“…We often mistake love for fireworks – for drama and dysfunction. But real love is very quiet, very still. It’s boring, if seen from the perspective of high drama. Love is deep and calm – and constant.”

★★★★

Celadon Books | 2019

Filed Under: You know how you want to kill your spouse sometimes?

There was a lot of hype surrounding this book’s release, and for the most part, it was deserved. I mean, it didn’t totally blow my bits off and it didn’t necessarily reinvent the wheel when it comes to thrillers with unreliable narrators, but, for a debut novel it’s pretty impressive and I had a fun time reading it, so one eggplant up for Mr. Michaelides.

Alicia, an artist, killed her photographer husband. Shot him in the head repeatedly while he was tied to a chair, as a matter of fact. She’s been silent every day since. Locked up in a psych hospital, she hasn’t uttered a word in nearly seven years.

Theo Faber is a psychotherapist who is overly confident that he can crack Alicia’s proverbial silent nut. He takes a job in the hospital where she is remanded and starts his mostly one-sided conversations with Alicia in the hopes of getting her to finally explain why she did what she did to her husband, who by all accounts, she was madly in love with.

I don’t know about all of you, but while I jokingly say I’d like to murder the shit out of my husband sometimes, I don’t really mean it. Obviously, when he clips his toenails in bed and I say that I could really, truly smother him with a pillow until all the life drains from his body over it, I’m just speaking metaphorically.

Anyway!