I was so looking forward to enjoying this book, but now the high rating just confuses me - I found this book not engaging and the writing to be unnecessarily superfluous. If you want a book that has a similar vibe, incorporates Greek mythology, and is academic but...better than this one, please just read The Secret History by Donna Tartt. It does everything this one attempts to do, except it actually succeeds in its execution.

The first couple of chapters absolutely hooked me in, but then it soon became clear that this would become a slog to get through. It's a quick read with short chapters (1-5 pages at the most), but damn did nothing really happen. The writing tries and fails to be mysterious and pretentious, and ends up just telling us what's happening, often in repetitive and unnecessary sentences. At times, I felt as though the writer was holding my hand, telling me what to think, as if I can't infer things myself. There are so many one sentence paragraphs that are meant to emphasize a point, but ended up just taking me out of the story. I think I would've felt the same emotional impact if those floating sentences had been tacked onto the end of the paragraph before them, so that they could be read organically. Instead, it was like a big sign saying "Here!! This is what you should be getting out of this chapter!!"

It's also one of those books where it's pretty obvious that a man is writing the female characters. Not that it can't be done correctly, but the way women were treated in this novel infuriated me. Elif is treated horribly by most of them, Stephanie is constantly undermined despite being correct, and workers imply that Alicia - silent at this point - is trying to seduce Theo, despite there being like no evidence for this?? I never picked up on anything remotely romantic between the two of them, and I didn't like that as a subplot point. Just, all of these workers in the Grove need to be fired, seriously.

This book also reminded me a lot of Verity by Colleen Hoover (find my review here). Similarities: the main character is not engaging, I nearly forgot their name, the patients are treated in very unprofessional ways, and despite them literally not being special at all, they are somehow treated as the most special person ever. How did Theo come into the Grove, immediately get assigned to their highest profile patient, and then allowed this much control? There wasn't enough depth in The Silent Patient nor Verity to justify any motivations, so it ended up just feeling convenient for the plot. And one of the biggest similarities was a letter at the end explaining everything. Listen...I get that telling the story through letters/diary entries is a cool idea, but it just feels like a cop out. I read this whole novel, and only now in the last 10 pages you're going to explain everything - but not let me see how it's explained in the moment?

I do like how the twist itself was executed.

Spoiler

It crept on slowly, until finally it was clear that I had been reading in two separate timelines.

I thought that was a good touch that I wasn't expecting, and you don't really know what's happening until the end.

Overall, I just did not like this book. It was quick enough to read all the way through, but if this is the author's bestwork...then I'm just gonna have to sit this one out.

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2/7/24:

Full RTC but oh my GOD I’m finally done with this.

If this is this author’s better books…I can’t imagine what the other ones are like because this one was not enjoyable.