Review ~ The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

✨ Happy Publication Day ✨

Orion
7 February 2019

My thanks to the publishers and also to PoppyStimpson for my copy of this book

Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.

Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.

Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him...

My thoughts..

There's been such an excited buzz around this book for the last few months that I was almost afraid to read it in case it didn't live up to expectations but from the moment I started The Silent Patient and came into contact with both Alicia Berenson, and her psychotherapist, Theo Fenton, I knew that I was reading something that was a little bit special.

There's a distinct creepiness to the story, and in light of Alicia's incarceration following her husband's death, for which she is held responsible, her silence is made all the more eloquent by her refusal to communicate on any level. Theo Fenton, takes employment at the secure psychiatric unit where Alicia is being held, and with a profound sense of bravado, Theo attempts to unravel the reasons for the silence of the silent patient. And, as we discover, over the length of the novel, there are so many valid reasons for Alicia's silence but the game is on to find out just who is telling the truth, as once the truth is out there, there is never going to be any way back. 

For me, the novel works well because it's a cleverly layered dissection of a life which has been traumatised and shows just what happens when the brain tries to protect itself from catastrophic loss. And yet the story is also about so much more than a psychiatric analysis, it's about love, betrayal and obsession on a grand scale, and it's about those secrets and lies which are so huge they threaten to overwhelm everything.

There's so much about The Silent Patient which is better left unsaid, as that way the denouement will be every bit as shocking to you as it was for me. I usually have a good idea of where a thriller is heading, but I really didn't anticipate the ending, which blew me away. Some  books leave you feeling a little bit empty when they finish, but not so with this one which was absolutely unputdownable and which had me completely hooked from first page to last.

About the Author

Alex Michaelides was born in Cyrprus in 1977. He wrote the film The Devil You Know and co-wrote The Brits are Coming. The Silent Patient is his first novel which he was inspired to write after doing a post-graduate course in psychotherapy and working part tine in a secure psychiatric unit for two years. The film of The  Silent patient is being developed by Brad Pitt's Plan B company.

Twitter @ AlexMichaelides #TheSilentPatient #BreakTheSilence


@OrionBooks

Blog Tour ~ Things Bright and Beautiful by Anbara Salam

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to host today's stop on the Things Bright and Beautiful Blog Tour

Fig Tree
5 April 2018

My thanks to the publishers for the invitation to be part of this blog tour and also for my copy of the book

What's it all about..

Bea Hanlon has moved to a remote island in the Pacific with her husband Max, a devout missionary. The island is a place beyond the reaches of even her most fitful imaginings. 

It’s not just the rats and the hordes of mosquitos and the weevils in the powdered milk. Past the confines of their stuffy little house, amidst the damp and the sweltering heat, are the stirrings of much darker forces. Rumours are spreading of devil-chasers, who roam the island on the hunt for evil spirits. Bea gradually adapts to this strange new life until the previous missionary emerges unexpectedly from the jungle, and the island suddenly starts to turn against them all. Before long, trapped in the growing fever of her husband’s insanity, Bea finds herself fighting for her freedom, and for her life.

My thoughts about it...

Things Bright and Beautiful is set in the New Hebrides on a remote island in the South Pacific, where the missionary, Max Hanlon and his wife, Bea set about trying to convert the islanders to Christianity. That the islanders have their own customs and taboos is very obvious from the start and in trying to become accustomed to island life, both Max and Bea experience their own very different problems. 

The claustrophobic atmosphere of the island, and the oppressive nature of living in a place where the very air you breathe teems with verminous life, sets the scene for this unusual story, which looks at the power of superstition and the irresistible lure of insanity. 

Although the story is set in the 1950s, there is a timeless quality about it which, regardless of time frame, focuses the attention on the here and now. Max and Bea do their very best to settle into island life but it becomes obvious from the start that these two are very different people and the marital discord in their relationship isn’t going to be resolved easily. The destructive nature of living in such a menacing place and the rat-infested creatures that hide away in dark corners only serves to emphasise the terrifying consequences of living in such an enclosed atmosphere and further isolates, Max and Bea, from the community at large.

The islanders themselves have their own very distinct personalities, their way of life intrigued me and I especially enjoyed reading about Aru and Santra, and of the effect that these two very different people had on both Max and Bea. 

Things Bright and Beautiful is a highly original story with a complexity of narrative which is as fascinating as it is terrifying to behold.

About the Author

Anbara Salam is half-Palestinian and half-Scottish, and grew up in London. She has a PhD in Theology, specialising in apocalyptic death cults, and is now a research associate at the University of Oxford. She spent six months living on a small South Pacific island, and her experiences there served as the inspiration for this debut novel.

Website

Twitter @anbara_salam #BrightandBeautiful

@Fig_Tree_Books

Amazon UK

Blog Tour ~ The Fear by C L Taylor

Avon
22 March 2018

My thanks to the publishers for my copy of the book and for the invitation to be part of this blog tour

What's it all about...

Sometimes your first love won’t let you go…

Lou Wandsworth is used to being headline news as, aged fourteen, she ran away to France with her 31-year-old teacher, Mike Hughes.

Now 32, Lou’s life is in tatters – and she resolves to return home to confront Mike for the damage he has caused. But she soon finds that Mike is unchanged, and is focussing his attention on 13-year-old Chloe Meadows.

Determined to make sure that history doesn’t repeat itself, Lou decides to take matters into her own hands. But Mike is a predator of the worst kind, and as she tries to bring him to justice, it’s clear that Lou could once again become his prey…

My thoughts...

Even from the very start of The Fear, there's a real sense of unease, and that disturbing sense of creepiness never goes away. 

At the start of the novel, we meet Lou Wandsworth, a troubled young woman who has had more than her fair share of misery. The horrors of what happened to her as a fourteen year old schoolgirl have never gone away, and time has done little to lessen the psychological impact of being groomed and then abducted by a man old enough to be her father. After years of living in London, Louise, now thirty two years old, returns to live back in her home town, only to discover that something similar is happening again, and that her abductor is up to his old tricks.

Right from the start of this clever psychological thriller I was drawn into the complex and dangerous world of control, deceit and deception, and so compelling is the writing that there were times when I simply couldn’t read the words fast enough, and as the sentences tumbled and twirled in my head, so I wanted to jump into the pages so that I could urge the story go faster and faster. Irrespective of my urging, the story moves along at a cracking pace anyway, and it is testament to the skill of the author that when events start to veer off in a very disturbing direction, so my heartbeat shot up another notch on my emotional, Richter scale.

As with anything that this talented author writes, the plot is superbly controlled, and there are so many twists and turns that many times I thought that I had the measure it, only to have the story swerve in an entirely unexpected direction. The different viewpoints from the major characters, add both complexity and understanding, and even though some of the accounts, particularly that of fourteen year old Lou are distressing to read, you can’t fail to become totally invested in the overall outcome of the story. Layers upon fascinating layers of fine writing build and build until you really can't imagine where the story will take you next.

The unexpectedness of it all, the overlying creepiness and the absolute manipulation of a cleverly orchestrated plot turn The Fear into one of those books that you simply can’t put down.

Be prepared to read until your eyes ache.

About the Author

C.L. Taylor lives in Bristol with her partner and son. She started writing fiction in 2005 and her short stories have won several awards and have been published by a variety of literary and women’s magazines.

In 2014, The Bookseller named C.L. Taylor as one of the year’s Bestselling Adult Fiction Debut Authors for The Accident. The Lie and The Missing were Sunday Times top 10 bestsellers in paperback, and both books hit the #1 spot on the Kindle bestseller list. She has sold 1 million books to date.

Website

Twitter @callytaylor #The Fear @AvonBooks

Facebook

Amazon UK

Review ~ The Ice Beneath Her by Camilla Grebe

Published by Bonnier Zaffre
April 2017
386 pages

Translated by Elizabeth Clark Wessel

My thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book

What's it all about...

The Ice Beneath Her is a deeply disturbing psychological thriller about love, betrayal and obsession. Fast paced and peopled with compelling characters, it hurtles towards an unforgettable ending with a terrible final twist.

Here's what I thought about it...

This is a hugely compelling and fast paced thriller which starts off with a horrific killing. The search for the perpetrator of this despicable act leads the police investigative team to question all those who are associated with the business tycoon, Jasper Orr, CEO of the retail giant, Clothes&More.

From the very beginning, this character driven novel looks at the dynamics between love and obsession and throws the individual stories of three very different narrators into the melting pot. There is much to take in, both in terms of plot and malice,  and the psychological suspense keeps you guessing throughout the whole of the story. 

I was engrossed in The Ice Beneath Her from the very start of the novel. The opening chapter is particularly compelling and sets the scene for the rest of the novel, which moves along at a cracking pace. The writing is strong throughout and even though this edition is the translated version, nothing at all is lost in translation.


About the Author


Camilla Grebe is a Swedish writer. The Ice Beneath Her is her first novel as a solo author.

~***~

Review ~ Monster 1983 written by Ivar Leon Menger (Audio)

New from Audible

October 2016

Callum Blue (Dead Like Me), Anastasia Griffith (Damages) and Marc Warren (Hustle) star in new audio-drama from Germany's master of thriller.

Anastasia Griffith (Deputy Taylor Dunford)

Callum Blue (Sheriff Cody)

Marc Warren (Deputy Landers)

Drawing influences from Poltergeist, Stand By Me and E.T. and other Spielberg classics, the story unfolds in the small coastal town of Harmony Bay, Oregon. Still reeling from a sudden and profound family tragedy, Sheriff Cody uproots his elder son Michael, and younger daughter Amy, from the chaos of Orlando to begin a new, more relaxed life in the Beaver State. Soon after their arrival however, this new-found tranquillity is disturbed by a succession of brutal but mysterious deaths. As the plot twists and turns its way through small-town secrecy, psychiatry wards and the supernatural, Cody comes under increasing pressure to solve each new case whilst keeping his family safe from harm.

©2015 Ivar Leon Menger (P)2016 Audible, Ltd

My thoughts..


When I first opened the Audible file of Monster 1983 and saw that there were 190 chapters I must admit that my heart sank a little, but then I discovered that some of the chapters are very short and take only a few minutes. And to be honest, once the story begins, both the chapters and the hours fly by very quickly.

The story is creepy from the offset, the small coastal town of Harmony Bay comes alive with intrigue and as the new sheriff tries to investigate a series of macabre killings you can’t help but be drawn into the whole creepy scenario.

The fact that Monster 1983 is a dramatic production of several voices gives the story a noticeably theatrical feel and I found that each individual narrator brought something very different to the story. I really enjoyed the distinctive and individual nature of their interpretation.

In many ways Monster 1983 is a chilling but entirely plausible version of small town America. Harmony Bay is a place of secrets. It is a town where petty grievances are allowed to fester and where control and domination go hand in hand. The chilling nature of the supernatural content grows gradually but with real intent until the malice and mayhem which is evoked becomes frighteningly realistic.

Monster 1983 is definitely one of those productions that you want to listen to with all the lights on and, preferably, not too late at night!

Best Read With ...A caffeine laced-Americano and generous slices of freshly caught tuna..

Audio Download Details

Listening Length: 7 hours and 18 minutes

Program Type: Audiobook

Version: Original recording

Publisher: Audible Studios

Audible.co.uk Release Date: 12 Oct. 2016

My thanks to Audible and Leanne at Midas pr for the opportunity to listen to Monster 1983

~***~