I really wanted to like this. I just couldn't get on board with the narrator. Elliot's style of narrating this "true" story was too distracting for me. The way he addresses the reader constantly and explains his flaws as a narrator just made it difficult for me to connect with him, which made it hard to connect to the story as a whole.

Thank you to NetGalley and Celadon Books for a chance to read this story in exchange for an honest review.

Much like Michaelides other books, this book was wild. A classic a group of people are trapped in an isolated location, then a crime is committed. Add the wealth and fame of the characters and it becomes quite a high stakes whodunnit?

I really appreciated the unreliable narrator style of having one of the characters telling the story as if in a letter or a book... it added to the intrigue in a big way. In particular, I liked that as the story progressed, it would flash back in the timeline to tell a scene again from another perspective. It made it hard to track who you wanted to trust.

A real page turner, and enjoyable read.

Come here my friend, pull up a stool. Can I get you a drink? A martini perhaps. Settle in old chap, boy do I have a story for you.

I was hesitant going into this after seeing quite a few mediocre reviews. I loved The Silent Patient (as did everyone else!) but you can’t go into this expecting that.

That being said, I really enjoyed this! I thought it was really unique and I loved the narrator speaking directly to us telling us his version of events. I also love the London/remote Greece settings and found it really added to the suspense.

FWIW, you have to really like an unreliable narrator. The storyline had quite a bit of back and forth of what was real vs what was not. If you aren’t a fan of a constant ‘carrot dangle’ type of mystery this likely won’t be for you.

You’ll likely enjoy this if you like:
- Knives Out
- The Guest List by Lucy Foley
- Netflix: You (Season 4)

4.5 out of 5. I devoured this earie read whilst on a plane. It is more than twists, you don’t really know what you are reading. From who did it, to who dies it’s all up in the air and I was all here for it. There are some wonderful character explorations, some lovely turns and and the writing is divine. I Loved the cameos from his previous books, it took me a while to remember some of them but its great that there are links between the books. Its an easy read that i got done in less than my 3 and a half hour flight.

Why did I choose it: The Silent Patient by the same author is one of my favorite books, so this was an easy automatic read

Read this if you like(d): Obviously if you like the Silent Patient, but also if you like good thrillers and who dunnits and lovely locales

I really loved Silent Patient and nothing is holding a candle to it, unfortunately up to and including The Fury. It was fun, but it just wasn't what I wanted or expected.

This book starts with Agatha Christie references, so I was immediately intrigued!

I really enjoyed how the narrator Elliot Chase starts off, by letting us know how what's going to happen, but also leaving plenty of room for what comes next.

Elliot does utilize temporal jumps into the past quite a bit to give context to current events, and through this reveals pertinent facts hitherto unknown. It feels a bit like cheating to me, as it purposefully misleads the reader.

Also, none if the characters were particularly likeable. For me, this means I wasn't truly invested in the outcome.

Overall I did enjoy this meandering mystery narrative; it kept my attention, but didn't snag me so that I had to turn the pages compulsively.

3 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and Celadon Books for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

“My name is Elliot Chase, and I’m going to tell you a story unlike any you’ve ever heard.”
Elliot’s tale unfolds on the exclusive Greek island of Lana Farrar - a former movie star whose glamorous life is marred by the shadows of treachery - and the object of Elliot’s affections. At first glance, this story appears to be a classic murder mystery, with the allure of a secluded island setting, celebrity drama, and a shocking crime. However, Chase cunningly guides readers through a labyrinth of emotions, blurring the lines between murder and a love story. The narrative, narrated by Chase himself, introduces us to a world where friendships harbor hidden animosities and long-standing grudges.

If someone handed me this novel with no context and told me to read it and guess the author, Alex Michaelides would be on my short list. The moody tone and sad, pretentious characters are unmistakably his. His style of writing is uncanny, and while that is not unnecessarily true of this book, I will admit that I wanted more. Though his trademark twists are still present, they fall flat in comparison to his past works. That said, I loved the juxtaposition created by Elliot as both narrator and character and the whole murder mystery vibe.

Now I think Alex Michaelides will have a difficult time topping his ending in The Silent Patient; however, he did a really good job with this one! I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy & I really enjoyed the progression of this novel.

From the start you have concerns that the narrator may not be the most reliable and may be spinning the truth to help his story. I loved that part of the book because it kept me on my toes and had me second-guessing who really was the killer.

Engaging, short chapters, and a lovely location for this story! Definitely going to be recommending this one!!

Special thanks to Celadon Books for the advanced copy of this one!

Love when Michaelides throws Easter Eggs in his books, all paying homage to the Silent Patient! I love Michaelides and how he weaves in Greek mythology into his plot lines. While this one was a little weaker on the Greek callbacks, I still very much enjoyed it.

I don't have a great understanding of the setting, from a time or physical perspective, other than being on a remote island supposedly off of Greece. It wasn't super integral to the story, in my opinion, although I read it like TransAmerican/roaring 20s period. Big Great Gatsby vibes with a whimsical narration.

I do wish we had more of a backstory on the narrator. A lot of his history was elluded to without any details, and what others found out was a mystery. The extent of their emotions were taken at face value, which, without that backstory, I found to be less believable. The BIG reveal was somewhat predictable but had enough twists along the way to keep your attention. Overall good read, I did like it but I think it's my least favorite so far of all of his books

I’m a huge fan of Alex and one of my favorite novels is The Silent Patient. When I heard about the upcoming novel I knew had to read it.
The prologue immediately grabbed my attention and I wanted to know what was coming. The narrator Elliot tells us a story about murder. He’s very unreliable and sometimes knows too much.
The first couple of chapters are short but sets the tone of the story. The story is about a murder on a Greek island and there’s a list of suspects that could have committed the crime, but who really did.
The story is very well written like you would expect from Alex, which I liked. I think this story could have being written as a first person because there were many things that the narrator knew that he shouldn’t.
Overall, this was a good story with some unexpected twists and turns and psychology to the story.

✨Read if you like:
- Murder Mystery
- Psychology Thriller
- Unreliable narrator
- Unexpected twist and turns
- Greek island

The Fury is the newest book from Alex Michaelides, author of The Silent Patient. Like others in the series, this title is a thriller, this time in the vein of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None with our cast of characters traveling to a remote island for a vacation that ends in murder.

I have read both previous publications by this author and felt mildly uncomfortable with the representation of women in his previous works. This one continues the trend of sad, damaged women who need tortured, misunderstood men to run along and save them.

This book was paced very oddly. 50% of the way into the book still felt like the exposition while the ending felt rushed and confused. There is a lot of play with the reliability of the narrator, which I liked, but the multiple branching "gotcha"s became hard to keep track of after a point.

The characters, like in other books in this extended universe, were completely lacking in defining traits - except, maybe, "bitchy". Even Lana, the center of our narrator's world, seems shallow and vapid. The narrator, Elliot, was easily the most developed character and I actually did rather like him - as much as you can like him, that is. I enjoyed his tone and the repeated breaking of the fourth wall, pulling the reader in like a friend peeking backstage at a play. It makes you feel like you are a part of the story, and potentially in as much danger as the characters you meet on the island.

One thing I kept asking myself was, "Why is this book set in Greece?" The fact that the island and "help" are Greek is mentioned several times, but does not really factor into the story. The island could have been off the cost of Thailand, or Spain, and it wouldn't have made an ounce of different. Storms happen all over the world. If I book is going to lean that hard into a specific setting, it would be kind of nice if the culture played in a little more.

In general, I was not a fan of this book and will likely not be reading future publications from this author. I do hope those of you that are fans do find enjoyment in this title.

Thanks to NetGalley and Macmillan for a DRC of this book.

Twists aplenty! Alex Michaelides has a way of grabbing the reader's attention and holding on until the very last page!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I loved how this story was set up as play with the narrator being character and being the playwright. Elliot was such an unreliable narrator and I love how all the narrators in Alex Michaelides’ are like that. This book was so good at deception and I was so convinced that Lana had been murdered and that anyone on the island could have done it. The elaborate ruse in the book was great.

A masterfully paced thriller about a reclusive ex–movie star and her famous friends whose spontaneous trip to a private Greek island is upended by a murder.

The first few chapters were full of potential. I absolutely love the prospect of murder on an island, with a limited number of suspects and all that remote isolation to give it ominous vibes. It's very à la And Then There Were None. And Michaelides's tendency to include a fair bit of psychology in his stories adds a fascinating slant to the whole thing.

That being said, this is a very slow thriller. You have to really invest your time and not give up on this book because the last 100 or so pages will grip you. The use of different storytelling elements is a great way to keep the reader engaged, but I would've preferred the plot move faster.

This was my first Alex Michaelides book and it was a bit of a let down. The premise had me so excited - actors on an island with murder; it had all the makings of an amazing story, but I found it to be disjointed, rambling, and I wasn’t really surprised by any of the “twists”.

I found the narrator to be both boring and annoying and I didn’t feel connected to any of the characters. I found myself struggling through the entire book pushing forward just to see if it would get any better.

I’m sorry to say, I wasn’t a fan of this one.

Thank you to the author, publisher and @NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Lana, our reclusive ex-movie star, and her entourage of friends, family, and hangers on head to her private Greek island for a little time away from the gloomy London weather.

But things on the island quickly go awry and we get a ‘locked room murder mystery’ set on this idyllic island.

I will say that I hate myself for picking up yet another book with an ‘unreliable narrator’ them. It’s not my favorite 🤷‍♀️ And I like Michaelides as an author (The Silent Patient was great, The Maidens was meh for me).

But this was worth it.

I found this book enjoyable. I had high hopes for this book going in, especially reading his last 2 books. This one hit different for me. I wouldn't say it was a bad different tho.

The story follows a group of friends on an island vacation. Lana, a former popular movie star, is the owner of the island who takes along 6 of her family/friends to get away from the England weather. Elliot, her best friend, takes us through what happened on island that ended in a murder and the events that led up to it.

It was slow starting at first but about 35 pages in I finally got into it. I understand why he wrote it the way he did. The anticipation to get to the end kept me reading thru the night. I'm glad I stayed with it because it was definitely worth it.

Thank you Netgalley for a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

The narrator of The Fury is Elliot Chase, and he's going to tell us a story. It's a story about murder -- or maybe it's a love story? Well, he'll let you decide. He'll just give you the facts, as he sees them, about a murder on a secluded Greek island owned by a former movie star, who happens to be his best friend. It's a locked-room Agatha Christie-style mystery, told in five acts. Elliott Chase reminds me of the narrator from the great Gatsby.

The Fury is an ambitious undertaking, both in its structure and execution, as Michaelides balances a murder mystery, complex relationship dynamics, the intricacies of mental health, a nonlinear timeline, and an unreliable meta-narrator in the plot. Michaelides is so good at writing about psychological issues, at conveying how those issues can manifest in the behaviors of his characters.

But unfortunately, I found these characters to be bland, uninteresting, and one-dimensional. I didn't feel connected to or care about any of them, probably because we only see them through Elliot's eyes, and he only really lets us know them in relation to him. And yes, I can see how in a way that is kind of a genius move on Michaelides' part and may have been exactly his intention -- but it made for a dry, humorless reading experience. Also, for a book set on and named for an island with gale-force winds, The Fury lacks a strong sense of place. I would have hoped the wind itself would become a character or at least factor in the plot, but it really doesn't.

As for the twists...I found them to be slightly ludicrous, yet fitting in the context of who the characters are, so I can't really fault them too much. The slow pacing and lack of atmosphere and characterization aren't quite as easy to forgive.

After a debut like The Silent Patient, anything and everything else Michaelides writes is inevitably going to be compared to that. That's not really fair to him, but it just is what it is. I have to wonder if that's why he set his two subsequent novels in the same universe (major spoiler for TSP in the epilogue of this book, by the way).

It's clear that Michaelides still has interesting stories to tell, and The Fury is undeniably compelling and unique, even with its flaws. And it's much better than The Maidens, so there's that. Thank you NetGalley for the early reading opportunity.

Just finished reading “The Fury” by Alex Michaelides.

The Silent Patient was one of my favourite books so I went into this book with high expectations.

It starts off very slow. I was not sure how I felt about the narrator. As the book progresses I still find it slow and still not liking the narrator.

I found it to be very choppy. I don’t want to give away anything but there are some things that the narrator couldn’t have known but acts like he did.

Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy it as much as “The Silent Patient”

I've had mixed reactions to the author's previous books but was excited to get access to The Fury early! Sadly, this one fell flat for me. I absolutely loved the setting, as the island was so atmospheric, and the story was paced really well. I can't exactly put my finger on what went wrong, but I didn't really connect with any of the characters and kind of hated both the narrator and the narration. The last quarter of the book went completely off the rails and just got kind of messy. I slogged through it to find out what happened, but can't say I really enjoyed it! I will absolutely look forward to whatever the author does next, as I think he's really talented. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!