Book Review: The Maidens by Alex Michaelides
February 24, 2025
Okay, so if you have been around for a moment, you know that I am a big fan of Alex and love the intense amount of twists and turns that he includes, and after reading this book I feel like I need to go back and read this book again and read The Silent Patient again. I loved this book and I am nervous that I will reveal something in the plot so I am going to be as brief as I can be with this review. All of this to be said, I will put this book as number two in my favorites that Alex has written with The Silent Patient first and The Fury being last. This book is my first five star of the year, and I am excited to see what other five star reads I come across this year but here we go.
We follow the story of a woman named Marianna who is a group therapist living in London and has recently lost her husband. She gets a call from her niece, who she and her husband were surrogate parents for, saying that her closest friend has been murdered. She is frantic and scared and Marianna does what any good parent would do, and drops everything to go and be with her. Zoe is going to school in Cambridge, at the same school that she and her late husband, Sebastian, went to together, and it is hard seeing his ghost in the halls and at the pubs they used to go to together, but she needs to be there for Zoe. Marianna is pretty convinced that the murder happened at the hands of the dashingly handsome, cult favorite professor, Edward Fosca, but he has an alibi: the maidens. This group of young women who is absolutely obsessed with Edward seems fishy and oddly protective of the professor and Marianna is fully convinced that there is something fishy going on, but when there is a second murder, and this girl was also part of his elite group of maidens, she cannot help but think he is behind this murder too. How can she convince the police that they need to look deeper into this character? Why can’t they see all the red flags that she does? And why does it feel like everyone is hiding something, even her beloved Zoe?
I cannot recommend this book enough. I love Alex’s work. This book I did listen to, and I would highly recommend that for any of his books because I was unable to jump ahead and skim over details to ruin it for myself. There was a point there at the end, while everything was unraveling, that I really wanted to jump ahead, but I am so glad that I didn’t because it reveled more to me than just jumping to the punch line would. I loved this book and would suggest it to anyone and everyone who likes mysteries, thrillers, and anything to do with psychology.
Last thought that includes a spoiler:
The characters from The Silent Patient made an appearance in this book and now I feel like I missed something in The Fury or feel like I needed to have read them in a certain order, but I would not be mad about re reading all three of his books so far. I really hope he keeps writing because I adore his work.
