I could swoon about this book for days, but I will spare you that and wrap up by saying, I loved this!

in fact, a lot of this book feels like the author is shoehorning in details from his own personal cache of 'stuff he knows about,' without regard for their narrative utility: psychotherapy, the beauty of the greek islands, greek mythology, the greek language. these recurring motifs take up a lot of real estate at the expense of other story elements, like character development, and they don't do much to enhance the larger story. Mariana was still in love with him—that was the problem. Even though she knew she’d never see Sebastian again—even though he was gone for good—she was still in love and didn’t know what to do with all this love of hers. There was so much of it, and it was so messy: leaking, spilling, tumbling out of her, like stuffing falling out of an old rag doll that was coming apart at the seams.it's just...look, i hate being that guy, but it's just not very good. i'm pretty reasonable about managing my expectations when it comes to summertime psych-suspense thrillery books; they don't gotta be art, they just need to hold my interest and maybe throw a surprise or two my way. Accompanying the housekeeper on shopping trips to the crowded and frenetic market in the center of Athens always made Mariana nervous. And she was relieved, and a little surprised, to return home unscathed. Large groups continued to intimidate her as she grew older. At school, she found herself on the sidelines, feeling as if she didn’t fit in with her classmates. And this feeling of not fitting in was hard to shake. Years later, in therapy, she came to understand that the schoolyard was simply a macrocosm of the family unit: meaning her uneasiness was less about the here and now—less about the schoolyard itself, or the market in Athens, or any other group in which she might find herself—and more to do with the family in which she grew up, and the lonely house she grew up in. There are so many things I liked about this book, that I almost feel bad saying that the main caveat about reading it is that the ending is just okay. I wouldn’t say it’s bad, but it certainly feels a little “meh”. I thought it was fine, though I don’t know that anyone will be particularly impressed by it. I’m hesitant to say more, since I don’t want to give anything away, but suffice to say it sort of works, but it certainly doesn’t feel quite as clever as the end of The Silent Patient. The letter is a somewhat confusing part of the book. In total, there are 8 chapters in the book by Sebastian. Only the first one is dated — October 7— but with no year attached, and only the last one has a closing (yours, forever). This seems to indicate that the 8 parts constitute one letter. The book opens in October, but by that time Sebastian has been dead for over a year, which means it must have been written over two years ago. My guess is that it was written right after Sebastian kills Mariana’s father (see the part about being “split in two”, below)

There was precious little love in her childhood. She had an elder sister, but they weren’t close. Elisa was seven years her senior, with no interest in her shy younger sibling. And so Mariana would spend the long summer months alone, playing by herself in the garden under the stern eye of the housekeeper. No wonder, then, she grew up a little isolated, and uneasy around other people. i am determined to dislike them both because of how poorly they are written. that dialogue—yeesh. it's contrived and melodramatic and just bad. "Do you think you can see inside my soul?" really, michaelides? and then the old tonal switcheroo from melodrama to etymological mansplaining her profession to her? you can practically see the red-pen arrow promising "authentic dialogue TK."

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Alex Michaelides’s long-awaited next novel, 'The Maidens,' is finally here...the premise is enticing and the elements irresistible." Yes, I disappointed! Yes, I was truly expecting something earth shattering, soul crushing, mind bending, grey cell fryer, unputdownable! The greatest campus novel since The Secret History by Donna Tartt … with a climatic twist that you will NEVER see coming.’ The one-paragraph version: Mariana is a young widow whose husband Sebastian died in a swimming accident last year. She goes to visit her niece Zoe at Cambridge after Zoe's friend Tara is found murdered. Zoe suspects Edward Fosca, a handsome and popular professor who Tara had been sleeping with. Mariana gets drawn into investigating Fosca as well as the Maidens, a cult-like group of women who idolize Fosca. Tara had been one of the Maidens and soon two more of the women are found dead. In the end, it's revealed that Zoe is the killer. Zoe had been lovers with Sebastian, who married Mariana for money. After his accident, Zoe decided to continue with his plan of murdering Mariana (to get her fortune). The plan was to involve Mariana in an investigation into a series of murders (all committed by Zoe), frame Fosca and finally kill Mariana. However, Mariana manages to fight Zoe off, and Zoe ends up arrested and taken to a psychiatric facility. P.S. I just read this review of The Maidens from the Washington Post and felt it was totally unfair. The reviewer seems to take issue chiefly with the idea that Fosca could blatantly hang out with a group of beautiful women and not be stopped by campus administrators.

Zoe tells us that Sebastian killed Mariana’s father after he caught the two of them fooling around in the olive grove. We also know something has just happened when Sebastian starts writing the letter because it starts off very frantic. In the second part, he talks about feeling split in two, the yellow light, and vaguely remembering feeling this way once before. As the letter continues, he describes digging into his memories and recognizing the other time he felt this way was when he was 12, involving his mother. Over the past two decades, the bestselling author has been a carer three times: to her father suffering from Parkinson’s, to her widowed mother and presently to her mother-in-law, the exuberant Granny Rosie. Unafraid to depict the exhausting reality of caring, her timely story is compassionate and humane, judiciously blending the personal with the political; as she eloquently argues, “care is a feminist issue”. The Maidens In Part II, Mariana learns more about Fosca and a group of his favorite students -- all well-connected and intelligent women -- who are part of his private study group. The women are referred to as the Maidens, a reference to Persephone, the goddess of death. In Greek, Persephone is referred to " Kore" which means " maiden". Tara had been one of them. Mariana is called to Cambridge when her niece Zoe's closest friend is brutally murdered. Mariana soon realizes that this idyllic campus of higher learning conceals something sinister lurking beneath the surface. The dead girl was a member of The Maidens, a secret society of beautiful female students led by the charismatic Professor Fosca. Mariana immediately suspects Fosca and becomes obsessed with proving his guilt. She must stop him before more innocent lives are lost. Even as she thought this, she knew it was an impossibility. They weren’t him; they weren’t Sebastian—they weren’t the man she loved and would love forever—they were just a pair of old shoes. Even so, parting with them would be an act of self-harm, like pressing a knife to her arm and slicing off a sliver of skin.The Maidens is an intricately plotted, mystery-thriller for the discerning reader. It’s an atmospheric story set on Cambridge University’s campus merging cliff-hanging twists with artful suspense." Even though he knows there are two sides to him all the time, it’s only when he’s done something terrible that the two parts have to separate — since the sane part of him wouldn’t do that — and he feels “split in two”. The “horrible yellow light” comes into play when the run rises in the morning and he realizes what he has done in the light of day.) Elsie mentions Zoe’s rude/unkind attitude towards her, and Zoe responds rather callously when it’s brought to her attention. Zoe implies that Elsie is nuts, but given how the book ends, it serves as another clue that Zoe may not be as nice as Mariana thinks. Mariana understood this. She knew she should relinquish Sebastian, but she couldn’t—because she was still in love with him. She was in love even though he was gone forever, gone behind the veil—“behind the veil, behind the veil”—where was that from? Tennyson, probably.

Mariana Andros is a brilliant, but troubled group therapist, grieving the loss of her beloved husband, Sebastian, when her niece, Zoe, calls from Cambridge where she is a student-afraid that her close friend, Tara may have been murdered. And that’s where she would have stayed, if Zoe hadn’t phoned her from Cambridge, that night in October.The Maidens also makes effective and substantive use of the mythological aspects of the story, so mystery-thriller fans who also love the classics should definitely take note. It adds layer of meaning that you don’t see too often in mystery-thrillers. Too much unnecessary misdirection about the identity of the murder even though it’s so obvious from the beginning