rhiannonmcgovern's reviews
150 reviews

i feel like the following review is going to sound quite negative, and whilst it kind of is, i want to preface by saying i actually enjoyed reading this book. but i had a few issues with it. i've also never read the silent patient and don't know much about it so i'm not sure if maybe i'd be more impressed with that considering how well loved it is.

firstly, i just couldn't gel with michaelides' writing style. i know he is a very popular and acclaimed author but to me his writing felt really quite basic. i felt like a lot of it was quite wattpad-y, and that the dialogue in particular was immature. i didn't feel like the dialogue was believable, it felt very staged and like it just wasn't how real people speak. i thought the characterisation was so bland, these characters had SO MUCH potential, especially fosca yet i don't feel like michaelides' writing brought out the best of them. the writing felt so one-note and, whilst its important for each writer to have their own distinct style, i feel like there was nothing to distinguish between who was the one talking. the character development was so poor and the majority of the time dialogue occured i was like this is literally Not something a grown adult or even a teen for that matter would say it just felt a bit cringey.

mariana was SO UNLIKEABLE - actually every character was - and i usually absolutely adore an unlikeable character but i'm not sure if i was actually supposed to be rooting for her?

anyways why is a grown woman hanging about a university campus and inserting herself into a murder investigation just because she is a therapist even though she was not hired to be there? also why would you STILL NOT take your niece off campus even after THREE GIRLS from her clique there have been murdered? like she suggested it but didn't even rush to get them both out of there even after they both received a postcard?

i feel like she was so full of self-importance and she was also so arrogant and maybe this is just me ranting at this point but i literally couldn't stand her.

the plot was quite predictable until the very very end. i do feel like i am victim to comparing this to other dark academia greats such as the secret history and even if we were villains, but in this book i felt like the mystery element was juvenile, it didn't seem very elaborate and i feel like the overall story felt like a dark-academia-mystery parody.

the postcards development was predictable and just like, not particularly imaginative in terms of how mysteries tend to be. the eric story was not believable and the henry story just wasn't fully fleshed out, it was implied that he was following her the whole time and everything but then he just shows up and tries to k*ll himself in front of her then gets taken to a psychiatric hospital and that's the end of that in like, not even three pages?

also the pinecone plot hole? why any time mariana was bringing up all her evidence against fosca did she just like, gloss over that? it seemed like a big development at the start, particularly when he offered her one is his room but then it was just... never mentioned again? isn't that like, incriminating evidence? even if we find out at the end it was planted it was literally just dropped from the story

i feel like overall the book just felt rushed despite being like 350 pages and it was just really in need of an editor to assess how believable the whole thing actually was. obviously it is a thriller so it is not going to be believable in a traditional sense but its so so important to be believable within the context. the ending felt so rushed like i had read about 300 pages and still felt like nothing had happened because the same developments just kept getting made over and over, like one girl dies they find all this fosca evidence then it happens over and over again with like, no actual plot progression? there was a major plot twist in like the last 20 pages but i just feel like it came out of nowhere and while i didn't predict the very end once i found out what was happening it was really easy to put the rs of the pieces together.

i enjoyed this book! i think its so important to distinguish between a book you enjoyed and a book you think is well written, this book was unfortunately only the former. i also study english lit so i think critical analysis is so important and i am bound to write a review like this. anyways i think other people could enjoy this and don't think it should be entirely dismissed as it did have its strong points, but overall, it was just a bit of a let down when michaelides' popularity and praise is considered

slightlyyyyy convoluted at times but otherwise showstopping. henkel’s prose is gorgeous