Book Review #111: The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

I was looking forward to reading this book. I didn't love Michaelides' first book, 'The Silent Patient', but I enjoyed the twist and knew that I definitely wanted to read another of his works.

Mariana is grieving. When she gets a call about a murder on her old university campus she travels to Cambridge to support her niece, pushing back thoughts of her late husband. But when Mariana gets to Cambridge and meets Edward Fosca, everything becomes clear - he is a murderer, and she has to prove it before he strikes again.

This book wasn't great. A few problems I had with it were similar to the problems I had with 'The Silent Patient', but this book also comes with its own problems too!

There was too much description of things I didn't care about, and things that didn't move the story forward. Setting the scene is great, but beyond that, I would have preferred more plot points than pointless descriptions.

Much of the story is centred around Mariana's grief for her late husband Sebastian, so much so that this grief formed the main part of her personality. But as the reader, I never felt like I got Sebastian. We never really got told anything about him, his personality never came through when Mariana thought of him (even in flashbacks), and he just never felt real. 

In fact, we never get to know any character other than Mariana. And because we never develop closeness with any other character, revealing any character as the murderer would have the same effect. We have to care about the murderer to be truly shocked when they are revealed - this is done much better in Michaelides' first book.

There were too many characters to keep track of, and a few that were slotted in just to have them as a suspect. One character in particular, from Mariana's life in London, brought absolutely nothing to the story, and certainly didn't need to be seen in Cambridge too.

My biggest problem with the story is that Mariana's conviction for the main suspect comes out of nowhere, makes little sense, takes up most of the story, and is used to stop the author from developing any other character. It just doesn't work - and the way it's written makes it obvious that this one suspect cannot be the murderer - because everyone in the story is trying too hard to make us believe he is.

Having said that, the writing was great, and the atmosphere of the story was created really well. My problems are solely with the plot and characters.

Overall, of the author's books, I'd definitely recommend the first more than this one. But in general, there are much better murder mysteries to read, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it.

2/5