“Death was no stranger to Mariana. It had been her traveling companion since she was a child keeping close behind her, hovering just over her shoulder. She sometimes felt she’d been cursed as if by some malevolent goddess in a Greek myth to lose everyone she ever loved.”

If you are already a fan of Alex Michaelides and The Silent Patient, you already have this gem on your TBR. The Maidens is a high tension, psychological thriller that races through a narrative littered with twists and turns. When the resolution emerges you will be stunned. The Silent Patient was a book that got passed hand to hand as people recommended it around the building where I work. This one is sure to get the same treatment. My interest here was doubled because it crossed my radar while I was hunting Greek Mythology titles. Set across the college campus at Cambridge, young women fall victim to deadly violence inspired by Greek Tragedy. Mariana goes to support her niece, Zoey, in the wake of the violence and must also unpack the burdensome secrets of her own husband’s recent tragic death. A labyrinth-like tale that allows you to hear from the murderer throughout, revealing his truth in tiny doses directly to you as Mariana searches for clues to prove his guilt. Short tight chapters and charged emotions propel the plot at breakneck speed. While I enjoyed The Silent Patient, I found The Maidens more accessible and propulsive to read.

The dual narrative, translated Greek and pin drop tension played so much better as an audiobook than this one would have as a print read for me.

Dark academia meets psychological thriller. Yes, please.

As someone who reads (and usually figures out) a lot of mysteries, the goal for me is to always feel a little unsure of my hypothesis. This book certainly achieved that. While I had guessed the ending, the ride to the reveal was intriguing and kept me on edge waiting to see what would happen next.

One of my favorite tropes is the dual narrative that features the killer. Listening to the audiobook version of this was a great, atmospheric experience. It built a lot of tension, and definitely had me wondering if there was anything lurking in the shadows while I listened.

***Thank you to Macmillan audio for providing me with a copy of the audiobook for free via NetGalley for an unbiased review.

I wasn't a big fan of The Silent Patient but the hype on this one made me want to try it. Some books just don't draw me in and apparently that's Alex Michaelides writing.

Thank you #NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for this ARC of The Maidens Audiobook!

TBH, I have not yet read The Silent Patient. It has been on to be read list for awhile, but I just haven't gotten to it yet. So going in, I had no expectations of Alex Michaelides.

"Death was no stranger to Mariana."

The story revolves around Mariana Andros, a brilliant psychologist and recent widow. She is contacted by her niece Zoe late one night to tell her to watch the news - a young woman has been murdered near Cambridge University. The student was a close friend of Zoe's, and Mariana begins to investigate the murder. Through conversation with Zoe, she quickly begins suspect to suspect a professor at the university - Edward Fosca. Professor Fosca is a young American who teaches Greek tragedy at Cambridge and has a private study group of girls known as The Maidens. The Maidens adore Fosca and would do anything to please him. Could they be involved too? Mariana is thrown headfirst into the dark underbelly of the university in her search for answers as she begins to unravel herself from dealing with her own grief and loss.

I am not usually a reader of psychological thrillers, but I LOVED this book. I could not stop listening from the moment I started. Usually, I only listen to audiobooks on my commute, but this one I continued listening to even after I came home. The story drew me in completely.

Things I loved:
- The Mystery: The entire time I was rooting for Mariana to figure out who the murderer was because I just had to know. I will say that I was completely surprised by the ending.
- The Greek Mythology: I loved how Michaelides weaved Greek mythology and tragedy throughout the story. As a huge fan of these stories, it was incredible to see his inspiration.
- The Emotional Levels: This story is a story of grief and loss - mainly examined through Mariana's point of view, and Michaelides handles it beautifully.
- The Narration: If you want an audiobook to listen to, stop right here - you've found it! The story is told from two alternate points of view: Mariana and a mysterious man who tells us disturbing memories of his abusive childhood. The narration provided Louise Brealey and Kobna Holdbrook-Smith of these two characters were top-notch.. Brealey's dramatic reading helped continue along the dread and suspense I already felt from the story, and Holdbrook-Smith's male narration was perfectly creepy to make me fear him.

Things I didn't love (not much, but to give a well-rounded review):
- The Ending: Without spoilers, the ending did throw me off. I really was taken aback by it because I didn't see it coming at all. I am not saying it was bad, but it just felt out of the blue. But as not a typical reader of the genre, this may be typical.

I can see how this book may not be everyone's cup of tea (see what I did there?!) with it's slower pace and dark tones. However, I am rating this one a 5/5 because I have not read a book this quickly in a long time. I highly recommend this book, especially the audiobook!

I applaud Alex. Another big hit.. I loved the characters and the story line.
The best part was the audio version. Perfection.
Now I wait for another Alex Michaelides book to come out.

A little disappointed in this one. I guessed a major part of the ending right from the beginning, so I felt a little let down.

Regardless, I was entertained the whole time and I enjoyed the pacing.

I’d recommend this to fans of thrillers and mystery!

I find that so many books of 2021 have been disappointing, “meh” reads for me. 2020 was so full of incredible books, but it seems this year is destined to be “just okay”.

THIS book, though… one of the most anticipated books of the year was different. Unfortunately, I don’t mean that in a good way. This book actually angered me. A lot. Plodding, disjointed, red herring after red herring, plot holes everywhere, and a “big reveal” that is so ludicrous that I felt robbed of the time I actually spent making my way through it. This author also seems to be absolutely awful at creating believable female characters. Has anyone else read this yet who actually agrees with me? I can’t be the only one, can I?

So many people loved The Silent Patient (in my opinion, marginally better than this one) and have been eagerly awaiting this follow up. It’s destined to be a best-seller regardless of my feelings about it. I’m sure folks out there will love it. It just was not for me. At all.

Note: I received an advanced copy of The Maidens from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I received a free ARC of this audiobook by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

The Maidens caught my interest because although it is a murder mystery novel, it's steeped in Ancient Greek literature and mythology and is set at Cambridge University. Also Alex Michaelides quickly sprung up out of nowhere with his first novel, The Silent Patient, which earned rave reviews and became a huge bestseller in 2019 (I haven't read it yet). The main character of the novel is Mariana, who is a group psychologist and is recently grieving the tragic unexpected death of her husband while they were on vacation in Greece. She rushes to her alma mater when her niece calls her sobbing because her best friend, Tara, was just found gruesomely murdered. Less than an hour before the murder of, Tara had informed the niece that she was terrified her Classics professor was going to murder her. [Open scene]

It took me a very longtime to finish this relatively short novel, and I sadly don't have a lot of positives to say about it. Although the setting is fascinating and the Ancient Greek theme piqued my initial interest, the plot felt like a trudge for the first 85% of the novel and then the ending came in a frenzied messy rush. Also the ending made very little sense, lacking the hidden clues scattered throughout the building of the plot that allows the mystery reader to have that exciting lightbulb moment when everything falls into place. There were also A LOT of plot threads that are never explained and that are left dangling unanswered forever. I find myself wondering whether Michaelides rushed the writing of this novel because of how everything was executed beyond the initial set-up. Overall it led to a disappointing experience. The main idea was there but it wasn't executed well, in any aspect.

And the last thing that is a personal pet peeve of mine is that our main character, Mariana, is a textbook Mary Sue. Almost every man she met was immediately enraptured with her beauty and tried to wine and dine her although they'd never had an in-depth conversation with her beyond what was her name. And beyond that there wasn't much character development.

I was so excited when I received the audiobook from Macmillan Audio, and I jumped right in feet first. So I'm personally a little heartbroken that in the end I'm giving The Maidens 2 out of 5 stars.

I was really nervous to read this book because The Silent Patient was perfection for me…that being said, I really enjoyed The Maidens.

You think you know…but you have no idea. This is the diary of The Maidens. I’m really not sure how to explain it more than that, ha! The Maidens is a secret society of Professor Edward Fosca’s special students and when they start turning up dead, all signs point to him.

I loved how I was never sure of my thoughts. There was a character that I thought may not be alive, but more of a voice in the head kind of situation. I thought I figured out the ending a few times but I definitely did not. Like, not even close. And I absolutely LOVED getting little reminders of the characters from Silent Patient!!!

It took me a little while to get into this book, but once I did, it really grabbed me. To me, this was even better than Michaelides's first book, The Silent Patient - a bar that was hard to surpass!

Mariana Andros is a group therapist in London, grieving the somewhat recent and unexpected death of her husband/college sweetheart, Sebastian. Although she's going through tough times, she has a responsibility towards her niece, Zoe. Upon hearing that Zoe's best friend has been murdered at Cambridge University, where Mariana herself was once a student, Mariana rushes to the college to support her niece. When she arrives and learns more about the murder, she meets Edward Fosca, a handsome, charismatic, mysterious Greek tragedy professor who privately tutors a beautiful, elite group of female students called "The Maidens."

Zoe tells Mariana that Fosca threatened to kill Zoe right before she died, and although he has an alibi for her murder, Mariana isn't convinced he's innocent. In fact, she's convinced that Fosca is a stone-cold murderer. One by one, more Maidens turn up dead, and Mariana dives deeper into her investigation of Fosca, trying to understand the psychology of the group, and how the beautiful, mythical stories of the Greek tragedies may or may not play a role in these murders.

I loved the atmosphere of this book, too. Not only is it dark academia to a T, but it's just genuinely creepy and spine-tingling in a way that I haven't felt with a book for a long time. Watching Mariana unfold this mystery was fascinating on its own, let alone the last ~5% which swings a left turn that knocked my socks off. I saw another reviewer say that they could see the "whodunit" resolution from a mile away - and I have to say, we must have been reading a different book, because the "mystery solved" moment was totally unexpected for me. Michaelides throws so many hints and red herrings in the last quarter of this book that I was suspecting just about every character by the end.

The only nitpicky thing issue that I have with this book is multiple characters being a bit too obsessed with Mariana's beauty, to the point where she's let into murder investigations, proposed marriage to, and more just because she's pretty. Not my favorite plot point.

Overall, a wonderfully thrilling dark academia mystery, for fans of Michaelides' previous works and many more. Thank you to the publisher for the ARC via Netgalley!

2.5 rounded up. When her niece's friend is murdered at university, Mariana comes to offer emotional support but stays to solve the murder.

Michaelides has a beautiful style of writing that is reminiscent of Tana French, a slow burn of a plot primarily advanced with character dialogue. I enjoyed the characters and was surprised by the ending but I had a hard time getting behind the premise of the story because I didn't believe many of the character's motivations. Mariana was especially problematic to me because she choses to stay on campus and try to solve the murder with no qualifications or solid motivations to do so. I could have bought into the story more if her colleague working with the police invited her to help or if the university asked her to stay and conduct group therapy sessions. Instead her actions felt forced for the sake of the overall plot. She's also a character that everyone immediately falls in love with, which pushes her to be more of an idea of person rather than a complex character. Overall, it was an interesting concept and Michaelides surprised me with the ending, but it just fell a little flat.

I liked this book. I think I love tie-ins...this book had so many tie-ins from The Silent Patient, which I read awhile ago, that it really made me think back and get excited for the next character to show up and see how they all connect. Stephen King does this all the time and I love it. This is a standalone book for sure, but if you read The Silent Patient first you might enjoy those mentions like I did. This isn't my favorite book by this author, but I like his interest in the Gods and mythology. That has always been interesting to me. I enjoyed it. I will continue to read this author in the future.

I was concerned by the cover and some of the reviews I had read that this book would be too dark for my liking. While there were definitely some dark parts and subject matter, it was written in a light way. I felt a sense of foreboding, but not depression as I listened.

This is not a fast paced thriller, it is, instead, a look into the relationships between Marianna and her niece Zoe and late husband, Sebastian.

The book did take an unexpected turn at the very end that I didn’t care for, which ultimately lowered my rating of the book. I’m not at all disappointed in the time I spent listening. In fact, I’m now even more excited to read The Silent Patient which is sitting on my bookshelf.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for ALC’s of this book.

Where to start... Marianna is a group therapist with some interesting clients. When she gets a phone call from her niece about a murder of a friend, she travels to Cambridge to support Zoe and help solve the case. Dead set on proving a Professor is to blame Marianna has a hard time seeing the evidence around her.

This is a book of many characters with undeveloped history. I feel like the timeline and development of this novel was rushed and had multiple plugs only for further sales. The ending was not surprising but very disturbing. I expected more from the second book from the same author as The Silent Patient.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Mariana, a psychologist, is still in mourning over her husband’s untimely death. She’s truly all alone in the world, having also lost her parents and sister. Zoe, the niece she took in after her sister’s death, is all she has left.

When Zoe calls with news of her friend’s murder, Mariana travels to Cambridge, where Zoe is a student. A professional colleague of Mariana’s draws her into the investigation, and it doesn’t take long for all suspicions to be focused on Professor Fosca, the creepy but magnetic professor who is beloved by his students and has a secret society comprised of seven girls, the “maidens”. Mariana is convinced of his guilt and will stop at nothing to prove it, especially after another murder of one of the maidens.

I enjoyed the mystery but what the author pulled off so well was the atmosphere of Cambridge, as well as Mariana’s character with her troubled past and struggles with grief. I enjoyed the nod to a Greek tragedy, but it wasn’t overdone and there’s no need to be well versed in Greek mythology (I’m not!).

Red herrings abound, and I turned my suspicious eye on nearly every character at different parts of the story. Even if the reveal wasn’t a complete surprise there was still a twist that took me completely by surprise.

This was a fun book to play armchair detective with Marilayce, my friend and reading buddy. I dare say we weren’t very good at it with this one, but it was fun speculating!

· I received both the digital e-book as well as the audiobook via NetGalley. I ended up preferring the audio, narrated by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith And Louise Brealey, because it was so well done.

Book 45 of the year was The Maidens by Alex Michaelides. I'm a little behind on finishing the illustrations but was lucky enough to have been sent an early release copy of this one thanks to the publisher and netgalley.

After reading this author's first novel earlier this year I was very excited about his second book. While I did enjoy this one, The Silent Patient out ranked this one for me by a bit. It had a slow start for me, by half way I was starting to feel invested and really question what was going on. I was able to see some twists coming but I was suprised by a few. All in all a good thriller.

This was one where I needed to know what was going to happen! I was a fan of The Silent Patient, so this was one I was very excited to read.

I finished.
I hated it.

I'm only giving three stars, because the ending really is done quite well and I certainly didn't guess who the killer was. Alex Michaelides does, as every review says, utilize red herrings in several ways, but in the process he leaves a lot of holes. The Maidens is not as well done as The Silent Patient, it feels rushed and contrived, like he wrote to meet expectations of a sophomore novel versus writing for the actual story. The killer POV chapters were just terrible and actually left me more confused. Basically, I wouldn't read this again and I wouldn't recommend it. I do think a lot of readers and fans will love it though and I think it's unfortunate I don't, but it is what it is.

The audiobook narration is quite fantastic though and if this story is your cup of tea I do recommend it.

I wasn’t a fan of <i>The Silent Patient,</i> so I went into <i>The Maidens</i> with caution. I was enjoying it at first, but it quickly became frustrating for several reasons.

I just couldn’t understand why Mariana was so obsessed with the murders or why she felt the need to insert herself so much. It is one thing for a character to play “detective” when they are deeply impacted by a crime, but these crimes had nothing to do with Mariana! She is described as a “brilliant therapist,” yet her thoughts and actions never reflected this brilliance (instead, she consistently commits ethical violations), and it was easy to forget that she was a therapist at all. Her character, as well as the rest of the characters, were underdeveloped.

Next, the amount of misdirection and red herrings was honestly a bit ridiculous, especially because most of them seemed random and irrelevant to the story. And they didn’t even work! I was able to figure out who the murderer was very early on in the book, although I did not predict the big twist until just before it was revealed. The reveal itself was unsatisfying and poorly handled – it was one of those reveals that is for shock value more than anything else.

Thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan Audio for providing me with an advanced listening copy in exchange for an honest review.

I really didn't enjoy the audio book and the narrator made the family character sound very very whiny.