesn’t provide much.
We get a bit from Alicia’s diary again. She talks about Gabriel buying a gun, a rifle, and her being upset. I assumed from this part that it was Michaelides again trying to sprinkle the seed of a possible weapon for Alicia to access in the house. I thought this was weird though. They keep talking about Alicia shooting him 5 times, and I mean I am no gun girl but if you were shot with a rifle 5 times would there even be a body left? Anyways, Alicia starts to talk about her issues with Max when he is over for dinner one night. He’s been coming onto her for a long time and for whatever reason she decides to approach him about it at dinner when they are alone. Obviously, this doesn’t go well and it gets a bit wild between the two. I felt like Michaelides was again trying to sprinkle in the idea that Max could have something to do with what happened.
Theo calls Max again the next day which again I thought was weird to follow up on some things. He finds out that Alicia never went to the hospital and recovered at home with a private psychotherapist. Max is all pissed that Theo called him again and complains which sounded pretty fair to me! Then Theo goes to see her cousin. At this point, I was like okay this has to be a violation or something, and doesn’t he need to be at work? How does no one find it weird that he’s busy all day talking to one patient’s family and doing nothing else? Theo finds out that Alicia’s dad killed himself in the house that they are in, and that cousin Paul’s mom Lydia (Alicia’s Aunt) is a crazy lady. She doesn’t have anything nice to say about Alicia and it’s clear she is not a nice lady.
Theo goes home and tries to get into Kathy’s email but can’t. Instead of talking to her about what he saw he’s kind of just being a dick to her. I don’t get this because obviously he doesn’t love her anymore as he did but is so intent on staying with her.
The next day the freak goes to the art gallery that has Alicia’s art to talk to Jean-Felix Martian who owns the gallery and was a friend of Alicia. He tells Theo that her most popular work which is a self-portrait she based on a play, Alcestis is why she is silent. Theo reads it and it has something to do with Alcestis whose husband wants her to sacrifice her life for his own, and she does and is silent forever because of it. Theo comes up with the idea that if she won’t speak maybe he can get her to paint in order for her to ‘speak’ since that was her form of expressing her emotions before. Alicia seems into the idea.
At home, Theo suspects that Kathy is going to see her lover and follows her. She was telling the truth the whole time and went to actually meet a friend, which he’s disappointed about. Obviously, he is obsessed with knowing who Kathy is cheating on him with since the email address has no name. This made me think about really what an obsessive person Theo is. It seems to go into all parts of his life, work and home. Theo runs into Alicia’s old neighbour Barbie at the Grove who seems to know a lot about Alicia and wants to talk with her further about her. He learns that she feels that Alicia didn’t kill Gabriel and that Alicia had confided in her that she thought a man was watching the couple. Eventually, Alicia told her that it was all on her head but Barbie hadn’t bought it. When I first read this I started thinking about Max or Jean-Felix, but that didn’t make sense completely.
Back at the Grove Theo finds out that Alicia has stabbed another patient in the eye with her paintbrush when they ruined her painting. When Theo talks to her she still doesn’t speak but hands her his diary. In the diary, Theo reads about Alicia’s growing obsession with the fact that she felt she was being stalked. Gabriel dismissed her feelings and instead sent her to see a psychotherapist Christian West who just gave her pills to take (which she didn’t). At the end of the diary entries we learn the man stalking Alicia has entered her house. Theo gets all giddy because Christian West is currently a psychotherapist at the Grove along with Theo. He feels like he’s cracked the code. He wonders if she knew who the stalker was and if she did if she ever spoke to anyone about it. Theo confronts Christian and forces him to tell him about his and Alicia’s sessions. Christian essentially says she was a narcissistic bitch. I thought this was so weird. I didn’t understand how Christian pulled these things from their sessions. It seems like Alicia understood that it was inappropriate for her to be seeing a friend of her husband’s for therapy and didn’t fully open up to him. And why would she? Christian says that Gabriel played him under the table so the whole thing was illegal. Why would his assessment of hers ever be legitimate?
That night Theo does his creepy thing again and follows Kathy. This time she actually did go see her mans and they did the dirty in the park while Theo listened. I mean at this point the guy is literally torturing himself and I just don’t get it. He won’t talk to her about it, or leave her, but is clearly obsessed with the fact that she doesn’t love him anymore. Theo follows the guy home after and sees that he also has a wife and life. Theo goes on a rampage after this just calling everyone in Alicia’s life to ask questions and at this point, I was just certain Theo is a messed up dude. He meets Paul for drinks and learns that when Alicia was a little girl her father had told her that he wished she had died and her mother had not. Theo again claims that this is the answer to Alicia’s issues.
Theo tells Alicia about what Paul told him and then she speaks to him for the first time. The next day Alicia starts to tell him the story about what happened to Gabriel.
**IF YOU DON’T WANT THE ENDING SPOILED FOR YOU DON’T GO ANY FURTHER**
The story that Alicia tells him is that the man who was following her broke into the house. He had a mask on so she couldn’t see his face. The man she felt was going to kill her. He tied Alicia to a chair and waited for Gabriel to get home. She told Theo that the man attacked Gabriel when he walked in and shot him 6 times. Theo instantly insists that she’s lying, and plans to confront her about it when he sees her the next day. I thought this was weird. Yeah, she got the gunshots wrong but why did he think she was lying? I mean I also thought she was because if the man left her in the chair how did she get out to try to kill herself? But I was just fishy about why he did.
After work, Theo follows Kathy and her lover again. When the two part he follows the man again. He watches the man and his wife in their home and decides that he needs to get his revenge somehow. Now I started to wonder who the man was. Theo says something about kind of recognizing him so I wondered if it was maybe Max or Christian or something. I didn’t see why he wanted revenge that badly. I mean if he just told the man’s lady that would do it.
When Theo arrives at the Grove the next day Alicia has overdosed, and is in a coma. It was presumed she took pills due to an empty bottle, but Theo noticed that she was actually injected with a drug and she did not willingly take a drug to overdose on. Theo decides to go to Diomedes to tell him about Christian’s connection with Alicia and that he believes he tried to kill her because of their connection and that she was now talking. Max comes to the Grove and has a breakdown while his wife is there and it’s clear to everyone that Max is in love with Alicia. I didn’t really understand the point of this, was it to insinuate that Max killed Gabriel for her?
After Theo leaves the Grove he goes to the home of Kathy’s lover again. Theo says he keeps coming back to the house over the days. This was when I started to connect the dots. When I tell you I generally said out loud “oh no way what the fuck” I mean it. It became clear to me that when Theo was following Kathy and her lover he was not speaking in the present tense, this wasn’t happening now, it was in the past. Theo enters the house of the lover knowing he is not home, but his wife is. He comes face to face with the wife when he enters the home. And god fucking dammit it’s Alicia. I felt like I should have caught on so much earlier with all the sketch vibes I got from Theo, but I pushed them down. Always follow your gut ladies.
Next, we get a diary entry from Alicia. She writes quick because THEO just injected her with a drug and she knows she’s about to die. Like wtf…wtf. Man Theo fucking sucks. What a nosey bastard. LEAVE ALICIA ALONE! This man has literally messed up her whole life and couldn’t leave her alone in peace, just had to ruin her some more. Alicia writes about what Theo actually did. Theo decided that he wanted to help Alicia see that Gabriel was cheating on her with Kathy and decided to do it in the most fucked up way possible. With the two tied up, he tells Gabriel to choose who dies, himself or Alicia. Gabriel chose himself to live. Theo yells telling Alicia what Gabriel has done. Theo has the two back to back and pretends to shoot Alicia by shooting the ceiling. Alicia in shock doesn’t say anything as Gabriel sobs thinking she is dead. Theo lays the gun by her and leaves the house, uniting her before he goes. Can we just all agree that Theo is a messed-up man? Like who does this to someone. What did Alicia do to him? It was all Gabriel so why punish her the most? Gabriel still tied up sobs in the chair. Alicia gets up from the chair grabs the revolver that Theo left and shoots Gabriel. Which like…girl…okay that’s not okay. Look I know he chose himself and he cheated but…damn.
Due to what happened and Christian being arrested for drugging Alicia the Grove goes into closure. Theo tries to find Alicia’s diary but never does. This freaks him out because he seems to know that whoever gets their hands on it will figure out he is the man stalking her. Which serves you right dick head. We find out in the present day that he and Kathy are still together but that she’s been a depressed mess since Gabriel’s murder. I think deep down she feels guilt about it because she probably thinks Alicia found out about her and killed Gabriel because of it. Alicia in her final act of trying to have her story finally heard had stashed her diary in the canvas of a painting she made while at the Grove. When she went into the coma Jean-Felix took possession of them. He finds the diary and gives it to the police. The story ends with Theo being confronted in his home with the new diary entry by a detective.
Here’s the deal I enjoyed the ending but I didn’t. I am glad that Theo was caught but I mean there are so many unanswered questions. Why did the police not figure out that the weapon Alicia used to kill Gabriel was not one that was already in the house? Why did she clean up the chairs and bindings before calling for help? Did she take Gabriel out and lay him on the floor after killing him? Why did Theo become so obsessed with getting her to talk? Theo says at the end that if he had known what had happened when Alicia was younger with her dad (him saying he wished she was dead) he never would have done this. He would have known he would have broken her. How would he have ever found this out though before? I mean I see that he’s trying not to feel any guilt but I think if he didn’t think or hope she would kill him he wouldn’t have left the gun.
I really enjoyed the twist at the end but I wish there just weren’t so many loose ends to explain it all. I just genuinely don’t see why Theo would have wanted to get her to talk. I mean all he did was risk her connecting that he was the man which she clearly did anyway. It is also just such a freaky concept to me in general. The idea of medical professionals being able to become so intertwined and involved in their patients’ lives isn’t rare it does happen. The idea that a man like this could stalk a poor woman in so many aspects of her life is horrifying. The people who deserved to receive his anger (Kathy and Gabriel) didn’t at all which makes zero sense to me. I mean he didn’t torture Gabriel for hours having him hostage in the house that was Alicia, Gabriel was there for like half an hour. He followed Alicia places and watched her in the house when she was alone.
I would love to hear comments on what others have thought of the book and your opinion on Theo.
Thank you so much for checking out this Baddie Book Review and feel free to check out my Instagram @baddiebookreviews to be kept up to date with new reviews.
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