The Maidens

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She was on her knees, on the floor, surrounded by boxes. She was making yet another halfhearted attempt to sort through Sebastian’s belongings. He has an alibi, but not one that Mariana considers to be reliable; his secret society of young women students, known as The Maidens, could easily lie to protect him. Mariana understood this. She knew she should relinquish Sebastian, but she couldn’t—because she was still in love with him. She was in love even though he was gone forever, gone behind the veil—“behind the veil, behind the veil”—where was that from? Tennyson, probably. I have a gift for that sort of thing, you know—runs in my family—foresight, premonitions. I see things others do not."

Ten years ago, on the fictional island of Inisrun, a young woman was murdered but nobody was ever charged with the crime. A decade later, two documentary film-makers have arrived to interview residents and try to uncover the truth. Exploring themes of class, wealth, desire and coercive control, O’Neill’s psychological thriller is a meticulously researched and emotionally astute exploration into the far-reaching impact of domestic abuse. That’s how it felt. Since Sebastian died, Mariana no longer saw the world in color. Life was muted and gray and far away, behind a veil—behind a mist of sadness. I want to thank the publisher, Macmillan for the ARC of The Maidens by Alex Michaelides in exchange for an honest review. From the #1 global bestselling author of The Silent Patient comes a spellbinding tale of psychological suspense, weaving together Greek mythology, murder, and obsession…I liked Mariana, who was dealing with her own grief behind the scenes. What I didn't like was the direction the book took in the later chapters. For one thing, I was fairly convinced early on that I had figured out the culprit, and I was right. But more than this, what came out as the reason behind everything was so baffling and out of left field that I was disappointed by it. I also just really dislike when a character who acted completely normal for the whole book suddenly pulls out a knife and turns "here's Johnny!" on us. it's just...look, i hate being that guy, but it's just not very good. i'm pretty reasonable about managing my expectations when it comes to summertime psych-suspense thrillery books; they don't gotta be art, they just need to hold my interest and maybe throw a surprise or two my way. As you would expect from a thriller, there were a ton of red herrings and loads of misdirection in this novel - as well as the potential for two unreliable narrators. The story is told from two alternate points of view: Mariana, in the third person, and a mysterious psychopath who regales us with harrowing recollections of his abusive childhood. (That poor dog, and what it revealed about his family dynamic! That was a jaw dropper.) because here's what's not in his personal cache of 'stuff he knows about:' creating believable characters.

After being introduced to our sad, grieving heroine Mariana Andros, we observed one of her group session and met with her obsessed passion Henry who might be watching and stalking her day and night. Then we learn her tragic past: She lost everyone in her life: including her parents, sister and her beloved husband which makes her think she’s punished by the gods of wrath! The first instance is when he is 12, after his “dream” about killing his mother (which I think was not a dream at all, but it’s something that actually happened that he is unable to face). The second instance is right before he writes the letter (which I’m guessing is when killed Mariana’s father).where i lost my mind was when mariana is led to the location of the murder weapon by a non-police person, and it doesn't even occur to her to object when they remove it from its hidey-hole. i know she's not a professional with a responsibility to preserve evidence, but oh we just allow people to grab murder weapons now, do we? mariana? COME ON, MARIANA! Let’s talk about the ending. The Sebastian thing definitely felt a little out-of-the-blue. The clues that point towards the reveal at the end are somewhat…sparse and pretty vague. (I’ve listed all the ones I could identify in the Explanation section at the end. If there’s something I’m missing, please let me know!) They say you always chase your first high. And that's the way it is with me and Alex Michaelides. His first book The Silent Patient is one of my all-time favorites. I still remember the visceral experience of reading that book—the headiness of an unputdownable thriller, the gut punch of that reveal. It's seared into my memory.

Mariana Andros is a brilliant but troubled group therapist who becomes fixated on The Maidens when one member, a friend of Mariana’s niece Zoe, is found murdered in Cambridge.In her sessions, she always kept out of the group’s way as much as possible. She only intervened when communication broke down, or when it might be helpful to make an interpretation, or when something went wrong. When Mariana arrives at Zoe's college the next day, she is disturbed to discover that the charismatic Professor Edward Fosca has seduced the entire college. Wow: I thoroughly enjoyed the audiobook version of The Maidens, read by Louise Brealey and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith. Brealey's dramatic reading tone injected a mesmerizing sense of dread and suspense into the narrative, and Holdbrook-Smith's husky tone did an excellent job of creeping me out!

Elsie mentions Zoe’s rude/unkind attitude towards her, and Zoe responds rather callously when it’s brought to her attention. Zoe implies that Elsie is nuts, but given how the book ends, it serves as another clue that Zoe may not be as nice as Mariana thinks. And that’s where she would have stayed, if Zoe hadn’t phoned her from Cambridge, that night in October. Fosca dropped his cigarette onto the path. He ground it into the earth with his foot. "You're determined to dislike me. I don't know why." There was precious little love in her childhood. She had an elder sister, but they weren’t close. Elisa was seven years her senior, with no interest in her shy younger sibling. And so Mariana would spend the long summer months alone, playing by herself in the garden under the stern eye of the housekeeper. No wonder, then, she grew up a little isolated, and uneasy around other people.The setting of Cambridge was extremely vivid. It starts as this beautiful, pristine and exclusive place. Then over the course of the narrative, a dark underbelly becomes exposed as Mariana digs further into the mystery.