Alicia Berenson seemed to have the perfect marriage – a famous painter married to an equally famous fashion photographer – until she was found standing over her husband’s dead body after shooting him five times in the face. Since that night, Alicia has not said one word, none at her trial and none at the Grove, the secure psychiatric unit where she is held. Theo Faber, a criminal psychotherapist who is obsessed by Alicia’s story, takes a job at the Grove where he hopes to get Alicia to talk in order to figure out what really happened the night her husband was killed.
The premise of this book drew me in – a woman refusing to talk after murdering her husband. Was she not talking because she was so traumatized by that night? Did she witness something horrible happening? Was she guilty and just didn’t care? I was super intrigued as to what the reason was for Alicia’s silence.
I was also curious about what Theo Faber would bring to the story. Was he going to be some great and compassionate therapist? Was there going to be some backstory where Alicia was just overly medicated and as soon as Theo came in and changed her medication, then she would talk? I really hoped this wouldn’t be a book where the therapist and patient fell in love and then the truth came out.
I am not a therapist or have any sort of medical background so I can’t talk about whether the scenes in the psychiatric unit were realistic or not. There did seem to be a lack of personnel and security for a facility that was supposed to be holding dangerous criminals. There was one woman at the Grove who was violent and strident and I wondered if a psychiatric unit would really house violent and non-violent people together in the same unit.
There were also a couple of things that didn’t make sense. For instance, when Theo first enters the psychiatric unit he has to give up his lighter because no weapons are allowed, but then he is shown constantly smoking in and outside the unit. How is he doing this if he has no lighter?
The book is interspersed with entries from Alicia’s journal in the days and months leading up to her husband’s death. I found the journal entries interesting just because they were not written like what I would consider a normal journal entry. They had dialogue and seemed to be written in real-time. At one point, the writing cuts off mid-sentence because Alicia thinks there is an intruder in the house. If you thought there was an intruder in your home, would you be writing in your journal?
This book is a pretty quick read with many chapters only being a couple pages. It was easy to read just “one more chapter” and the writing style was perfect for a psychological thriller. I’m not going to lie – I did not see the ending coming and I was surprised at the end.
I think this book might make a good movie
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