I love Alex Michaelides’ writing — there’s just something about it. This one wasn’t as good as The Silent Patient, but still really really entertaining. The MC had a few WTF moments — I kept wondering why no one was trying to rein her in. The twist here was so unexpected, and I love that Michaelides’ thrillers aren’t tropey or cheesy, which I feel is often the case with thrillers. We’ll get a corny villain or deranged lunatic, but the characters here were all layered and nuanced.

The audiobooks of both his books are really good, too! Excellent narration.

3.5⭐️ - spoilers ahead

…….

I enjoyed this one, but the greek mythology aspect was a bit lost on me. It's interesting that the author has again chosen to make the protagonist a therapist. The group therapy theme felt a bit forced, and I'm not really sure how the inclusion of Henry, the unwell patient, really contributed to the story beyond painting Mariana as paranoid. He was just another red herring for me and I felt his storyline was lacking.

There seemed to be a lot of side characters who were thrown in as red herrings. This coupled with them all having similar backgrounds felt like lazy characterization, as it was a quick and easy way to create ambiguity in the "whodunit" storyline.

I had a feeling midway that Zoe had something to do with the murders, but wasn’t expecting Sebastian to have been in on it. I was sort of half expecting his death to have been faked and for him to pop up somehow, but I wasn't expecting that icky father-figure/daughter romance. That was really gross. To me, it came across as lazy that Zoe acted pretty normal through 90% of the book and suddenly flipped a switch. Not my favorite trope. Sure, she likely had all the pain and planning going on underneath, but it was surprising that the woman who raised her, a therapist, couldn't see through her if she was indeed faking her grief. The idea that all those murders among the Maidens were just to cover up Mariana's murder was outlandish. It seemed silly for Zoe to ruin her life and go through all that effort to kill Mariana when Sebastian was already dead.

The letters/journal entries were confusing but kept me guessing as to who was writing them. However, like I said, giving all the male characters similar troubled backgrounds felt like lazy characterization. There could have been better ways to make others (Fred, Fosca, Henry, Julian, etc) appear guilty. The letters being written by Sebastian came out of left field for me. Unless I missed it, there was no mention of his childhood or abuse from his parents, making the other characters' backgrounds feel entirely pointless. But perhaps that’s the point, otherwise we would have suspected him.

I wish there had been more resolution to the Fred storyline. Did his premonition of proposing to Mariana and her saying yes come true? I want to believe it did. The inclusion of the Silent Patient characters was cheeky. It’s interesting that Mariana saw some sort of darkness in Theo, considering how things play out in that book. I almost wish that thought was explored a little further in her head. It felt like he was really forced in as a character, but then kind of glossed over. Why was it necessary to have two forensic psychologists--Julian AND Theo? The crossover with The Silent Patient would have been more believable if Theo was more of a main character as opposed to just a cameo.

The book was good, but it felt contrived and scattered. The characters were very one-dimensional and I think their arcs were weak.