The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

Hello everyone.  I hope you are well.

I try and put something personal here that in some way relates to the book.  I know y'all just think I'm yammering on for the heck of it, which is true, but I'm also linking real life to the book of the moment.  I've talked about owning a haunted house, restoring houses, lots of housewife stuff (including endless dusting and chicken roasting, hopefully not really having anything to do with each other), my childhood and my often irritating family (I say teasingly to get a rise out of them). I've even told you way more than you ever wanted to know about my Brownie troop, that somehow was linked to a book. Today, I've got nothin'.  Yes, I know that is not how you spell nothing and incorrect grammar, I'm being folksy.

I recently read The Maidens by Alex Michaelides.  This is the author that wrote the very popular thriller The Silent Patient, which I very much enjoyed and even cajoled my husband into reading.  We were both surprised by the ending.  Reading the number of thrillers I do, I don't get surprised by that many so when it happens it's fantastic.

In the newest book, The Maidens, we are following Mariana, who has sadly recently lost her husband.  Marianna grew up in Greece, where her family was fairly well off. While on a Greek island with her husband on vacation, he goes missing.  She finds that he has drown and as the book opens she is trying to move on with her life but is also in mourning and deeply misses the man she loved so much.  To make matters more complicated she must travel to Cambridge University, where a girl has just been brutally murdered  and was a friend of her niece who is distraught.  Marianna takes it upon herself to help figure out who is the killer, to protect her niece from any future heartbreak and keep her safe.  Despite the police zeroing in on one subject, Marianna suspects a professor of Greek tragedies, Edward Fosca.  Not only does she suspect but she becomes adamant that he is the killer.  As readers, we see possible guilty people everywhere.  The author is astute at directing us to this person then the next, each with the real possibility of secretly being a monster.  

I thought I had this book figured out.  I eliminated everywhere the author was begging us to look for killers and I picked an improbable person and told hubby at page 207 I was a thriller reading genius and despite Alex Michaelides' best attempt, I had won...I knew who did it. Um...yeah...so much for my "I read so many thrillers I know all the authors tricks"...I'm a genius.... I was wrong.  Darn it. I thought I had it.  I really did.  My guilty person was good, really unexpected, explosive, but the author's was better.  The book was all things you expect in a thriller and obviously I enjoyed it despite being outwitted (my family would say that is so easily accomplished!)

Next time Mr. Michaelides, I'll beat you, now I'm determined.

The Silent Patient

Hello everyone.

I hope you are enjoying the winter weather and not too snow bound. Last time I was talking about the big storm that was coming and how my sister in upstate NY was due for something like eighteen inches. I admitted I was a little bit evil because I had a smirk on my face while writing about it. Hey, my family teases me about moving south when I complain about the humidity, fair is fair. Only I guess it isn't really. My sister slid while walking on the ice and really hurt her knees, like x-rays and Cortisone shots under both kneecaps hurt. Rrrrr, gives me the willies just thinking about it. Thankfully for her, she is much stronger than I am. Anyway, now I feel terrible, like a horrible rotten person. We were supposed to get a little ice and snow but had pouring rain and bad wind for a couple of hours, that was it. Just enough to make everything in our old house creak and groan, especially as the temperature dropped and the wood shrank. It was both creepy and annoying. I swore I heard dripping on the third floor, in the storage-rafters part. Of course I woke up hubby and sent him from bed to literally crawling all over to find no dripping. Phew, I would rather be wrong on that issue!

While all this "weather" was going on last weekend and we were hunkered down, I finished a book. I received an arc of The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides from Celadon Books. It is available for pre-order and is released February 5, 2019. You all have busy lives so I'll cut to the chase, it was great, I loved it. See ya later!

Okay, just kidding. Figures huh, spend 45 minutes yammering on about the weather and family issues and one sentence about the book. Seriously, this is my favorite, a thriller. A husband and wife seem like everything is fine, one day she shoots him in the face several times, killing him. Then she never speaks again. Instead of jail she is in an institution. The story is told as a new doctor arrives and is very interested in this silent patient's case and is determined to help her. Now you mystery and thriller readers will agree that when you read a lot of these types of books you think you can beat the author, figure out the "who dun it" or the big twist. Sometimes we get it right, which is fine if you enjoy the story. Sometimes, however, the author shocks you and you, as the reader, are wrong. This story has an enormous twist, HUGE, as I am ashamed and delighted to tell you I didn't see it coming. I've been trying to get hubby to read it. I'm wondering if I missed signs, was this twist obvious? But I keep telling myself that I have read so many thrillers I would have seen it coming. Nope, boys and girls, you can cross the butler off your list in this one, he definitely didn't do it.  You've got to love when a book can make you gasp out loud and that is what this one did.

One more thing, I hate medical stuff so the title had me a little leery, but rest assured that is not an issue here at all. Also, know that this book is nicely paced and certainly keeps you turning pages before and after the "gasp". Get ready for February 5th, see if you figure it out!