The Maidens - Alex Michaelides

[normal vortex]

Maybe he lied

Omg also….

1000!

[tired flame]

with that many messages you'd think this is an amazing book

[fluid relic]

||FR or mariana and the fans would be more suitable than building the maidens just to forget and not utilize them at all ||

i think ||fred/henry being the killer and had been stalking the maidens would make more sense and interesting twist than having sebastian, somehow, as the mastermind.||

he said he did but we have no proof

[dim sinew]

maybe my personal goal should be set to 2000

[restive aspen]

wowwww i think google's question search suggestions spoiled this book for me and all i searched for was "maidens sticker" not even "the maidens"

[restive aspen]

p2c10 || mmmm is he basing this whole eleusian myth thing on the not-widely-accepted work of brian muraresku in the immortality key? and putting it in the mouth of a cambridge english professor? this is weird. ||

[minor path]

there's a running theme through this of ||Alex either at best misinterpreting/misunerstanding the works/ideas he references or at worst misrepresenting them which is genuinely insane to me considering he has a solid uni degree. one of the first nd most continuous things they bash into you is to not fucking do that||

[prisma wasp]

Part 1, Chapter 19
||"(...) Clarissa had been touch, and perhaps intrigued, by this lonely motherless Greek girl"
||

||peak prose right there||

[restive aspen]

this guy is a master of language butchery. truly an artist to behold

[prisma wasp]

||100% Michaelides thought this was so good||

[restive aspen]

i am really struggling to make progress in this book lol

it isnt unreadable, but hard to enjoy

[fluid relic]

its very frustrating

[prisma wasp]

Finished part 1
||Here we go, Michaelides gives us the random ass detetive character again. I love how Clarissa implied that Mariana had to take things into her own hands because the police was not going to be useful. Mariana has to be the savior, she's better than the police, detectives... Perhaps even god, that blessed this lonely motherless Greek girl ||

[minor path]

||petition to only refer to Mariana as the "lonely motherless Greek girl" from now on ||

[prisma wasp]

Part 2, chapter 6
||Tara was incredibly beautiful, luminous so. She had long red hair, and exquisite features - the face of a Greek goddess.

I can't with this descriptions ||

[prisma wasp]

End of part 2
||I feel like all the locations are so mixed up, I am having such a hard time placing characters in different locations, I can't make a mind map of what this freaking school looks like.
Also, so who is Fred? I thought he was also a student...? But he just said that he have friends in the school that talk about the professors, I am confused now||

[prisma wasp]

Part 3, Chapter 7
||I just love how everyone doesn't bat an eye at Mariana saying she is working with the police or with the dean. People just blindly accept that and let her go into crime scenes, private rooms, etc. What a wonderful world they live in, a serial killer on the loose and no one is even a tiny bit careful ||

[stuck fractal]

The delulu world of Michaelides

[prisma wasp]

Part 3, Chapter 11
||'You've gone to a lot of trouble, Professor.'
*'I've asked you before - please call me Edward.' *
I don't recall ever reading this conversation, maybe I was distracted but I can't remember him asking that beforr ||

Also,
||I just remembered he randomly kissed her before lmao I love how she still agrees to have diner with him after truly believing he's a serial killer and basically assaulting her. Mariana is truly a lonely motherless Greek girl, super quirky and fearless ||

||Or plain dumb... ||

[restive aspen]

okaaay gonna try and push through this today lol

maybe i can finish

[prisma wasp]

I am determined to do the same

Part 3, chapter 12
||She was already feeling the effects of the champagne on an empty stomach; she should stop drinking, or she'd soon be drunk. But she didn't stop.
Mate, you are plain dumb lmao||

[foggy cape]

|| a psychotherapist who assumed a dude is a serial killer, who has assaulted her, and this therapist goes to the dudes house to get wasted. Sure!

It also felt like Mariana is drunk every day. There are so many drinks mentioned when she eats anything. ||

[prisma wasp]

||And it is never a beer or something, always champaign and cocktails, expensive stuff ||

[restive aspen]

p2c17 || please tell me this man did not just call her "fresh off the boat" dude. ||

|| "Female minds"||

[restive aspen]

im pretty sure it's what michaelides would do || if he was mariana. so definitely plain dumb ||

[prisma wasp]

I am not finishing today

[restive aspen]

all of the logic in this book can be summed up by the old adage "when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail."

[fluid relic]

||FR she thinks he's a killer but still agrees to be with him?? twice? with no one around?? are you tempted to be the next victim or what? have u no self preservation??!!!! ||

[fluid relic]

||so he wants to be taken out on dates....||

[restive aspen]

p4c8 || these two therapists together sound more like fortune tellers than therapists. ||

[restive aspen]

p4c10 || look i get not wanting to date fred because of the age gap, but calling him a boy is just insulting ||

[restive aspen]

p4c12 || why would zoe ask to not be there... im confused because i thought she was one of the group, did she say otherwise?||

p4c14 || well now im more confused but ok. ||

p4c16 || jeeze this guy is a bit full on... ||

p4c17 || ahh it is a weird reversal of what i expected with the creepy porter saving her from the stalker. this is so random and so quickly wrapped up. is it even imporant to the story? ||

[restive aspen]

p4c21 || what kind of nonsensical interrogation is this where you have 4 people in a room giving a statement to a police chief and making allegations in front of the suspected perpetrator? ||

[restive aspen]

mmm yep i think google definitely spoiled the book for me.

[tired flame]

what was the spoiler?

[restive aspen]

whole book spoiler || i searched "maidens sticker" and under that stupid "People also ask" suggestion box, there was only one question and it was "Was Zoe the murderer in The Maidens?" from that point on i knew it was obviously zoe from the beginning manipulating everything, just didnt know why.||

[tired flame]

[restive aspen]

anyway, i finished and yeah... there was not much pleasant about that experience. lol

[tired flame]

congrats

[tired flame]

ending spoilers || i mean even if i got spoiled that zoe was the killer, I don't think it would have made that much difference for me. It still barely made any sense when I found out at the end LOL ||

[restive aspen]

||i mean, i get what the plot attempted to do... i dont think it was done well at all. and on top of that, the scenario just seems incredibly fucked up and unlikely. the professor should have been very suspicious after tara's death and obviously known someone was attempting to frame him after the 2nd murder but the whole time he pretended it had nothing to do with him. logically made zero sense from any outsider perspective||

[tired flame]

totally agree!

|| im guessing it had something to do with fosca having secrets of his own to hide involving the maidens. But he was terrible at proving his innocence honestly, it kinda felt like he was just playing along with Mariana's suspicions ||

|| im glad he got arrested either way he was mentioned so much in the book that it annoyed me ||

|| and i think he was smiling after serena's death and mariana was questioning him? like read the room omg ||

[restive aspen]

|| yeah but that's what im saying. he's sleeping with the entire group, one of them dies, he's clearly going to have a guilty conscience about it, and as soon as mariana came forward with an accusation he should have been like, holup, wait a minute, why am i suddenly under direct threat and attack from this supposedly random girl's murder? ||

[tired flame]

true it's not explained very well

[restive aspen]

for being a book about smart people everyone was incredibly stupid

[foggy cape]

Yesssss! There was || this thing Mariana said that Fosca was "sharp as a knive" and I just thought "what? Who? Him? He is as sharp as a 30 year old butter knife made of plastic" ||

[dim pike]

joe mama

[foggy cape]

What:D

[restive aspen]

uhh final review i guess: || the writing was so clunky from page 1. in retrospect it was the most heavy-handed attempt at manipulation possible by going all-in and just saying "this is the killer" and leaving you with no option but to think "obviously that isnt the killer." all of the background on the characters, idk, just didnt care that much about them. the repeated glorification of sebastian became an obvious misdirect when we started getting into mariana's therapy sessions about her father. the sheer amount of lame tropes used was overwhelming. so, many, commas, everywhere.

the characters did not feel fleshed out. how do you even manipulate a 15 year old into becoming a psychopathic serial killer? she would have had so many other psychopathic traits that mariana had to gloss over. the group therapy session with the maidens was the most cringe moment of the entire story and even though it had been spoilered for me at that point, i was so confused by the writing that i genuinely had thought it was obvious to mariana that zoe was part of the maidens already.

idk man. it was bad. || 1.5 stars

[restive aspen]

lol it's cuz you wrote Who?

[dim pike]

joe mama

[restive aspen]

oh, || and the sheer number of red herrings and misdirects, like... i just got bored with it after awhile. there's no suspense and fear to be had when you're trying to make everyone sound like the killer. ||

[foggy cape]

Ahhh I see

[tired flame]

even carl wants to give his take on the maidens classic carl

[restive aspen]

im gonna go through what other people had to say tomorrow just to see how others experienced it without spoilers

[minor path]

im finishing this shit today, i need this to be over and done with before i go actually insane i cannot have this on my conscience for much longer

[prisma wasp]

Part 4, Chapter 7
||LMAO OUR BOY THEO ||

[foggy cape]

^ || as someone who hasnt read any other book by Michaelides, this Cameo was just stupid. At the time of reading, it felt like another creepy man was introduced, and he was at thr same time too important to be a random side character, and not important enough to be the murderer.
It just seemed like badly done fan service. Just show a character from another book without it making sense that he is in there.. is so lazy. I have read better -verses (David Mitchells books come to mind) ||

[restive aspen]

yea this was very confusing || until i remembered the mentioning of a cameo from another book and i just had to assume ||

[minor path]

I've only been listening to this today for like not even 5 minutes nd I've already rolled my eyes like 10 times

part 2 somewhere: ||ok yeah I'm suspicious of Fred. I'm like 99.9% sure he had something to do with Tara's death and Mariana's husbands death||

probably later in part 2 ^^^

later in part 2 again, I think the same chapter:||ok it's definitely Fred, he pulled out some apples nd the next body was found on a farm. Alex michaelides I know you nd your shitty plot points. Fred also said he's queasy around blood nd all the stab wounds happened post mortem. there'd be significantly less blood from the stab wounds if a lot of the blood was already drained through the neck||

[minor path]

no I lie both of those are part 3 ignore me

end of part 3 ||fosca did NOT just say its xenophobia why Mariana thinks he could be the murderer. my brother in christ you have a weird borderline cult thing with your students, 2 of which were MURDERED in a way that's v much related to the thing you discuss WHY THE FUCK WOULD SHE NOT BE SUSPICIOUS OF YOU, ALIBI OR NOT THE GIRLS COULD LIE FOR YOU THERE ARE PEOPLE SCARED OF YOU YOU PSYCHO||

this book is making me genuinely angry

[raw linden]

https://tenor.com/view/let-the-hate-flow-through-you-gif-11207010703952945273

[minor path]

LMAOOOO

michaelides writing is genuinely so bad I wonder how he got anything published like no way this shit went through an editor and a publisher then got published

[raw linden]

I feel this in my bones

[minor path]

I've learnt if it blows up on tiktok its 9/10 times the worst written book you've ever read in your life, the fact Alex got a full hatrick of books to blow up on tiktok tells you all you need to about not only his writing skills but also the critical thinking skills of most of the people rating these books 5 stars

[minor path]

genuinely reading these makes me feel a lot better about my own writing skills

part 4: ||THEO NO FUCK OFF ARE YOU KIDDING YOU ARE NOT WHO I NEED TO DEAL WITH RIGHT NOW||

https://tenor.com/view/monstersinc-sully-mike-door-put-that-thing-back-gif-4553929

part 4 chap 7: ||MARIANA SO ITS YOUR FAULT THAT ASSHOLE WENT TO THE GROVE ARE YOU JOKING ME||

[minor path]

later in part 4 idk where: ||Fred is definitely the killer idc, he's writing a book, has a dead mother nd a bad dad, he's the guy whos been in the like interlude things idk what to call them with the psycho nd he keeps being described as like slipping into the darkness nd disappearing randomly which is how the murderer is disappearing||

chapter 17 part 4: ||I'm not saying mariana would deserve/be to blame if henry killed himself in front of her or hurt her with that knife.

HOWEVER.||

[stuck fractal]

However indeed

[minor path]

I also now agree that ||the copper is the only reasonable person in this entire book, like yeah mariana is unwell nd fuckin psychotic||

||she has no right to be doing what she's doing rn nd harassing professor fosca, like I think he's a nutjob too but there's 0 evidence||

[minor path]

if alex michaelides ever brings out a new book i genuinely dont think id be able to read it after this. like (tsp spoiler kind of) ||the shitty comments about bpd in tsp upset/pissed me off a lot|| but this book has arguably been worse for ||shitty mental health practices|| than tsp (somehow)

genuinely thought the bar was in hell with tsp but even with my expectations actually in hell, alex still managed to go under the bar

ive not finished it yet im right near the end though (i have maybe 20 mins left on 3x speed i think) nd this book has been so insanely triggering in like every single way possible its unreal. like it wasnt even really funny towards the end, just... upsetting nd genuinely annoying

like ||mariana's mistreatment of Henry nd his case is just. fucking horrific. using him as a psychological punching bag, keeping him in that group at all, not removing him from the group when he started to show signs of attachment to her, NOT FUCKING REPORTING IT WHEN HE WAS CLEARLY ABUSING HIS MEDS, NOT FUCKING REPORTING IT WHEN HE SELF HARMED ND SHOWED IT TO HER?????? HELLO????? NOT FUCKING REPORTING IT WHEN HE WAS LITERALLY STALKING HER???? like you shit in this bed love, now lie in it||

||as someone whos had a lot of fuckin issues with accessing mental health care in the UK despite being brutally honest about my issues, his whole case just... it really has fucked with me man icl. its gotten to me a lot. im not surprised he got to the point of going to kill himself in front of her. she even admitted at the start he was way too mentally ill for her group BUT STILL FUCKIN KEPT HIM THERE. MARIANA IT IS YOUR FAULT HE GOT TO THAT POINT||

i think what makes that so much worse is that ||alex definitely thought he cooked there. like shes meant to be a sympathetic. he wants us to see her as good at his job nd thats the fucking kicker because shes so evidentially a fuckin useless therapist||

ok im getting far too heated nd upset over this, im gonna listen to the last 20-30 mins ish later on when im not genuinely ready to put my head through a wall clearly im not in the best mental state to be dealing with michaelides bullshit rn

[restive aspen]

if he was trying to || portray mariana as competent he grossly failed. he went so far in the other direction that it's pretty ridiculous ||

[minor path]

knowing him nd he work im convinced he was ||she really justifies her actions as just "im an empath" LMAO||

[restive aspen]

it gets worse but i dont think you're there yet lol

[minor path]

castral youre scaring me how can this get worse

ok fuck my mental health im finishing this shit now

[prisma wasp]

I need to finish this today, specially now that I saw that ||our boy Theo is making a cameo lmao||

[prisma wasp]

Part 4, Chapter 8
||This is what is called in anime a filler. Absolutely useless and most people hate them what a pointless chapter, Michaelides reached the end of the book and thought it was too short, so he added this chapter to get a bigger page count, for sure.||

[prisma wasp]

Part 4, chapter 15
||My boy Fred has no business being there, does he? Probably he's the killer, somehow. And I am still trying to figure out what Henry has to do with all this, if anything lmao||

Part 4, Chapter 16
||Mariana needs to stop drinking mindlessly around all these people. There's a serial killer sharing halls with her and she is so carefree, I love it. Truly how a woman would feel in her place ||

[prisma wasp]

End of part 5
||Somehow I saw this miles away, of course Zoe loved Sebastian, why else would we be reading about him throughout the entire book... I am dying to know how this evolves lmao||

[minor path]

I thought that was funny too like ||you suspect this man has murdered 2 young women nd you're like "ykw I'm gonna go have dinner at this man's house AND drink ridiculous amounts, I have incredible self preservation instincts"||

[prisma wasp]

Wtf did I just read

Wtf is this climax? And ending?

I am out of words

[minor path]

now I really have to finish this ok I'm getting all cozy in bed nd finishing this before I start my next read

[prisma wasp]

How could this be worst than The Silent Patient

Acknowledgements
I wrote the majority of this book during the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020 omg Michaelides, I wish you would have just hybernate instead

[restive aspen]

see, when i read that part about covid, i knew he was a joe rogan fan because The Immortality Key blew up on Joe Rogan during the pandemic. it's wild that he based a book on that work. zero standards, and says a lot about him.

for those unfamiliar, the author of the immortality key did a bunch of independent research in a field that was not his specialty, couldn't get it published in any journal and released it as a nonfic book instead

then promoted the whole thing on joe rogan's podcast and went viral

all because || lol the ancient greeks were trippin balls on acid ||

[minor path]

I'm genuinely not surprised he's a Joe Rogan fan and based this book in that shit. like they're both in the field of ||"let's spred misinformation nd disguise blatant bullshit as facts"||

[minor path]

I procrastinated finishing this despite there just being 10 mins left nd castral you were right it somehow did get worse

done. ||I FUCKING GUESSED AT THE START THAT ZOE WAS THE KILLER LMFAOOOOOOOO I KNEW IT I KNEW IT||

||I FEEL LIKE A FUCKING GENIUS RN YOU DONT UNDERSTAND ALEX MICHAELIDES I KNOW YOURE NOT FUCKIN SLICK||

tbf ||I blamed Fred yes, but my first guess was Zoe so therefore I'm a genius nd Alex michaelides is predictable ||

||thank god fosca got fired that's the only part that I'm glad about||

[restive aspen]

and || mariana is such an amazing therapist because she lived with not one but TWO psychopaths ||

[prisma wasp]

||the explanation was just so bad tho... what was this masterplan? what did the Maidens dying had to do with anything lmao ||

[restive aspen]

|| the intention was to kill off a bunch of random girls and get mariana to "investigate" and kill her off too so that sebastian and zoe could run away together||

[restive aspen]

and || pin it all on fosca ||

[minor path]

||that is. so fucking stupid icl LMFAOOOO||

I also ||hate the michaelides-verse more than anything. theo actually fuck off, disrespectfully. I hated you in your own book nd I hate you in this one too||

[prisma wasp]

||I know... but why they apparently went to a freaking remote island in Greece, he could have just thrown her off a cliff, it would have been so much easier, this was suuuuch stretch ||

[restive aspen]

but that's not a || MASTER PLAN ||

[minor path]

-10000000 stars that was miserable I feel like shit nd not even in a fun way. its more because of my own personal experience with mental health professionals nd ||them being fuckin useless|| so for the general public this is probably less upsetting nd triggering than it was for me, but oh my god if I didn't already want to absolutely deck Alex michaelides, I do now. ew.

[restive aspen]

michaelides lives in a tiny glass cabin and enjoys throwing baseball sized stones around for fun

[minor path]

||it's not an Alex michaelides book if the plot isn't batshit nd completely stupid ||

[minor path]

LMFAOOO SO TRUE

that genuinely made me laugh out loud castral HAHAHA

[prisma wasp]

||this entire book is so freaking pointless, Mariana goes to Cambridge to support her niece and she spends what? 30 minutes total with her? 1 meal, they had drinks 2 times I believe, and that was it?
and what about freaking Fred, what is that "I will ask you to marry me and you'll say yes" conversation, it is pointless, we get nothing from it, not even a hint at the end that she will say yes or wtv, no matter how weird that would be, but at least it would be something||

[restive aspen]

dont forget her || pointless abandoned stalker she manufactured ||

[prisma wasp]

||not to mention that he is also a creep, following her around lmao I love how Mariana seems to have a magnet for these kinds of men. Not a single men in her life is worth, that is not bad luck, that is just being plain dumb and blind tbh||

[restive aspen]

meanwhile || she creeps around and spies on the random guy sleeping with students just for funsies ||

[prisma wasp]

||and why on earth did we have that entire Henry plot? LMAO what a freaking mix of pointless things||

[prisma wasp]

I mean, ||she couldn't look away, she was so transfixed||

actually disgusting

[restive aspen]

i think most of the pointless things were || michaelides trying to create suspense and mystery through as many red herrings and misdirection as possible ||

[minor path]

||fr too she marries a pedophile who is "in love" with her niece, she goes to dinner with a creepy american bloke who's sleeping with his students, basically created a monster with Henry, creeped on another Cambridge employee sleeping with students nd also kinda has a thing for a low-key stalker dude who's weirdly in love with her after like 1 meeting||

[minor path]

||she should've been locked up too, not just Moris because brother EW||

[restive aspen]

who she'd || never date because he's just a BOY ||

[prisma wasp]

||I mean, aren't all people you know weird? that is just the new normal, not knowing a single normal person ||

[restive aspen]

*** looks at the obc members list nervously ***

[prisma wasp]

||29 y.o? aff, what a child||

[minor path]

yeah her ||thing for him is even grosser because she doesn't shut up about "how young he is" even if he's 29||

[minor path]

we're all very normal, trust

[restive aspen]

@dim sinew this was a demented BR, 10/10 would rage again but i wouldn't buy another one of michaelides' books

[prisma wasp]

I love how I can hate-read a book in 3 days, but I take a full week with 5* books, make it make sense

[restive aspen]

oof really? i was struggling to read this one

the writing was making it very difficult

i kinda just held my nose and chugged the last 150 pages

[minor path]

choco when I have a complete mental breakdown because of these books, I'll send you my therapy expenses

[minor path]

yeah icl picking this back up today was hard

[restive aspen]

i dont understand who is rating it 4 and 5 stars online

[raw linden]

This flew by for me

[minor path]

that's genuinely how I feel about all of his books, like who is reading any of these books nd thinking "ah yes a literary masterpiece" like the characters are boring nd 2d, there's ||so. much. fucking. filler|| nd ||the plot is jut convoluted and stupid for no reason||

[prisma wasp]

And if that doesn't work, call our boy Theo or our motherless Greek girl Mariana, they sure would help you

[restive aspen]

i kind of liked ruth's style: || "i could tell you all your problems but i won't bother" ||

[prisma wasp]

Ruth was like: ||"you're coming to my house randomly, not paying, and want me solve your problems? Fk off girrrrrl" ||

[minor path]

one of the only characters i respect in this book tbh ruth was a queen

ill spoiler this just in chase but theres no actual plot spoilers in this but this is my gr review of this personally i think im really good at writing book reviews /j

[prisma wasp]

THE LAST SENTENCE LMAO

[minor path]

if you dont hear from me for a while assume alex michaelides called the police on me for that line

[fluid relic]

||and her "problems" stem from her daddy issue- what a bs ||

[dim sinew]

just wait until he publishes another book

[prisma wasp]

hell no

[runic talon]

I think it's nice how this is bringing everyone together /gen

[dim sinew]

that’s what i think too but the 4 am rage demon inside me knows i’ll literally read every book that man publishes

[normal vortex]

We can’t not read it now

[raw linden]

Just logged on to GoodReads and it's four 1 star reviews of this book back to back

I reckon we'll be on a hit list by the end of the read

[normal vortex]

[minor path]

i will gladly be on an alex michaelides hit list, i want him to try to take me out

[prisma wasp]

he would probably even write a book about it

[gleaming plinth]

What if he starts actually writing good books

[minor path]

if he writes a book about ||a seductive male borderline|| then you know immediately who he took inspiration from

[restive aspen]

proof of the multiverse i guess

[minor path]

then we'll know he hired a ghost writer

[vague nest]

Inpossible

[dim sinew]

amanda

[vale lodge]

1. A group of Greek statues navigate life together as best friends.
2. Probably not well, considering The Fury
3. I wanted to have fun riffing on another one of his books. And there's so much hype in this group about doing so!

Also I started

[vale lodge]

Part 1 Ch 2: ||Already 4 spaces marked off the bingo chart Therapist character, Greece reference, trauma||
Part 1 Ch 3: ||I get the feeling Mariana isn't a good therapist lol. Being glad that Liz is getting out her repressed anger at her brother by yelling at Henry? Yikes.||
Part 1 Ch 5: ||This whole news segment is weird af.||
Part 1 Ch 7: ||Ew, edgy killer diary||
Part 1 Ch 8: ||"Time stood still in this timeless place" ||

[prisma wasp]

you're in for a treat

[sick canyon]

Ok starting the audiobook

[raw linden]

https://tenor.com/view/spock-good-luck-old-star-trek-gif-14135359

[sick canyon]

Prologue |||ok but why is this giving twilight? Aren’t the very first words of Twilight something about how Bella knows Edward is a killer? This is what I paid for? (Jk it’s a Libby checkout)||

I already have thoughts

And his name is ||Edward? Maidens is just Twilight fanfic, prove me wrong ||

Part 1 ch 1 ||this just feels so clinical and cold. Like how do you write a woman holding her dead husband’s shoes and crying and it just feels so boring and lifeless?||

Part 1 ch 2 ||oh so this is a toxic relationship. That tracks||

Part 1 ch 8 ||”and she wore glasses” 🙄🙄🙄||

The constant ||psychoanalyzing|| is going to be my 13th reason

Part 1 ch 14: this is just boring. I feel like my mid curse is coming true, so far

[minor path]

he really thought he cooked with that last quote

[sick canyon]

He thinks all of his quotes are like peak intellectualism and it drives me nuts

Part 1 ch 20 ||”my character is so sad, here’s a Tennyson poem to tell you how sad she is” ok bro||

[sick canyon]

Part 2 ch 15 ||Is she gonna fuck that portrait of Tennyson?||

[minor path]

LMFAOOOO ||yes you figured out the plot twist/j||

[sick canyon]

Hey that would at least be interesting

I am sooooo booooored

[minor path]

thats the issue with alex michaelides books in my experience, if they arent making you insanely angry theyre just stupid boring

[sick canyon]

Part 3 ch 4 ||When are authors going to do the brave thing and stop making the “front-page famous person murder” a senators daughter and start making them viral tiktok stars. Cause I don’t know any senators daughters by name or sight but if someone said the “demure” lady from tiktok was murdered I would be floored. Demanding answers. National mourning period. Just saying||

Off topic rambling cause I’m bored

[raw linden]

||I've seen members on this server lose their minds over authors mentioning soda brands on their books, imagine if Alex Michaelides just straight up killed Brittany Broski or some other Youtube persona. People would riot.||

[sick canyon]

lol! I’ve never seen that before. Why would soda brands make people mad?

[still dune]

lol! I’ve never seen
that before. Why would soda
brands make people mad?

- tink

[sick canyon]

Thank you haikubot

[raw linden]

I honestly couldn't tell but they were pretty passionate about it

[sick canyon]

Part 3 ch 8 ||wait didn’t she say at the beginning that there were two murders? So there was the first one and now the senator’s daughter? Either we’ve already reached our quota and it’s downhill from here, or someone isn’t actually dead and there will be a last minute murder. Or the first two murders weren’t committed by the same person. Either way I’m suspecting fuckery afoot||

They’re going to love my debut book where my self-insert mc invents Baja blast

[raw linden]

literary product placement

[sick canyon]

It’s only product placement if you get paid for it

I genuinely do not get this, not that you have to defend it. But what’s weirder “I drank a coke” or “I drank a cola soda”?

Mmm lemon lime carbonated beverage

[restive aspen]

|| tara was the first murder ||

[minor path]

i always find it funny whenever books or movies or whatever has like some weird off brand version of an actual product because its always so goofy

[raw linden]

I think the point was about the author (I think it was King) using a lot of brand names/brands but this is not something I ever noticed, I just thought it was interesting since I just... don't notice brands at all in books if they're contemporary

[sick canyon]

Thank you I’m bad with names

Or are you saying that’s the same person?

[raw linden]

this is the best

[restive aspen]

no they're two people

[sick canyon]

Oh ok thank you. I was like damn, am I that out of it?

[minor path]

like ah yes this sounds like something a real person would say, im really nailing realism in my book

[normal vortex]

It’s definitely King sjhdjsjd

[sick canyon]

Exactly!!!

[normal vortex]

He also uses a LOT of American pop culture references from the 20th century that I don’t understand

[raw linden]

ooo I probably gloss over those

[sick canyon]

Well that’s fair

[raw linden]

Michaelides could never, he's cultured

[normal vortex]

Fr

[minor path]

stephen king does it so much nd its so funny it just sounds like hes desperately trying to get a brand deal nd failing miserably

[sick canyon]

His characters would never drink soda

[minor path]

thats so unhealthy nd like rots your teeth nd stuff, his characters have standards/j

[restive aspen]

i dont mind brands in use personally

[sick canyon]

Just like sparkling water or some bs

[normal vortex]

Greek spring water ONLY

[sick canyon]

Greek omg

[minor path]

if its not fresh from the sparkling water fountains in greece, its not good enough for his mcs

[raw linden]

his next book is about a cult and he'll have to find a way to make Koolaid sound well-read and Greek (/hj)

[minor path]

the /hj killed be there LMAOO like who knows what this man is gonna pull out his ass at this point

[normal vortex]

Tentative hj

[raw linden]

DO NOT manifest it

crying

[minor path]

khooladius, the well known greek god

[sick canyon]

Where’s that meme about dodgeball but it’s Apollo hitting people with the “gift” of prophecy

[normal vortex]

Help he’d actually do that

[minor path]

HAHAHA YEAHH

[raw linden]

reading back I totally forgot THIS book was ||about a cult because the plot was so tenuous you could have 100% taken the maidens out of, well, The Maidens, and it would have read the same||

[normal vortex]

Oh it was ||about a cult?||

[sick canyon]

Lmao same

[restive aspen]

yeah he based the maidens on || the eleusian religious rites which was basically an ancient religion of women ||

[minor path]

||literally too the fact they had nothing to do with it in the ending is fucking insane to me|| <<ending spoilers

[sick canyon]

Lead by a ||man||, naturally

[normal vortex]

Obviously!

[minor path]

lets be completely real, its alex michaelides, are we surprised?

[normal vortex]

||They were just ✨quirky✨||

[restive aspen]

in the source material that he clearly did not read, it was || lead by women ||

[normal vortex]

What if he did read it and he just didn’t care

Or he thought well I can do it better

[raw linden]

Maybe he took an online class about it and was "an expert"

[normal vortex]

[raw linden]

just like he had "a background in psych"

[restive aspen]

wouldnt put it past him tbh

[sick canyon]

Draaaaag him

[minor path]

im entirely convinced he did a course online nd then used that to say he has a degree in psychology

[sick canyon]

Part 4 ch 2 ||who the fuck is Fred?!?||

What the fuck is this?

[restive aspen]

meet || fred || he's a bit || psychic ||

[minor path]

like he went to 1 free lecture at cambridge nd was like "guys. i did my masters at cambridge i promise"

[minor path]

||freds the guy she met on the train up to cambridge, he was insanely forgetable nd weird ||

[sick canyon]

Guys he knows that melancholia is depression, I think he knows what he’s talking about /jk

[restive aspen]

i totally forgot about him

so you're not alone in that tink

[normal vortex]

No no ||he’s a BOY||

[raw linden]

he overheard an AA meeting through a window once and decided ||his main character should lead group therapy|| jfc

[sick canyon]

I cannot keep all these generic dudes and their generic names separate

Omg just like Twilight

[minor path]

alex michaelides gets all his male characters names from the first page of a british-sounding baby names site nd he gets all his female names from the first page of a greek baby names site

[minor path]

LMFAO

[raw linden]

this is eerily accurate

[sick canyon]

This is so accurate tho

Marianne tho

[minor path]

clearly he plagiarised twilight nd tink is the only one whos caught on

[sick canyon]

Wtfffffffff

[raw linden]

pretty sure we have made more research on Michaelides that Michaelides has ever done for one of his books

[normal vortex]

I unironically like Twilight

[sick canyon]

Part 4 ch 5 ||why did people just randomly start fucking?!?!?!||

[raw linden]

https://tenor.com/view/right-in-front-of-my-salad-gif-19328107

[sick canyon]

Nothing wrong with that but I can’t keep all the mikes and Bobby’s and Jacob’s and Stewart’s and whatever straight

[normal vortex]

So valid

[sick canyon]

Heeellllppppp

[normal vortex]

||Let’s not forget that Mariana couldn’t look away||

[minor path]

he got her name because he went to an aquirium nd was like "mmm marine.... marina... thats a girls name. could be more greek sounding though."

[restive aspen]

yes, like watching a train wreck

[raw linden]

The way this weirded me out to no end

[normal vortex]

Yeah fr

[sick canyon]

Ohhh is it Mariana? I thought it was Marianne. Audiobook problems

[normal vortex]

Yeah Mariana

I wonder if the audiobook narrator thought “wtf am I reading here”

[sick canyon]

Also who tf is Morris?

Or is it Maurice

[normal vortex]

Morris

||hes the porter||

[restive aspen]

i cant imagine this as audiobook, it was difficult enough with the shitty writing to read in print

[sick canyon]

Ohhhh yeah

[sick canyon]

I am struggling

Too many names

[sick canyon]

Damn now I’m even more confused about the random ||doinking||

[raw linden]

It doesn't help that some characters show up for exactly ||2.5 paragraphs and vanish||

[sick canyon]

Exactly!

[minor path]

i dont think ill ever emotionally recover from that scene. i remember ||when i was listening to it in the gym, i was mid set while they started fucking so i wasnt entirely focused so i was just like "wait what? no. theres no way. hold on. nd i went back nd just sat in the seat of the machine like as i then heard she was being a creepy vouyer||

[sick canyon]

Ok this one lady ||the narrator sounds like she’s impersonating Judy Dench||

Idk her name lol

[raw linden]

||"Zander couldn't stop listening."||

[sick canyon]

Ruth?

[sick canyon]

We are all ||voyeurs||

[minor path]

yeah maybe the real || creepy voyeurs|| were the friends we made along the way

[sick canyon]

The Silent Patient spoilers ||THEO!!!!! ||

Why didn’t reply to that lol. That was an accident

Ok I’m at part 4 ch 7 and I need a break for mental health

[restive aspen]

who among us can really say they haven't || chased a man into a graveyard to watch him have sex with a random person at night? ||

[sick canyon]

Lmao

Live footage of me crying trying to do my work after this book traumatized me

https://tenor.com/view/crying-cry-kid-mfw-mrw-gif-4548083

[minor path]

genuinely too though

[minor path]

honestly trying to read this one in like just one or 2 sittings is so hard, its like physically painful

[sick canyon]

I was hoping to one-shot it but I misjudged the time

Now I’m kind of grateful

[restive aspen]

better for yoru sanity

[sick canyon]

Ok we’re back baby girls

Just under an hour left

Part 4 ch 8 ||Oh so we have Mariana to blame for The Silent Patient ||

[sick canyon]

Part 4 ch 16 ||I don’t trust Fred. She says she doesn’t want more wine and he fills her glass anyway. He’s got nice guy written all over him||

Part 4 ch 17 ||Tennyson’s in love with a ghost? That’s a leap. Uhhhh Henry how we doin buddy. Also the one paragraph summarizing what happened to Henry, like he was taken to a hospital and prescribed something blah blah blah”. Like why was that even here? It was so anticlimactic and tacked on||

Ok pausing cause I’m losing my damn mind. Does anyone else feel like things are just happening in this book like bullet points on a “write a thriller” book mad libs? ||widow, murder, niece involved, creepy stalker patient, creepy cult, voyeurism, fantasizing about a dead guy, stalker patient tries to kill MC||

It’s too much!

Ok back to reading

[sick canyon]

Part 5 ch 7 ||Ok, waiting for a big plot twist or something because this wasn’t nearly as bad as I was expecting, just annoying||

I stg tho ||if it was Mariana the whole time, I’m flying to Greece to slap a bitch||

wtf

Part 6 ch 1 ||her dead husband was fucking her niece?||

[restive aspen]

|| 15 year old niece. yeah ||

[sick canyon]

Ok I was trying to do the math on that

The maidens indeed

Part 6 ch 2 ||oh no, not Fred/s. Ok now aren’t we on like 4 murders?||

Oh ok

Part 6 ch 3 ||So I was promised Edward the killer and it was all fake… again?||

[restive aspen]

in the most absurd way possible

[sick canyon]

Epilogue ||”I keep trying to imagine my dead husband and can only picture my father”||

https://tenor.com/view/office-gif-23066448

Fucking ||Theoooooooo||

[restive aspen]

i think im grateful i didnt read TSP

[sick canyon]

I actually liked aspects of The Silent Patient, but every book of Michaelides I read is just “the silent patient but in Greece”, and “the silent patient but boring and in a university”. Can’t escape fucking ||theo||

Ok I finished

This was somehow worse than the Fury and I’m questioning how I ever liked any part of The Silent Patient. Like who was that bitch who read that book? How do I get back to her? She was so trusting and vulnerable. Come baaaaccckkkk

https://tenor.com/view/stressed-stress-baby-crying-cry-gif-8768811

[prisma wasp]

I've just read your entire commentary and I feel like I either 1) read a different book or 2) can't remeber a single thing about this book already

I am also extremely tired, that could be number 3

Who was ||Edward? Now I can only think of Twilight Edward and my brain is having to much trouble placing him on this thread ||

[restive aspen]

|| fosca ||

[prisma wasp]

OH YEAH OK

Lmao I didn't remember his name was ||Edward ||

And now this ruined Robert Pattinson for me

Nooooo

[sick canyon]

I thought his name was ||Foster||

[sick canyon]

Yesssssss

[vale lodge]

Part 1 Ch 9: ||Oh boy, a character with a gift of premonitions 🙄 ||
Part 1 Ch 10: ||Omg, the Fury got Sebastian!! /hj. I bet he was murdered. Bonus points if Mariana did it||
Part 1 Ch 15: ||Why is Professor Fosca speaking so formally about Tara and his relationship with her lol||
Part 1 Ch 17: ||I'm so tired of Mariana and her entire characterization being about Sebastian and his death. Also she's a therapist who likes wine. Great character /s||

[sick canyon]

Professor Focaccia

[amber lava]

https://tenor.com/view/macgruber-im-in-imin-gif-24174214

I'm up to Chapter 7 and I ALREADY have a bone to pick, several, actually

[sick canyon]

Yessss Vaude is reading The Maidens

[amber lava]

I ain't going back and annotating step by step so consider these all spoilered up until Part 1, Chapter 7, I'll have it go in descending order at least

• ||Anyone else find the immediate lore dump kind of trite? Like I JUST met this woman, maybe we should have some breathing room to understand what her personality is like rather than the immediate 'I have generational trauma because my grandad worked on fishing boats and my grandmother was a sex worker' ||

• ||Mariana is kind of ass at her job, isn't she? This guy that she just explained as having attachment issues and all number of other terrible mental ailments has seriously hurt himself - yes she should not encourage any attention as far as showing positive reinforcement of self-harm but she's also not reporting anything??? She's not going to let the police know that her patient might be stalking her??? Or even make sure he gets medical attention??? WHY DOES THIS MAN INSIST ON MAKING HIS CHARACTERS THERAPISTS BUT HE KNOWS NOTHING OF BRITISH MENTAL HEALTH CODE OF CONDUCT. ||

• ||That news segment immediately pulled me out of any immersion??? First of all when do you ever interview the poor sod (usually a dog walker) when they find a body? And have them give graphic details on air? They also don't broadcast live usually? So that implies that this murder was so high profile that it needed a live evening segment coming from the dog walker that stayed the whole day for this OR his was from an earlier interview and for some reason they thought that was good for broadcast? ||

https://tenor.com/view/the-simpsons-krusty-the-clown-wth-what-the-hell-was-that-confused-gif-4720874

||The UK public watching that segment at PRIME TIME btw ||

[vale lodge]

I totally agree about ||that news segment. Why tf is this random murder in Cambridge even being broadcast in London? I know the news does eyewitness interviews sometimes (at least in America), but this one felt super unrealistic and graphic.||

[sick canyon]

Agree with the ||lore dump, the shitty therapists, and I didn’t even think about the news segment, but you’re completely right||

[amber lava]

Up to Chapter 17

• ||So again, why are you even allowed to be in POLICE INTERVIEWS. Who are you even? The victim's roommate's legal guardian? The implication as far as that shit ass news report was that this is a HIGH VALUE case, so why are they just letting some random be involved with the highly sensitive early stages of an investigation because checks notes she's a therapist?||

• ||Also what in the 2-D hell is wrong with this policeman? Why is he not taking this seriously? Also the next step would be to continue to press the police about this highly suspisious professor who apparently has drug ties and potentially a relationship with the murdered student but that's just me Ig ||

• ||Me trying to exist near Mariana without her constantly focusing on my tragic background and mental health. Maybe I'm being nitpicky on this but why does she constantly rattle off about the past mental health problems of everyone in her circle? Is this meant to be a quirk? I think the problem for me is that all of this writing is really sterile.||

[restive aspen]

dont you get it vaude? || mariana is a THERAPIST || you cant just turn || THERAPY || off!

[raw linden]

||It felt both poorly researched and deeply uninspired, not a lot of redeemable aspects. When a book's main and single quality is that its chapters are short I tend to abandon all hope ||

[amber lava]

I'm so glad to be here you guys

[raw linden]

https://tenor.com/view/cats-circle-magic-cursed-seance-gif-8085738

[normal vortex]

God felt

[foggy cape]

That is my dream life, to be the human who is attached to the hand

[still dune]

That is my dream life,
to be the human who is
attached to the hand

- pauliney_

[sick canyon]

I didn’t see the gif at first and I was like “damn that is so deep”

[still dune]

I didn’t see the
gif at first and I was like
“damn that is so deep”

- tink

[sick canyon]

Damn we’re killing it with these haiku today

[amber lava]

Up to Part 1, Chapter 20

||Okay, no. So... "You should totally stay and involve yourself in this investigation because you're a group therapist and this is a GROUP concern. You also went to this school so this means that you should totally get involved." Wtf.||

[restive aspen]

michaelides logic be like

[minor path]

that is exactly how he writes his book im p sure 😭 no thoughts just bullet points nd a dream

[minor path]

the greatest crime this book has committed tbh

[sick canyon]

And it becomes my nightmare

[vale lodge]

Part 1 Ch 19: ||Why is Clarissa being so insistent on Mariana staying and helping with the investigation? Makes no sense lol.||
Part 1 Ch 20: ||Why are we getting a lore dump about another whole book pleeeeeease (it's interesting though)||

Part 1 thoughts: ||I'm disliking this more than The Fury so far, because at least in The Fury, I was still interested in what was happening at the end of Act 1 I'm so fucking tired of hearing about Mariana's grief and backstory. It's not written in an interesting way, there's no point to her character other than that (besides the investigation I guess), and it just keeps going on and oooon. Michaelides seems to have a way of over-explaining his MCs in the most uninteresting way and almost putting the murders on the backburner. Everything about Mariana's involvement in the murder investigation is also super contrived. Uuuuuugh. I'm continuing and staying strong for you OBS ||

[amber lava]

Part 2, Chapter 11-13
||So iconic that Alex Michaelides is a Mean Girls fan ||
|| https://youtu.be/MribRQNEPLQ ||
||I cannot tell you how much I was waiting for "and her father is the inventor of toaster strudel."||

Part 2, Chapter 14
||Who tf is Fred now??? WHY IS THIS OTHER RANDOM TRYING TO INVOLVE HIMSELF IN THIS MURDER. "I like puzzles" COOL, GET YOURSELF A PROFESSOR LAYTON GAME BRO. Also on a personal level I would rather light myself on fire than have a conversation with this man- "I had a premonition that I would ask you to marry me" BROTHER YOU'VE HAD LESS THAN 20 MINUTES OF CONVERSATION, SETTLE DOWN.||

[raw linden]

It's like all these characters are speed-running (any%) being hated by the reader

[normal vortex]

We all gotta be haters sometimes and Michaelides is just facilitating it

Doing us a favor if you will

[foggy cape]

^|| also the way Fred met Mariana?? I really felt for her. I can imagine almost every person who is presenting somewhat feminine has had encounters with men like that. Not being left alone on public transport/in public spaces in general. I actually thought this creepiness was presented relatively well. Fred was so hateable.
And then this creep plays a bigger role???? and I should have sympathy for him??? wtf wtf wtf! ||

[amber lava]

Alex Michaelides on writing women imo (General discussion but I'm up to Part 2, Chapter 16 if y'all want to be safe):
||So he sucks at this, sometimes I wonder if he's spoken to a woman tbh. BUT the biggest thing that's a red flag to me is that Mariana does not respond to men acting weird/dangerous as a woman would do. Now I'm not trying to spark the discussion on 'men can be afraid of weirdos too' because of course but what I want to put forward is that so far in my reading she has had a patient exhibit stalking/obsessive behaviour towards her that she's weirdly cool about? Like she doesn't really DO anything with this information, she just goes 'oh man I hate when he does that' rather than y'know, actively inform someone about this. Fred being an absolute freakazoid but instead of keeping her distance she's encouraging him into her life, argugably 'leading him on'??? I know that she says at the pub that 'you have no chance tee hee' but why did you even go to the pub with him? SHE CONSTANTLY FEELS LIKE SHE'S BEING FOLLOWED BUT SHE'S NOT EVEN BOTHERED MOST OF THE TIME- IN FACT IN THE LAST CHAPTER SHE YELLED OUT TO THE PERSON FOLLOWING HER? It's just this strangely lackadaisical nature to her personal safety that I think most feminine presenting people would never behave like???||

[gleaming plinth]

havent read the book yet but from what you are describing it gives of ||Women likes the attention so she kinda likes feeling like someone is obssesed with her ||

[amber lava]

Part 2, Chapter 17
||?????????? He kissed her??? What is sis doing??? What the fuck is going on???||

Ideal train journey read btw, quietly seething

[foggy cape]

|| yeah, it absolutely feels like Michaelides has no idea how scary some situations can be when you look/present even somewhat feminine. And Fred gets confirmation for his creepy behavior. And male readers might also get this confirmation: this behavior isnt too bad, she is not afraid or creeped out, and even goes to a pub with Fred, so being pushy works! If she says "no", she just doesnt know better!
That is just so, so, so wrong ||

[amber lava]

Part 2, Chapter 18
Okay more loudly seething now:
||Not letting anyone know about this weirdo that's involved in her life now for seemingly arbitrary 'I don't really know what to call him reasons'. Also "I called him because I was sad that professor fetucchini assaulted me" - Don't you literally have people you call friends from this school? Like the pipe smoking teacher lady that I refuse to remember the name of? Surely that's a better choice to vent your anger at and feel comfort with than this random weird guy?||

[foggy cape]

|| professor fetucchini, I'm dying :D ||

[amber lava]

||She ALSO goes to meet with the professor that her niece has actively said might be related to Tara's death, has a weird gang of groupie students and is another man giving weird vibes. It's like she has no in built protection for herself that feminine presenting people are more or less drilled on from the moment that they're young and while it's sad it has to be this way, it's an intrinsic part of what we're raised to be like. The fact that she just wanders around head empty the whole time.||

https://tenor.com/view/shut-up-stfu-blah-blah-gif-13070641

||@Fred every single time he brings up the premonition thing. "Oh wow yeah I had no idea about your dead husband and stuff wild that my premonitions are so strong and cool" ||

[normal vortex]

^ at some point I was convinced ||he had something to do with it||

[amber lava]

Start of Part 3
||It's fucking Zoe isn't it.||

Part 3 Chapter 1
||Wha???? WHAT ARE THEY DOING AT THE CRIME SCENE??? This JUST happened??? Why is this Julian guy letting this random contaminate a crime scene? Surely she has to show some credentials rather than just a guy saying "yeah she's cool, let her look at the body", what about the dignity of the victim? What about procedure on a high scale case???||

[foggy cape]

|| but she is a therapist!!!! ||

[normal vortex]

||maybe she can bullshit the victim back to life||

[amber lava]

~ Up to Part 3, Chapter 13
||Why 👏 are 👏 you 👏 having 👏 dinner 👏 with 👏 professor 👏 Fettuccini 👏 ||
||WHY ARE YOU GETTING DRUNK ALONE WITH PROFESSOR FETTUCCINI FOR THAT MATTER. NO SURVIVAL SKILLS.||

||Also why does every man want to bang Mariana, this shit is stupid She doesn't do anything, she just exists and every man is just like 'HUBBA HUBBA'||

[fluid relic]

fr i really really hate him for this

||he doesnt give disclaimer or ANYTHING to explain why they behave the way they did or tell the readers: dear readers do NOT do this, its weird and dumb. he just rambles on and on about bad behaving man following bad written woman to his big audience ||

[minor path]

I 100% agree with this (wanna preface this with I'm not a biological man, I'm a trans man so I have experience with men being creepy because they think I'm a woman) ||I think Henry was the first big red flag of this for me, like no only is he a danger to himself rn, he's also a massive danger to you, why tf are you not doing anything???? he's acting insane, nd clearly needs 1 to 1 support not group therapy with people you've admitted are no where near as mentally ill as he is like???? not only is it a question of her competency at her job, but its also a question of like do you have 9 common sense or self preservation instincts???||

[amber lava]

Part 4, Chapter 5

||What is sis doing now??? Why did you stand there and watch them??? The whole thing??? Even if it's strange for one of the Maidens and this old man to be banging, I think I would be angry too if some random stood there like ||

https://tenor.com/view/why-michael-scott-the-office-why-are-the-way-that-you-are-gif-5593972

[amber lava]

~ Part 4, Chapter 15
||"Wow, these girls are being so mean and demeaning to me :c This is because they are under Professor Fettuccini's thumb and now that he's here the power of group therapy will not work :c they are so mean to me" You know what I love the Maidens they're the best characters because they immediately shut Mariana down with all of her bullshit, GOOD FOR THEM. Also WTF WAS WITH THE THEO CAMEO? I DID NOT SIGN UP FOR THE MICHAELIDES EXTENDED UNIVERSE? Why is this a prequel to The Silent Patient? ||

[dim sinew]

i see you’re enjoying this vaude

[amber lava]

https://tenor.com/view/penury-strife-black-books-blackbooks-gif-15534431

[sick canyon]

Penury, nice vocab word

[amber lava]

End of Part 4 general
||This is the part of the book where it massively goes down hill. Henry shows up, evidently having a genuine mental crisis but she does nothing to help him???? Just exasperates the problem??? What kind of interrogation was that even??? ||

Part 5, Chapter 5, beginning of Chapter 6
||I want to commit violence, this book is no longer a funny ha-ha bad, it is just a ridiculously stressful bad. It's fucking FRED SURELY? FRED AND ZOE. THE MAN WHO SAYS THE WORD PREMONITION IN EVERY SINGLE ONE OF HIS SENTENCES AND MARIANA IS LIKE "man... I can't believe professor fettuccini alfredo would do this..." ||

[raw linden]

||Fetuccini Alfredo would never||

https://tenor.com/view/spit-take-drink-laugh-funny-thats-gif-11859512

[amber lava]

Okay I'm done.
||Love how the prologue I could picture Michaelides looking at me like while it was time for more Theo and Silent Patient stuff. I WANT IT QUOTED THAT I KNEW IT WAS ZOE EXACTLY 3 HOURS BEFORE I FINISHED THIS BOOK. Look, I'm sure that Alex Michaelides is a nice guy but good lord this was awful. I wasn't even horribly offended by The Silent Patient when I read it - there were a few things that got stuck in my craw, sure, but it was like a 2-3 star read, I had some fun with it. The only scene in this book that I had any fun with was during the weird forced group therapy scene where the Maidens made Mariana feel like an idiot. More or less the whole time, I kinda just thought "yeah I remember The Secret History, I sure liked that book, wish I was reading that again right about now". ||

||This is just such a weirdly sterile book. Why does Mariana feel the need to insert jargon and analysis into everything she does ever? I don't enjoy the random lore dumps that happen completely inorganically too. I.E: "I knew I had to go see Zoe. Much like I was not seen by my father who I constantly sought approval from. This is because my mother died and I was left alone with him." Mariana had next to no character apart from these strange pop-therapy moments, she was a simp for her borderline Gary Stu dead husband (until we find out later) and the fact that apparently every man ever wants to be with her - Henry, Fred and Professor Olive Garden all have a fixation on her when she has the personality of soggy bread. I can only dream to be as head empty and unphased by danger as Mariana is. Dinner with a suspected killer? Sure! Drinking a ton around him? Don't mind if I do!||

||I do not care even slightly about any of these characters - I vaguely hate them all actually which is a weirdly impressive feat? How can you write a book where I don't walk away with a single good thing to say about any character? I hate that to even vaguely allow this book some space to continue I had to suspend my belief to levels that I didn't think capable. I was so frustrated by how these murders were being investigated. Could homie have played a little Ace Attorney before writing this? I know that the UK legal system is iffy but I 100% assure you that they would give an iota of a shit about keeping a crime scene contained when it features the murder of a wealthy powerful student (her father invented toaster strudel ). But also why were they just fucking around with the postcards instead of fingerprinting them??? Why was Mariana allowed to just gallivant around accusing anyone she wanted and going where she pleased? Why does this man hate just researching proper procedures? I remember him being really egregious with how therapists work in The Silent Patient and it feels like he has learnt nothing with this book. ||

||Even on paper if I hadn't been lured into this BR with promise of a messy garbage read - the idea of a murder in Cambridge surrounded by a cult dedicated to Persephone? COOL. RAD EVEN. So why did you make it as boring and stupid as possible? For a book called The Maidens, why was he so afraid to make the titular characters interesting, 3-D or even fully realized? All they do is exist to make Professor StudMuffin seem more suspect. Wild to throw in that he was fired because SuRpRiSe SuRpRiSe He WaS sLeEpInG wItH aLl Of tHeM. My issue would be - why was he allowed to just do the weird shit he was doing anyway? It was like an open secret that he was throwing wild parties with drugs and booze? What about that weird thing he did at Tara's funeral? Why was no one like... on that? Like in 90% of all the other Dark Academia books I've read, the secret societies are...secret? It's a big deal that they keep all their weird nonsense under wraps because otherwise there would be repercussions? ||

1/2

||So with that ending: I knew it was Zoe but I could not have imagined how ASS the ending actually was going to be. My brain was going for some kind of Zoe is the true leader of The Maidens and has been using the Professor as a scapegoat to...punish other Maidens for infractions? I don't know, I was trying to work out a motive. But the reveal that Saint Sebastian, Mariana's saintly husband who took her on long meandering picnics, gave money to the poor and apparently walked on water (lmao) was apparently a molesting piece of shit who broke Zoe's brain and was planning on killing Mariana to steal her money so he could continue to live with Zoe. I GUESS I NEVER SAW IT COMING BECAUSE IT WAS STUPID. I really enjoyed the part where Zoe chose to monologue too because there was no amount of subtext that could be given to make this less cack-handed of a reveal. Very cool Michaelides. EVEN COOLER TO EVEN USE THE TERM RED HERRING OUT LOUD. ||

||I would even have been cool with the fact that Freaky Fred was involved in the plot just because it made an iota more sense than it being Sebastian? What kind of ass pull was that, seriously? ||Fuckin take my 1.25 stars based solely on the fact that I have read worse as far as my metric goes. The .25 stars comes from that aforementioned scene where ||they absolutely dogged the shit out of her for thinking that Group Therapy held any power in this murder case ||

2/2

[sick canyon]

It’s sad when you can’t even give things a .25 star out of spite, cause you know objectively that there are worse books

[amber lava]

Literally the only thing stopping me, at least I got something out of this.

Last month I read something way worse and the worst thing I read this year was Stalking Jack The Ripper so I kinda use 'well was this worse than that' to help me out.

[sick canyon]

I gave Gone with the Wind one star and now I can’t ever go lower cause I’m always like, well it wasn’t as bad as that flaming piece of shit

[amber lava]

Exactly Gotta go with the tiers of bad

[restive aspen]

i love this br

[normal vortex]

Omg Vaude has THOUGHTS

[sick canyon]

The main feeling is betrayal

[vale lodge]

Part 2 Ch 3: ||Man, Michaelides is obsessed about this inner child thing. If the inner child is upset, there's no telling what someone will do! 🙄 It feels like an excuse and very victim-blamey with "Tara provoked him"||

[minor path]

||alex michaelides 🤝 victim blaming||

[vale lodge]

Part 2:

• ||God I'm so over the connections to Sebastian and how Mariana thinks everything is related to his death. I'm sure one of the big twists is that Sebastian was actually murdered by someone in this book, but it's so duuuumb.||
• ||Why tf are all of the men in this book fawning over Mariana? And that kiss between her and Fosca?? LMAO WHAT||

Part 3:

• ||I'm very sus of Fred, and I'm pretty sure one of the big twists will be that he's the actual killer.||
• ||I'm surprised that the director of Veronica's play didn't immediately fall in love with Mariana too ||
• ||Why tf is Mariana going to go to the apartment of a man she heavily suspects of killing two other women and who knows that she suspects him?? Vaude's right, this woman has no survival instincts lol.||
• ||I'm glad Michaelides spelled out where he got the name Mariana from 🙄 ||

[vale lodge]

Part 4 Ch 5: ||This sex scene is awful. And why tf is Mariana just standing there watching?? Morris's reaction is very justified ||

[restive aspen]

|| SHE COULDNT LOOK AWAY ||

[vale lodge]

Part 4 Ch 7: ||"If something of this nature—toxic, malignant, murderous—were operating within one of your groups… what would you do?” Nothing, just like she's doing with her group and Henry?||

[vale lodge]

Part 4 Ch 8: ||Lmao I hate that Michaelides wrote a prequel for The Silent Patient in this book||

[raw linden]

In this server we hate the MLU (Michaelides Literary Universe)

[normal vortex]

LMAOOO

[vague nest]

Now let us start this

Chapter 5: untill now this boojs feels like || A 5 year old tryinf to tell a story. Meaning it is all saying and NO showing. Plus why the chapter so SHORT. I bearly start the chapter and then POOF it over||

[sick canyon]

I forgot this was still going on lol

[raw linden]

maybe that's for the best.

[dim sinew]

i will never let anyone forget about this

[tired flame]

Thanks choco

[manic dagger]

I just found this BR and I am so nervous to read this now. I bought this book as a random find on a trip to Walmart, it's been sitting on my TBR shelf for weeks now and y'all got me so reluctant to even pick it up after reading comments for the last hour.

[restive aspen]

hahaha yeaaaah....

you might like it?

[manic dagger]

I'm going to bump it up to my next read after I finish what I'm on. Like it or not I have to get past it now.

[prisma wasp]

you're in for a treat...

[foggy cape]

... from the Goodreads "60 top books from the past 5 years" :D

[raw linden]

https://tenor.com/view/dalek-do-not-blaspheme-blasphemous-dont-be-rude-doctor-who-gif-11017978

[normal vortex]

Fine line between popular because good and popular because bad and people talk about it because of that

[dim sinew]

i read the first line and immediately cringed why do i keep doing this to myself

prologue

||in her mind, she would go back to the very beginning and remember it all.||
please don’t

i hate this book already and i read like one page

im so done with michaelides

chapter 1
||ew not him describing love as leaking out of something not mariana hugging shoes so many red flags and im not even a chapter in ||

bingo card

chapter 2
||oh here is the usual dose of daddy and mommy issues ||

how am i checking stuff off the michaelides bingo already i’ll send it every 5 chapters

[tired flame]

YAYYYY CHOCO

[raw linden]

STAY STRONG

[normal vortex]

[amber lava]

https://tenor.com/view/perfect-popcorn-michael-jackson-gif-26271837

[minor path]

im so excited to see your rants choco this is gonna be GOOD

[normal vortex]

[dim sinew]

i was actually thinking of dnf-ing this but i’ll read on

[still dune]

i was actually
thinking of dnf-ing
this but i’ll read on

- chocorb

[dim sinew]

stop

chapter 7
||it’s not an alex michaelides novel if something isn’t written down||

[minor path]

if i had to finish this so do you

[tired flame]

nooooo complete the trilogy

finish it off once and for all

[restive aspen]

https://tenor.com/view/suffer-now-suffer-elmo-evil-evil-laugh-gif-13063727

[normal vortex]

Us when choco is suffering:

[dim sinew]

until chapter 8
||alex michaelides must have a trauma checklist because every character gets their own sob story and a free psychoanalysis session and naturally, there's a female character whose entire existence revolves around her man ||

[dim sinew]

chapter 16
||dare i say it, this is more boring than tsp, idc about any of these characters and everyone seems like a horrible person ||

[dim sinew]

part one finished
||nooo don’t investigate the murders i just know there’s going to be a million red herrings and in the end the twist is going to be really dumb||

bingo card so far

i don’t hate this book so far but it’s just very boring

[restive aspen]

https://tenor.com/view/soon-cat-peek-gif-10008520

[dim sinew]

part 2, chapter 1
||foreshadowing or classic michaelides red herring? ||

[dim sinew]

part 2
chapter 2
||is henry somehow related to the murders or am i falling for the red herrings i feel like i can’t trust michaelides enough so i will stop guessing who is the murderer because it’s probably going to be mariana in the end||

chapter 3
||fred please what do you see in her and also what is with michaelides and blaming everything on childhood trauma??? ||

chapter 5
||i hated everything about their conversation ||

chapter 8
||god forbid women have lives outside men||

chapter 10

||the applause went on for some time||
|| naur ||

40% in and my bingo is almost done

[minor path]

for your chapter 3 thing ||because how else would he explain nd excuse her shitty behaviour no one can just be a piece of shit they've gotta be traumatised so we can empathise nd excuse them ✨️✨️||

[dim sinew]

part 2, chapter 14
||fred are you sure you’re good at hunches? you just said you thought marianna would marry you why are they working together??||

[dim sinew]

part 2, chapter 16

||she’s relieved when the contractions resume. ||
||alex michaelides has obviously never given birth before ||

part 2, chapter 17
||excuse me????? he just kissed her marianna girlie what is this ||

||why is every man in this book trying to get on with her ||

i don’t like this book

part 2 finished
||so she’s just working with fred now??? that’s so random, like he said he thought you were going to marry him so now he’s helping you investigate a murder you have absolutely no connection to and another murder. im only upset it isn’t marianna||

[dim sinew]

part 3, chapter 1
||you’re just gonna let a colleague of yours look at a dead body? ||

||so much of this book is concerning and unbelievable, but marianna is a group therapist so that makes it alright?? ||

part 3, chapter 2
||yeah i wouldn’t be too happy if this random woman invaded a crime scene either||

part 3, chapter 3
||boohoo no way the police inspector didn’t know the connection between the two students, i refuse to believe marianna proved any help at all||

part 3, chapter 8
||idc who the murderer is this book just gets under my skin, i want it to be over. imagine the killer is just zoe and she killed veronica because she didn’t get the role in the play herself lol||

part 3, chapter 10
||ruth??? seriously??? she is a recurring character in all three of michaelides’ books omg||

part 3 done i need coffee

part 4, chapter 2
||fred please stop being yourself for one second ||

||i don’t even care about the actual murders, which seems to be the case for all of michaelides’ books ||

||and who the hell is henry ||

||oh nvm i got it ||

[amber lava]

[dim sinew]

part 4, chapter 5
||was the sex part really necessary for the plot AND MARIANA YOU PERVERT STOP WATCHING ||

part 4, chapter 7
||NOOOOOOOOO NOT THEO ANYONE BUT HIM why does he keep coming up in every single book ||

part 4, chapter 8
||maybe im the murderer do you mean to tell me that because of mariana, theo got a job in the grove and we had to deal with tsp?? from one murderer to another, one cardboard cutout to another, this conversation was not only boring, but also pretentious as hell ptsd from tsp||

(spoilers for tsp ⬆️)

part 4, chapter 10
||WDYM AFRAID FOR THE FIRST TIME ||

i could’ve been eating my sandwich

now it’s cold

[dim sinew]

part 4, chapter 16
||FRED STOP imagine he’s the murderer and the whole chapters written down are him lol||

||why does every character have childhood trauma in this book||

[still dune]

||why does every
character have childhood
trauma in this book||

- chocorb

[dim sinew]

part 4, chapter 17
||henry being unstable is not your fault mariana ||

part 4, chapter 20
||inspector sangha deserves better first this crazy woman interrupted his crime scene and gave him false leads and tips, and now she’s beating someone up ||

only two more parts left and a whole night to waste

part 5, chapter 2
||so zoe got drugged and was included in an orgy? ||

||wait omg did fosca do all that to her ||

||what is this book ||

part 5, chapter 5
||erm what the sigma did she have an affair with fred cause fred says the premonition stuff, or did she have one with sebastian or edward?? yeah idk ||

part 5, chapter 6
||oh it’s edward ||

[restive aspen]

lol is this part 6 or did you go back in time

[dim sinew]

oh my bad

part 5, chapter 8
||well i guessed it was sebastian but he was her uncle ||

last part, only 3 chapters then im done

[restive aspen]

you've reached the || unhinged || section

[dim sinew]

if part 6 is the ||unhinged|| section, what was i supposed to make for whatever i have just read

[restive aspen]

haha i mean it is basically the last 2 parts

it's so silly

[dim sinew]

[dim sinew]

last chapter left

part 6, chapter 3
||you have got to be kidding me rn ||

omg why is there an epilogue

im done

im gonna read everyone’s thoughts and then hate on this book if i have enough energy left

[dim sinew]

final thoughts
||first of all, i would like to post a few quotes from the acknowledgments of this book because i have read all of it so you shall suffer too:||

||so my first acknowledgment is the immense debt of gratitude i owe to these classic crime writers, all women, who have given me such inspiration and joy over the years.||
||istg this man has never met a woman before in his life ||
||the silent patient was written in a state of complete isolation, with no audience in mind and nothing to lose. ||
||yes and it showed ||
||and to kam sangha, for your surname.||

||now talking about the actual book, where the bloody hell do i even begin
the prologue convinced me that the murderer was anyone but edward fosca, i knew michaelides would try so hard to place all the blame on fettuccine (loved this nickname btw LOL) along with a million red herrings but i would NOT FALL FOR IT AGAIN.
the first few chapters are just mariana being grief stricken over her husband’s death, aka hugging his shoes. we find out she’s a therapist, and not only that, but also she’s a terrible one at that! i read through everyone’s comments and the way henry was handled was so unprofessional and dangerous, i need to know where this man studied psychology so i can make sure to never go near that place. it’s so blatantly wrong that im wondering what michaelides thought he was doing with this. he did not cook, and he most definitely did not eat.
while im on the topic about henry, WHY WAS HE EVEN THERE??? like while reading this book i thought ok maybe this is all going to be part of some dumb plot twist but little did i know. henry had no relation to the plot other than to highlight the true extent of mariana as a terrible therapist and human in general ||

||then, mariana goes over to the uni. on the way there though, she meets the infamous FRED. i hate fred with a burning passion. idk if michaelides thought bro was supposed to be the “quirky” character because all i got was someone intrusive who couldn’t take no for an answer, which ig can also be applied to mariana so maybe they are perfect after all. the way she constantly undermines his age though?? he’s a boy funny how you say that when your husband had sex with your niece when she was 15. maybe it was intentional or maybe michaelides is just contradicting himself in every chapter. i think it’s kinda ironic that every man in this book fell for mariana except her own husband, like ???? and the way fred said he loved her after meeting her three times, and even talked about marriage. don’t even get me started on the psychic abilities part. tell me this plot couldnt have worked without fred. you can’t, HE WAS USELESS, LIKE 85% OF ALL THE CHARACTERS PRESENT. mariana i hate you but i hate fred more so just find someone else or better yet, go to naxos and just stay there and stop bothering all of us.
i want to take a moment to appreciate the fact that the maidens were mentioned less than 5 times in this book. im sorry but the book could’ve totally worked without mentioning the cult. more trauma for us. what was the point of the cult?? imagine just having a normal day at uni and you’re sipping your boba when you see these random ahh girls who look like models following some professor my day would be ruined please. it’s giving the secret history. ||

||the way the investigation is conducted is so unprofessional im questioning where michaelides researched this from, ao3??? bold of me to expect normal behavior from characters in a michaelides novel. mariana kept barging into the crime scene, was allowed to look at bodies and readily accepted to interview several people, someone put this woman in prison
edward fosca is surprisingly not the weirdest aspect of this novel, but he’s definitely up there. i don’t even remember anything much about him except the fact that mariana willingly joined him for dinner even after she was convinced he was a murderer, and that he acted so suspicious when confronted about the crimes. he also kissed her out of nowhere??? haven’t you assaulted enough women??????
i want to mention how almost every character in this novel is described as a greek goddess, im not saying i don’t enjoy the lore about tragedies but it’s just a bit excessive, trying to shove it in our faces and all
THEO, THEO, THEO. i hate you so much you little goblin of a man, why the hell can’t you stay in your own book istg the last thing i needed was this guy showing up in every single book. alex michaelides trying to recreate the marvel movies except instead of superheroes we have two incompetent therapists and a guy whose name i can’t even remember. why is he trying to recreate the avengers seriously stop
i think a lot of things in this book have to be changed, including the fact that it’s published. who decided to publish this
the unfiltered pedophilia in this book was…something. zoe being the killer was a bit of a surprise because not only was there no building up to that, but also everything else in the book was so distracting i forgot who she even was. ||

||i actually forgot who a lot of people in this book. in fact, i still have no clue who morris is or why is was having sex with serena. and the random greek guy that was mentioned in one chapter for no reason. and elsie. god elsie was just plan awful.
i think we can all agree that the grove is where all our problems began. the michaelides saga, if you will.
the amount of misogyny in this book is actually crazy the females in this book are so clearly written by a man. every woman in this book is either thirsting after men with less personality than white bread or is a stuck-up cult member. or both, actually. even the motive for the murder was sebastian?? like it was sebastian working through her or something??
WHY DID MARIANA DECIDE TO INVESTIGATE A MURDER THOUGH? why did she waste everyone’s time and brain cells and will to live? i need to be compensated.
everything in this book felt so rushed in general. im not saying i want a longer book but maybe let’s not write 3 page chapters and work on developing the characters eh? the only reason the books flow is because there’s literally no buildup whatsoever so we’re just pushed head on into whatever purgatory this man has created for us next. ||
complete waste of time. nothing gained and everything lost. 1 star.

also im so sorry for rambling but i needed to let the anger out

[raw linden]

wake up babe, choco dropped an essay on The Maidens

reading this rn like

perfect review

reading everyone's reviews was worth paying 10 bucks or whatever for this e-book I swear to GOd

[dim sinew]

we need to publish a book consisting entirely of all the messages in this thread and dedicate it to michaelides

[minor path]

technically it isnt ||but she also just basically enabled him lets be real ||

[minor path]

dont insult ao3 like that ive read fanfics better researched nd written than michaelides books ok

choco your review was a delight to read omg really made my day LMAO

[dim sinew]

||can’t ignore the fact that he showed her his cuts and she thought it wasn’t her concern yeah mariana i change my mind this is on you girl||

[dim sinew]

yeah you’re right michaelides could never compare to the masterpieces on ao3 who let this man write a book

[dim sinew]

count this as compensation for reading this book it’s all you’ll ever get cause the chances of meeting and confronting the man himself is very low

[minor path]

RIGHT THAT WAS CRAZY ||"ik this guy is a serious risk to himself rn however, in my professional opinion, womp womp" like thats insane||

[minor path]

his shit shouldve stayed on wattpad

[minor path]

a man can dream, i like living in england since it gives me a better chance of running into him

[amber lava]

So we're just planning on jumping Alex Michaelides now

[minor path]

absolutely

[dim sinew]

we’ve been planning that since tsp vaude

[dim sinew]

omgggg the possibilities

i want to meet him one day, and just have a talk (or an intervention)

[amber lava]

https://tenor.com/view/cromartie-cromartie-high-school-walk-walking-gif-20992964

Us going to talk to Alex Michaelides

[dim sinew]

guys in the acknowledgments he talked about working on another one

a new book

[restive aspen]

i was only good for one michaelides novel choco

[minor path]

I think my goodreads review of this book got hidden because I said smth like I'd give him a 30 second headstart if I ever saw him irl

[minor path]

PLEASE NO NO MORE

https://tenor.com/view/i-cant-do-it-i-can't-do-it-idk-how-spongebob-i-cant-do-ittt-gif-250336344464710241

[dim sinew]

so who’s gonna host the br for the next one

[dim sinew]

but you need to experience the whole trilogy

and chronologically speaking, this was the perfect starting point it only gets worse from here

[restive aspen]

i dont understand how anyone publishes his stuff

[minor path]

same tbh

I genuinely don't understand how people read his stuff nd are like "this is fucking incredible" like

I feel like every other book I've read that I don't like I can at least understand why other people enjoyed it but michaelides is just a genuinely terrible writer to the point where I don't trust anyone who loves his books

[amber lava]

It was also number 1 on a Goodreads best of the last 5 years or something like that

[dim sinew]

[restive aspen]

yeah i dont understand that at all

but hey, if he can be #1... maybe i can too!

[dim sinew]

i kinda want to incorporate this book into my display name but the only options i can come up with are ‘choco michaelides’ or ‘choco the maiden’

[restive aspen]

choco fosca

[raw linden]

I dig that

I could but I shan't

[dim sinew]

you should do it OMG it’s so perfect

[dim sinew]

what is fosca

[restive aspen]

the professor

[dim sinew]

oh

[restive aspen]

of the maidens

[dim sinew]

[raw linden]

||Either the professor or the... detective? I forget.|| No one is interesting in this

[dim sinew]

my brain chose to forget the traumatic events that took place in this book

[raw linden]

I couldn't name one of the characters besides ||Theo|| in the MLU to save my life

[dim sinew]

he’ll forever be engraved in my mind unfortunately

[raw linden]

we grieve as one

https://tenor.com/view/cats-circle-magic-cursed-seance-gif-8085738

I can honestly say the collective debate of Michaelides' books and the turnout for these novels are so fun

[minor path]

literally the only reason I still read his shit is because of obc ~~specifically choco, I blame you for my trauma ~~

[dim sinew]

don't fool yourself, we're all addicted to his books. it's a collective struggle

[prisma wasp]

LMAO "choco the maiden"

Michaelides would be so proud

maybe you'll be the main character in his next best-seller

[normal vortex]

omg lmao

[dim sinew]

[dim sinew]

can’t get over the trauma so i drown myself in it

[raw linden]

you could sue for likeness

[amber lava]

[vague nest]

I cant with this book.I have up. The three year old writing vie was just too much

[dim sinew]

good for you avialia

[placid heron]

I'm gonna read this next week to see why all of you gave it a rating ranging between 0.5 to 1.5⭐

i haven't had a good experience with this author's works before

[still dune]

i haven't had a
good experience with this
author's works before

- mimosa

[placid heron]

good bot

avialia's dnf review lmaooo

[restive aspen]

this BR needs a special role, but instead of "conqueror" it should be "survivor"

[normal vortex]

REAL

[amber lava]

I will pull a few strings

[normal vortex]

We should be compensated with a group holiday to Greece

[fluid relic]

not group therapy where we sit in circl-

[amber lava]

[dim sinew]

guys we need to sit in a circle surrounding michaelides

[dim sinew]

omg

[candid latch]

@dim sinew,@raw linden,@stuck fractal,@restive aspen,@sick canyon,@normal vortex,@dusk wagon,@vague nest,@wind tiger,@gleaming plinth,@tranquil kraken,@minor path,@vale lodge,@placid heron,@fluid relic,@prisma wasp,@foggy cape,@tired flame,@scenic dragon,@valid coyote,@amber lava

greetings, my dearest hate squad
we’re almost done with this br with just ten more days to go. i know you guys already miss this book so here’s some questions to reignite the passion:

• ||on a scale of 1 to michaelides, how much did mariana’s decisions make you question her sanity?||

• we all know the plot twists in this book were traumatising in the worst way possible but how surprised were you by them?

• ||did the themes of grief, obsession, and trust make you feel anything other than the urge to throw the book across the room? how do you feel about the mental health portrayed in this novel?||

• did the greek mythology references add a sense of other-worldliness to the whole atmosphere/vibe of the book?

• how satisfying was the ending? did alex pull another michaelides? suggest an alternate ending that you would’ve appreciated more.

• what was your favorite part of the book? (to make this a more challenging question, you can’t say the end 🤡)

if anyone needs an extension, let me know!
this has been a very eventful br and im glad i got to trash on all of these books with you guys, i hope you suffered as much as i did. best worst trilogy ever

happy reading obc :D

[restive aspen]

choco not satisfied with already having the most discussed BR ever, needs to stir the pot

[dim sinew]

here’s all the people i have marked down as finished:
jana, alex, pauline, spinch, scarlettsens, discord battle pass (evet), castral, scarlatte, zander, tink, vaude and myself
let me know if i missed anyone

[raw linden]

1. ||I wish I could Mariana and Theo off a cliff.||
2. Negatively surprised at how little I managed to care. I don't even remember who did what
3. Nah
4. How Michaelides managed to fumble a world of such incredible lore and mysticism is beyond me.
5. I'm not risking giving him any more ideas for a sequel.
6. I like how I got it for 0.99 on Kindle

[dim sinew]

only 1650 messages and you call yourselves haters

also i would like to say that my copy has 100 discussion questions (and im convinced michaelides came up with them)

[raw linden]

https://tenor.com/view/jesusisafriend-out-of-this-house-exorcism-cross-church-gif-9309545

[foggy cape]

||

1. Michaelides times 1000. Which woman would go to a dinner in the house of a guy she suspects is a murderer and possible rapist? And then get drunk?
2. idk I did not see them coming but this does not make for a good book in my opinion. Just throwing a weird ending in there does not make for a good plot twist.
3. there were themes like that? maybe I read the wrong book. I read the book on my tablet and the knowledge that I payed around 100€ for it was the only thing that kept me from throwing it around the room. I wish there was a way to aggressively close a kindle book in the same way you can aggressively close a book. the kindle devs should work on that. The portrayal of mental health was something between horrible and dangerous (for people who are actually suffering, for people who might think this is how mental health works)
4. the greek mythology stuff was the one thing I thought was not as terrible. Not super good, but also not terrible.
5. as satisfying as stepping out of the shower and realizing your only towel is wet. I never read another book by Michaelides and never will thanks. Alternate ending: have the MC be killed by Fred, because Fred and creepy prof dude were lovers, and driven mad because they just found out they were also brothers.. The maiden circus was just a decoy because nothing matters anymore and when you just stare long enough into the void, Michaelides will stare back at you.
6. that the MCs creepy husband is dead for real
   ||

spoilers for all the questions because I dont know anymore, this was my first BR in OBC and I am still in this server and that might mean something. not sure what, but something, probably.

[restive aspen]

Question 53: Was it obvious that Michaelides' genius stemmed from his Greek heritage and deep knowledge of controversial academic subjects in the writing?

[dim sinew]

i loved all of these, ||and fred and fosca being lovers but finding out they’re brothers? SEND THAT TO MICHAELIDES ||

[tired flame]

1. || it was the perfect dose of michaelides-infused insanity. ||
2. Oh, the plot twists did take me by surprise, but not in a good way.
3. || when you consider the context of the ending (which I barely remember now), Mariana's grief seems kind of misplaced and confusing. She was grieving for someone that didn't really love her, and wanted her dead. Obsession there's definitely a lot of that, and trust is seemingly non-existent or misplaced. ||
4. The greek myth references were nice, || I liked the lore explaining the Maidens at first, but I also kind of wanted that group to be more like a murderous cult rather than a group of women being groomed by some creepy professor. ||
5. lmfao || I would have preferred if the ending was predictable, even. Like Fosca being behind it all, or even Fred. There was such a deliberate effort to make all the male characters in this book weird except for Sebastian at the very end. Again, I would have preferred if there was more depth to the Maidens, considering that it is literally the name of the book. A murderous cult of girls brainwashed by the professor under the belief that they are "doing the right thing" or "purifying themselves would have been a more interesting premise. I just felt like this weird Zoe-Seb thing lacked any meaningful build-up to it. ||
6. || Just reading all the interactions Marianna had with a literal man in this book And also the unnecessary Theo Faber insert was funny as hell — it was just missing the Avengers theme song ||
   I'm sure I had more meaningful thoughts just after reading the book. Now I barely remember what happened LOL

[dim sinew]

avengers is so real

[tired flame]

omg || I forgot about the mental health stuff. That was sooooo bad! Marianna sucks as a therapist too ||

[foggy cape]

yeah I had to remember a lot of my hatred for this book, there have been so many great books since I read this. :D

[tired flame]

also thanks choco for hosting the br! As much as this book pissed me off, I genuinely enjoyed reading and having conversations about it here. It made me realise how much of a uniting force Michaelides' books can be

[tired flame]

this basically (spoilers for the ending)

[dim sinew]

wait ||HE WAS SLEEPING WITH ALL THE MAIDENS????|| what the hell

[raw linden]

I kinda perceived this from the moment ||we established a power dynamic slash elite university cult with all the "Maidens" so to make this your plot twist was... a choice.||

https://tenor.com/view/tatianna-choices-rupaul-all-rupaulsdragraceallstars-gif-5947779

[restive aspen]

1. || mariana was totally a self-insert just gender-swapped. definitely a michaelides on the scale ||
2. google managed to spoil who the killer was for me and somehow that made me more angry because i still had to finish the rest of the book
3. michaelides needs to take his own therapeutic advice
4. || the references were about 1 step above random, which actually fit nicely ||
5. || nope. whole book was a misdirect, starting with the title and the first sentence on page 1. to suggest an alternate ending would be to write my own entire book ||
6. i guess || when the maidens dunked on mariana. self-own for michaelides there ||

[restive aspen]

holup please tell me you did not actually pay €100 for this book

[sick canyon]

I think she means the ereader

Tablet whatever was €100

[restive aspen]

lol yeah

[restive aspen]

ohhhhh phew i was so upset for a second

[sick canyon]

[minor path]

1. michaelides
2. i wasnt surprised at all tbh ||i said from the beginning that zoe was the killer nd honestly even if i then went onto predict it being fred i still said zoe originally LMAO||
3. ||oh no it made me want to throw this book across the room. also it was fucking awful yet again, as someone whos entire life seems to revolve around dealing with mental health professionals nd services in the UK though michaelides did portray them accurately. largely incompetent LMAO||
4. no it made me hate greek mythology
5. the ending fucking sucked nd thats all ill say on the matter. ||alternative ending is that cambridge blows up nd kills all the characters ||
6. ok if the end doesnt, count, ive got to say ||at the beginning when henry randomly pulls up his shirt nd shows the self harm just on his chest. 10/10 that made me laugh purely because it was so theatrical nd random, nd clearly just there to be like "look how crazy henry is!!1!1!!!!" as opposed to being any kind of positive rep of people who s/h. im not saying michaelides should be like "yeah its cool to do that!!!" its more like showing them as normal people nd not having it as a device to make a character seem more unhinged||

[fluid relic]

• ||Michaelides obviously. Sometimes I feel like Mariana needs therapy as much as the group therapy members because all her decisions are... Its like the blind leading the blind, and that makes me question if Michaelides's knowledge in the practice is wrong or the practice im wjatever location he lives in is bad, or he just loves misrepresentation||
• surprised and utimately disappointed ||It could have the best possible plot twist (like Fosca, or the Seer boy, but somehow Michaelides put shit outta his ass and present it to us proudly like its the greatest train of thoughts ever||
• ||I think the themes are great if explored with knowledge and care, but obviously he only watch psych 101 thru youtube- that's why he only knows Freud, so everything is related to toilet training and who should have mommy and daddy issues. Sorry.||
• Nope, Greek is great but what the hell ||this book doesnt even reference the greek myth other than the naming||
• I applaud him of his consistency, really. ||Alternative ending that I would love: get everyone a real licensed therapist and not Mariana||
• oh my... ||I think my favorite part is when Mariana goes to her therapist and her therapist said she got daddy issues.||

[foggy cape]

Haha yes, I read on an Android tablet:D
I got the book for a few cents on sale, didnt know what it was about and just got it because I thought the cover looked nice and I heard Michaelides was popular. Oh well

[restive aspen]

haha good, on sale is ideal

[prisma wasp]

my heart actually skipped a beat when I saw the ping on this channel, I completely forgot this book thank the lord

1. ||LMAO, definitely Michaelides level, agreeing to have diner with a guy that she was sure was the murderer and then drinking wine throughout the entire night was definitely a Michaelides mind-blowing decision||
2. I mean, I didn't see it coming but that doesn't mean I liked it or that I think it was good, it was really weird and convoluted.
3. I didn't throw anything across the room because I read it on my Kobo and that thing was expensive and I love it, but man...
4. Nop LMAO, I love mythology but I felt like that plot just pasted there so Michaelides could say his book has mythology in it.
5. I would prefer if they all died in the end tbh, just put them all out of their misery...
6. Hate-reading it, writing comments about it and reading everyone else's comments here

[raw linden]

Love these final reviews. Get him while he's down

[gleaming plinth]

Starting this now

[sick canyon]

I keep forgetting about this book lol

Good luck

[dim sinew]

[foggy cape]

Your brain wants to protect you

[sick canyon]

Prob

[vale lodge]

I'm gonna try to get this done today

[vale lodge]

Part 4 Ch 13-14: ||This is somehow a more unhinged group therapy session than the one at the beginning of the book.||
Part 4 Ch 16: ||Oh, Fred's writing a book about his mother and how she left him, is he? ||
Part 4 Ch 17: ||Fred feels rejected, so he's gonna take a walk... and kill another girl! Also Henry, yikes. Girl, what he did isn't your fault.||

[vale lodge]

Part 5: ||I'm gonna kick Alex Michaelides's ass||

[raw linden]

https://i.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExdjlnYm9waXhxYWd0ZG51ejR6Y2xsMHd4NGtjZjhlemZzam84dDZ0ZiZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9cw/WDullCz7Nwg5rn8xRa/giphy.gif

[vale lodge]

Part 6 Ch 2: ||This master plan is garbage. I mean, it probably would have worked with how incompetent everyone is, but like... wtf.||
Part 6 Ch 3: ||OH SO FOSCA IS STILL GUILTY OF DOING CREEPY CULT SHIT? AND MORRIS IS ACTUALLY GUILTY OF BLACKMAILING FOSCA??? Whyyyy. I feel like it's just Michaelides giving a consolation prize to Mariana and the readers. Like, I get that Fosca is creepy no matter what, but ugh.||

[dim sinew]

i see you’re enjoying this

[vale lodge]

Finished ||Very dumb, as expected. But it was a lot more boring than expected. I could hardly care less what happened in the book tbh, and the only reason I didn't DNF was because of OBC The characters were all dumb and bland. The plot twist sucked and made no sense.||

||Mariana is kinda the worst. She's so intellectual but she railroads Fosca for no reason other than vibes (though I guess those vibes were justified in the end?). She honestly makes the dumbest decisions at every turn, like going to meet with people SHE HIGHLY SUSPECT ARE KILLERS IN THE MOST ISOLATED PLACES. Letting this random kid Fred involved without directing any iota of suspicion at him and how he wants to insert himself into this murder investigation. Not really investigating Zoe's connection with the Maidens and how Fosca is her professor. Like, how did you not find out that Zoe was a Maiden before one of them explicitly telling you she is?||

||Also Michaelides does not know how to write women at all good lord. A lot of scenes dealing with how Mariana is insecure because she's not young and beautiful and how all her problems in college were because she wasn't pretty enough. How maybe she likes these men that fall in love with her as soon as she walks in the door even though they kiss her without her consent and follow her around. ||

[gleaming plinth]

finished part 1~~ sorry choco i might be a couple hours late with finishing this book~~
||so far i dont hate it its kinda meh and im not a fan of the elitist vibes also Mariane is kinda annoying and i dont understand how she feels entitled to bud in on the investigation also that group therepy session was so shit like i have gone to a little bit of group therapy and that wasnt like that||

[gleaming plinth]

Almost halfway through
Listening to the audiobook on 3x speed was a good idea

Part 2 chapter 14 ||A 29 year old dating a 36 year old isn't that much of an age gap ||

[gleaming plinth]

Finished part 2
||They keep saying that Tara was killed at 22 but how did they get such an exact time of death also reading this right after finishing Dark places was a bad idea Like with dark places I was hooked and wanted to know what was going on and tried to figure it out where with this im just like meh Mariana could be stabbed to death on the next page and I wouldn't feel a thing||

Part 3 chapter 1||SHE IS JUST GONNA GO IN AND CONTAMINATE THE CRIME SCENE is she stupid ||

Part 3 chapter 3 || why does it seem like every male character who meets Mariana wants to bang her at this point I won't be surprised if these murders are done as an attempt to get her attention ||

I'm gonna try and get some sleep since it's 3 am and then I will finish it when I wake up
Sorry for being late again for a br deadline

[sick canyon]

No Maidens Reader Left Behind

[gleaming plinth]

Finished part 3 || I honestly don't care if he is guilty or not Mariana is still completely out of line honestly if I was the police I would look towards her as a suspect with how intensely she is digging around this case Like she has no training in law or crime at all and somehow still think she knows better than everyone else ||

[gleaming plinth]

Part 4 chapter 7 ||not an Alex Michaelides connected universe ||

[fluid relic]

||🥺she knows🥺because🥺she🥺got🥺group🥺therapy🥺license🥺 (/jk, probably? i dont even know if she had one)||

[gleaming plinth]

finished part 4 ||how can Morris be a subject if he was Foscas Alibi like then he would also be in the conversation when the murder happend||

finished part 5 ||okay that twist came out of nowhere ||

okay i finished the book ||It was so meh like i understand needing a twist Alex but you actually have to make us invested and give us clues i dont have that feeling of going "oh that makes sense" that i love after mysteries im not sure what else to say about this book since it was so meh and i will honestly forget all about it in a minute || 2/5 stars

[normal vortex]

2/5????

[tired flame]

i read this thinking you were referring to OBC alex like yea cmon Alex you need to step up your game /j

[gleaming plinth]

is that to generous
i feel like i have read worse and it was a quick read so i didnt end up simmering in my hate

[raw linden]

[candid latch]

@dim sinew,@raw linden,@stuck fractal,@restive aspen,@sick canyon,@normal vortex,@dusk wagon,@vague nest,@wind tiger,@gleaming plinth,@tranquil kraken,@minor path,@vale lodge,@placid heron,@fluid relic,@prisma wasp,@foggy cape,@tired flame,@scenic dragon,@valid coyote,@amber lava

hey everyone,
(so sorry for the late announcement 😭)
we did it! we survived the maidens! we came out pretty much okay and i think it’s safe to say some of you are never picking up another michaelides book again

reading the michaelides extended universe has truly been a horror and im glad i got to share the experience and hate with you all

here are all the people i have marked down as reading (let me know if i missed your name)
jana, alex, pauline, spinch, scarlettsens, evet, castral, scarlatte, zander, tink, vaude, choco, vetrina and amanda

if michaelides ever publishes another book one day, i hope atleast some of you can join me in this journey of never ending pain and we can create more traumatic memories together

happy reading obc :D

[dim sinew]

thank you everyone for joining me for this br i know how hard this was for everyone

[stuck fractal]

choco i would love to join you on another michaelides trip!!! thanks for hosting

[minor path]

tysm for hosting choco!!! though keep your eye on your mailbox, my lawyers will be in touch about you paying for my therapy

[dim sinew]

[raw linden]

'twas as pleasure and you can sign me up for all the future "psychological" (heavy air-quotes) thrillers Michaelides will pull out his ass

[dim sinew]

who needs therapy when there’s another michaelides book on the way

[minor path]

id say “im never touching anything this man releases again” but i said that after TSP then i said that after the fury nd here we are so i already know when a new one comes out i know ill immediately cave to peer pressure

[dim sinew]

i remember how easy it was to convince you to read the fury

[minor path]

i think id forgotten the trauma that TSP had inflected on me atp nd i was like “lol itll be funny, it cant be as bad as the silent patient was” nd then it was as bad as the silent patient nd i was shocked

for whatever hell comes next with mr michaelides im at least going to pretend to put up a fight before i cave

[dim sinew]

we’ll see about that

[raw linden]

@minor path the sound that came out of my mouth

absolute mood

[restive aspen]

thanks for hosting choco

[minor path]

reading Michaelides books really is just summed up to “it cant be that bad” nd then 5 or so hours later just “oh my god, it was somehow worse”

[normal vortex]

Thanks for hosting

It’s fun to be a hater

Also these points will turn me into a Book Eel. How ironic

[minor path]

honestly yeah i cant deny, reading his books makes me feel like im getting brain damage but ranting nd hating on them with you all is so fun

[amber lava]

Thanks for the read, Choco! I'm convinced to join you for the next Michaelides book

[tired flame]

Thanks for hosting Choco! This was fun