A (mostly) Spoiler-Free Review of The Fury by Alex Michaelides

After reading The Silent Patient last year I was hit with the "thriller bug," and I wanted more. Then one of my two dear bookish friends suggested we have a girls getaway to read and craft and hang out, and the other friend suggested we all pick one book to read together. The consensus was Alex Michaelides' The Fury, since we had all loved The Silent Patient.

Unfortunately, after we'd all read it, we all agreed that The Silent Patient was still far superior. That being said, though, Alex Michaelides is still such an incredible writer that The Fury is still an excellent book.

I will do my best to lay out the details of this conclusion but, I will warn you, that will not be all that simple to avoid spoilers. Thrillers are just like that I guess.

Before I get too deep into the way this book fell short for me, allow to give you a visual to how good of a writer Alex Michaelides is. Even when his book is only OK, you can't put it down:

So while the remainder of this review may focus on what wasn't great about The Fury, keep this picture in your mind. I am not not recommending this book, only giving you a heads up that it wasn't the best thriller I have read.

Primarily, and surprisingly, The Fury fell short because it was rather predictable. Given the twist in The Silent Patient that had my mouth hanging open, The Fury's twist(s) just didn't hit the same way. Except for one.

Multiple twists kept the book moving, especially considering the first of many takes place quite early into the second half of the book. This was a good move by Michaelides, considering his colorful cast of characters contribute to the predictability of the novel.

Michaelides' characters are colorful, deep, unlikable, complex, broken, and very very realistic. His ability to write a textbook narcissist almost sympathetically is incredible. But his narrator was the character I struggled with the most. He felt too much like the narrator from The Silent Patient. So I spent even the early parts of the book distrusting him, which, unfortunately (SPOILER-ish incoming!) made some of the later twists and turns predictable.

But unlike The Silent Patient, The Fury boasts a much larger cast of characters that are arguably all messed up theater kids. Each character shines on its own, but each character is extremely messy, and you spend the whole book trying to figure out who to trust, and what each person is up to. This is brilliant, and it keeps you turning the pages even if you can kind of see what is coming.

Ultimately, where the larger plot is predictable, each character's individual contribution is much much less so.

Alex Michaelides is an incredible author, and I guess, with the success of The Silent Patient, I can hardly blame him for leaning into what has been proven to work. But it did mean I didn't walk away raving quite as loudly as I did when I read The Silent Patient.

So, if you liked The Silent Patient, I do still recommend The Fury, but you can expect it to fit into the same mold. It's the same, but different.

Adult themes and/or trigger warnings: language, mild sexuality, bullying, death, murder, suicide.