Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


The Perfect Thriller?

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

by Leave a Comment

This thriller is told from the point of view of a criminal psychotherapist who switches jobs so he can try to help this infamous “silent patient”.  Alicia Berenson is a famous painter that was convicted of shooting her husband Gabriel in the face 6 years ago and hasn’t spoken since.   She was found at the scene with the gun in her hand, covered in blood because she had slit her wrists in an attempt to kill herself.  The prosecution never presented any motive for Alicia […]

Not that much to talk about

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

by 3 Comments

[Read as an audiobook from the public library] I don’t know what I was expecting in this book, but whatever it was, I didn’t get it. This book left me cold, more than anything. I don’t think it was supposed to – I was probably supposed to be shocked. But I was just left with a feeling of, “Huh. Okay. Well then.” Very unlike my recent reaction to, of all things, And Then There Were None, an 80 year old book that I’d never read […]

I’m not sure why this book is so popular

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

by Leave a Comment

I remember seeing The Silent Patient (2019) by Alex Michaelides on some “best of 2019” list somewhere. The blurb sounded pretty intriguing. A successful artist and beautiful woman is found covered in blood in her home. Her husband has been shot and killed, but the woman has not and will not utter another word. It’s pretty clear that she murdered her husband, but no one knows what really happened. The Silent Patient has 4.5 stars on Amazon, was voted best mystery of 2019 on Goodreads, and it’s apparently […]

What a Turn of Events!

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

by Leave a Comment

With about fifty pages left, I had told my husband that this book was going to get five stars as long as it didn’t muck up the ending. As you can see by the rating I gave, it prevailed. The unexpected turn of events in The Silent Patient caused me to gasp aloud, “NO WAY!” I’ve read enough mysteries and thrillers to have a good sense of what is to come based on foreshadowing and common plot elements, but this was one twist I did […]

Mystery as Lightweight Snack

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

by Leave a Comment

I’ve been having some trouble making it through another book for CBR. I started a collection of Ngaio Marsh mysteries, but half-way through the stories dropped off in interest and quality. I then made it about a third of the way through The Best Mystery Stories of 2018, but I didn’t seem to like any of the selected authors. Grumpy, and falling behind in my reading, I seized on The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. Skimming through some reviews it seemed to be a quick, […]

The Silent Patient is a good book but I didn’t like it

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

by 1 Comment

This is a hard book for me to rate because it was fascinating and compelling but I didn’t like it.  Alicia Berenson hasn’t spoken since she murdered her husband six years earlier. To outsiders, they seemed to have a perfect marriage. She was a beautiful, successful painter, and he was a handsome, famous photographer. They were madly in love. So why did she shoot him in the face 5 times?  Theo Faber has recently joined the Grove as its new psychotherapist. Part of why he […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo