Not the best, not the worst, Alex Michaelides sophomore novel The Maidens ended up being a middling read for me. Following up a mega-success like The Silent Patient was always going to be an uphill battle, but I just don’t think this one had the style or substance of Michaelides’ previous work.
The premise here was undeniably compelling. I’m always game for a good academia murder-mystery! Mariana is a therapist in London, who receives a frantic phone call from her niece after a friend of hers has been found murdered at Cambridge. Mariana rushes over to help console her niece, Zoe, and eventually starts investigating the death herself. A strange group of female students, known as The Maidens, draw Mariana’s focus, not least of all because at the center of their cohort is an unsettling professor, who seems to have a strange hold over the young women.
I think my biggest complaint while reading would have to be that I was just bored for so much of it. Michaelides writes in a very readable style, with easily consumable, short chapters, but I kept waiting to be swept away by a plot wave that never came. In order for a slow burn to be pulled off successfully there needs to be a good amount of tension simmering throughout, and I just never felt on the edge of my seat in that way. Did I want to know what would happen next? Sure, but did I tear through the pages to try to find out? Not really.
The characters were also a little underdeveloped for me as well. Most were pretty one-dimensional, so it was difficult to connect with them or even get a read on their motivations. And in my opinion, the author majorly over-used red herrings. There were so many that it started to feel like a coi herring pond full of them. Every single male character was creepy and weird. Every single female character was malicious or helpless. Additionally, Michaelides has a background in psychology and Greek mythology, so it wasn’t a huge surprise to see those topics included in both of his books. But something about Mariana’s psychology credibility here felt insincere, so any time she used those credentials to glean access to crucial information, I had trouble buying into it.
There were a couple of twists that I didn’t necessarily think were the most likely outcomes, but I still had considered possibilities. So I don’t think I can claim that I truly ‘guessed the ending’, though I still didn’t feel thoroughly surprised in the way I assume the author was going for. I was completely blindsided while reading The Silent Patient at multiple points in the story, and for me The Maidens just didn’t deliver in the same way.
The pacing nearing the end picked up significantly, which I liked, even if the ending itself felt a little rushed. I don’t know, I’m seeing reviews all over the place for this one, so I get the feeling this is going to be a book most people are going to want to experience for themselves. And while I’m not going to put this on any must-read lists of 2021, I think it’s still going to be an entertaining enough thriller for a lot of readers.