The Patient

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She tells us she is very observant, that she has to be as a doctor, but she doesn’t seem to notice much of anything. It was a page turner that I read really fast which is good since I’m busy and don’t have tons of time to read. At 31, she’s been raised to keep magic secret; her sole contact with other witches is a small group she sees every three months, and she can't even text with them in between, as the group's leader thinks having too much magic in one place will draw unwanted attention. A long-time patient appears to be following her every move, and her daughter Lizzie is hiding a secret. He is haunted by memories of them and increasingly by questions of how the victims of the Holocaust resigned themselves to their fate.

The author never once tries to lead you astray with erroneous clues in an attempt to distract you from an obvious conclusion. I found this book mildly entertaining, and I think there’s lots of people who will enjoy reading it, especially if you love smartly laid out plots. Most of the scenes with the two of them together are focused on what Rachel is thinking and feeling as opposed to learning anything new about Luc. I must confess now itself that if I was not a Doctor and I didn't know how the healthcare system works, I would also have given this book four or five stars. In other words, each time there was a traumatic event in her life an alter would be “born” and that’s how they all came to be …But then I thought Theo was the main character (or the host).

Alone in captivity, Alan excavates his own past through memories of his old therapist, Charlie, and grapples with waves of his own repressed troubles -- the recent death of his wife, Beth, and the painful estrangement from his religious son, Ezra. Both Rachel’s daughter and her husband treated her very disrespectful so that cultivated a lot of sympathy for her. With a title like The Patient, I did not need to read the synopsis to know that this would be a book for me. The plot itself very much drags and nothing really properly happens until the very last quarter of the book.

The world Mandanna has created is exceedingly cozy and heartfelt, full of people bursting with love who have trouble expressing it due to trauma in their pasts. When sexy architect Luc presents as a new emergency patient one evening, she is drawn to him, and helpless to stop herself falling into an affair when they meet again some months later. From the three magical girls to the elderly gay caretakers to the hot, young Irish librarian, each resident of Nowhere House is a lovingly crafted outcast reaching for family.I’ve had this nagging question since reading this book that I can’t seem to come to a conclusion about: Why would Alicia give Theo her journal? This whole mythology of us that I had built up […] now collapsed in seconds—like a house of cards in a gust of wind. There’s a lot of foreshadowing phrases to end chapters before this point but the first three quarters are mainly just about an unlikeable woman’s infatuation with a neighbour and their love affair.

Honestly, if you don’t mind thrillers that are sort of imperfect (like you know they could be better) and are able to just enjoy the things that they do well, I think you might enjoy the Silent Patient. We also have the “ jolly Caribbean dinner ladies” (who, surprise surprise, are only mentioned once). Maybe it’s hinting that now that he’s caught, he’ll be able to get the psychiatric help he needs as well? Just because The Silent Patient has a "twist" that doesn't mean it should be labelled as being a psychological thriller. His adored wife Beth (Laura Niemi) – a formidable woman and cantor in their synagogue – recently died of cancer and they were both estranged from their son Ezra (Andrew Leeds) because of his conversion to orthodox Judaism.She was shortlisted for the Janklow and Nesbitt award and the Lucy Cavendish fiction prize for Daughter, her first novel. Many thanks to Netgalley and HarperCollins UK, Harper Fiction for the much appreciated arc which I reviewed voluntarily and honestly.