I finished The Silent Patient which was on my TBR for so long and honestly I feel it’s not bad but too hyped by masses.
Theo felt like a great character with his troubled childhood until he was not anymore, at some parts I felt narration was too wanna be deep from Theo’s POV. Narration didn’t mention the timeline for Kathy and Theo’s angle and I’m glad(slightly) for that since I could see from miles away what’s happening there, so it was more about how it unfolds because you already could sense what’s behind the unfolding. It was a back n forth ride for me getting in and falling back for whole book.
The last scene again felt wanna be deep, for me personally. I didn’t hate it but it was just okay. It gave me similar feels after reading “The Girl on Train”. Not bad. But not that “must” of a read.
The unreliable narrator kind of became its own genre briefly - Gone Girl, Girl on a Train, Silent Patient - I hated all of them. As a reader it is super easy for the writer to just flat out lie to me, and then create this big shocking twist that everything I’ve been reading is a lie. It strikes me as lazy writing.
That said, the Silent Patient is even worse than that, because the lies were to poorly constructed that I picked the murder on page 9. Literally. As I was just starting the book, I said to my wife “if the killer turns out to be so and so, this book will suck.” And suck it did.
The lying somehow creates an illusion that the twist is there. Never have I thought of it in this way, you’re right. This made me doubt if this genre is actually for me.