The Maidens

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this is one of my most anticipated releases for the year and im so relieved it didnt let me down. i honestly inhaled this. AM is the master of short chapters. he truly understands how to get readers to say, ‘just one more and then i will go to bed.’ and then all of the sudden the story is over in the blink of an eye - thats how much the content and pacing hooked me. i loved the greek mythology and poetry, i loved the old-fashioned cambridge vibes, and i loved how those created the most compelling of mysteries. Instead, Mariana brought the shoes close to her chest. She cradled them tight, as she might a child. And she wept. Mariana mentions that she saw Sebastian as being similar to her father, and Ruth warns Mariana that she has a blind spot for how she sees her father. Ruth also suggests that Mariana’s relationship with her father is central to the investigation somehow. (That said, saying that he’s similar to her father really isn’t that much of a clue since her father was emotionally distant, not a bloodthirsty psychopath.)

Nine chairs. A chair for each member of the group, and one for Mariana. In theory, the chairs were meant to be identical—but life didn’t work like that. Despite her best intentions, she had accumulated an assortment of upright chairs over the years, in different materials and in various shapes and sizes. Her relaxed attitude to the chairs was perhaps typical of how she conducted her groups. Mariana was informal, even unconventional, in her approach. Eerie atmosphere isn’t enough to overcome an unsatisfying plot and sometimes-exasperating protagonist. Mariana immediately suspects that Edward Fosca is behind the deaths of several of The Maidens - six young female students who are Fosca's adoring and devoted acolytes. Zoe's friend Tara had been one of those Maidens. Then, almost the very next day, another Maiden is murdered .... That’s how it felt. Since Sebastian died, Mariana no longer saw the world in color. Life was muted and gray and far away, behind a veil—behind a mist of sadness. and ____ (proper noun) waited _____ (period of time) before deciding to get ____(adjective)? and ____(verb, past tense) _______ (proper noun) for (noun)? even though _____ (series of facts we are told at the beginning that contradict motive and some math that may or may not be accurate?????????????)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." now, you may well ask yourself why no one would give a little wait, what? about a female-student-collecting prof drinking behind closed doors with all these pretty little maidens, or find the optics of professor mcdreamy striding across campus trailed by an entourage of girls in flowy white dresses on their way to a memorial service...ill-advised? As well as the group therapy element Mariana was supposedly heavily involved in. The come-about of the Maidens. Mariana’s relationship with Zoe. The trauma she’s suffered from her husbands death. In the interim, in Zoe's room, Mariana finds a letter (which turns out to be what the journal-like chapters of the book are) written to Zoe, where the author explains that he wrote it so Zoe could understand him, and he professes his love for Zoe. (Mariana assumes the letter-writer is Fosca.)

Recently, out of morbid curiosity, and in an attempt to understand what she was wrestling with, Mariana had reread all of Freud’s writings about grief and loss. And he argued that, following the death of a loved one, the loss had to be psychologically accepted and that person relinquished, or else you ran the risk of succumbing to pathological mourning, which he called melancholia—and we call depression.So many thanks to Macmillan Reading Insiders club for providing me this readers’ advance copy in exchange my honest opinions. It also meant that tutorials took on a more personal flavor, and lines between teacher and pupil became blurred—confidences were given, and intimacies exchanged. 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." I could swoon about this book for days, but I will spare you that and wrap up by saying, I loved this!