“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
The Maidens was the second book that I read by Alex Michaelides with The Silent Patient being my first. The Maidens is set in the same world as The Silent Patient, even allowing us to see a couple of The Silent Patient’s characters. Whereas the big twist in The Silent Patient got me, The Maidens throws so many suspicious people our way that I suspected everyone of being a murderer. Still, this was an enjoyable story, even as I rolled my eyes throughout the book, as the main character made one irrational decision after another.
Mariana Andros is a group therapist, still grieving over the death of her husband. She seems to have trouble setting boundaries for herself and her patients. One patient harasses and stalks her and she quickly meets several men at her old university that scare her yet she puts herself in close proximity to them, even allowing them to pour her drinks that take her past her tipsy limit. She is back at Cambridge University because her niece’s good friend has been murdered and she wants to give her niece the support she needs to get through this sad time.
“It doesn’t take much to save a childhood.” A little kindness, some understanding or validation: someone to recognize and acknowledge a child’s reality — and save his sanity.”
But once on campus, things are even more dire than the murder of one university student. A popular professor, Edward Fosca, seems to be up to no good, with his followers made up of a secret society of female students. Mariana’s niece seems to know a lot more than she will admit to Mariana and soon is Mariana dangerously poking her nose in places that will get her in trouble. She claims she is being careful, when in reality, she is anything but careful or subtle. The story has such a dreamlike, misty quality to it and Mariana is still so damaged by the death of her husband, that her lack of clear thinking seems to fit in with the atmosphere of the story.
There was no way I could guess who the murderer was because every man seems to have something that might point to him. Everyone speaks in circles and there is a sense of foreboding, as if more is going to happen (and it does). I suspect that there will be more of this world, and I look forward to reading that story.
