Thank you to NetGalley and Celadon books for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review.

This book was not for me, even though my college degree was in Classic Greek literature, something this book uses heavily. I've read two of Michaelides books now and, despite being really intrigued by the original premise, I found the execution of both to be lacking. Speaking of the other Michaelides book I’ve read— there’s fully a spoiler for The Silent Patient at the end of this book. Which means that these take place in the same canon, meaning that there is now an official MCU (Michaelides Cinematic Universe). So that’s fun.

If you don’t know, “The Fury” follows the reclusive, retired movie star, Lana Ferrara, and her group of friends as they take off for Lana’s private Greek island for the Easter weekend. By the end of the weekend, one of them will be dead.

This book touts itself as being “like nothing you’ve ever read before,” which is hilarious because even within the book, the author is comparing it to other books. The entire time I was reading it, I was firmly reminded of Glass Onion. So, the book had lied to me before I had even started it.

I had a lot of problems with this book— the characters were two dimensional; the plot lacked substance; and the twists are entirely too predictable. The narrator is far too pretentious for me to ever enjoy reading, and I love unlikeable characters. Unfortunately, the pretentiousness of the narrator gives away a lot of the book. This is a first-person peripheral narrative, that is also framed as being an omniscient narrator for a lot of the book. Because Elliot is acting like this all knowing narrator, you, as a reader, know almost immediately that he does not actually know what’s going on and everything is filtered from his lens of delusional thought.

As for the other characters, they all fall incredibly flat. Literally 90 per cent of the descriptions of Lana are about how beautiful she is, physically. And that’s it. There’s almost no “here’s what she’s like as a person,” almost everything about her is just how attractive she is. This is why nobody likes to read women who were written by men.

The other characters, even after they know about Elliot’s delusions, still leave him completely alone and unsupervised on an island that has way too many guns, honestly. It is an upsetting amount of guns for one island. But they leave him alone anyway, and you’ll never guess what happens…

I really struggle to describe this plot in anything longer than a sentence, which is fine for a thriller like this— you just want to tell people the initial premise without giving too much away so they don’t guess what’s really going on. The problem is more that if I were to describe the entire plot to you, exactly as it happened, it would still only be a couple of sentences. The majority of the novel is paced way too slow for it to build up any sort of tension and whatever little tension it can drum up at points is quickly deflated by the fact that we know we can’t trust anything this narrator is telling us. This is 300 pages of unreliable narratives, given by a character that I can’t stand, about a murder that will eventually occur.

I didn’t like The Silent Patient, but I was hopeful I would enjoy The Fury. Unfortunately that was not the case. I don’t want to spoil anything, but there are elements of this book that are boringly similar to his last novel. The “twist” is confusing and I don’t feel like I ever understood the main character’s true personality. Mostly I was just bored by this book. The time jumps and slowly revealed information were a little bit interesting, but the payoff wasn’t worth it. The relationships between the characters were confusing and changed really rapidly. There are violent descriptions of bullying, and there is never emotional relief from those descriptions. There’s a lot of talk about dealing with and coming to terms with our inner children, but it didn’t resonate with me. I didn’t particularly like any of the characters, and I didn’t care when any of them were hurt. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be reading any more of his books in the future.

Did not finish. I could not get into the story line and the narrator. I really enjoyed his other books but this one missed the mark for me.

When a group of friends convene on a remote Greek island for a vacation, there is more than just relaxation at stake. Perhaps unrequited love will come to a confrontation, or old friends will be accused of betrayal and infidelity, or simply a son will seek connection with his aloof movie star mother. But we soon find that with this crew, nothing is as it seems.

I was excited to receive an ARC of this book—I read The Silent Patient (TSP) last year and while it wasn’t one of the best thrillers I read, the twists and turns were memorable enough that I was interested in reading more from Michaelides. With so much to live up to after TSP effectively dominated BookTok, the author had quite a task ahead of him. Unfortunately, The Fury was highly underwhelming for me and a disappointing follow-up.

Let me start with the things I did enjoy about this book: once again, a very well-written story. The settings were well-developed, character building was incremental and purposeful, and it was a fun take on an age-old tale of friends trapped on a remote island.

Now to what I was not as enthusiastic about: it wasn’t the slow burn that turned me off to this story, or the fact that there were many characters involved right off the bat, or the fact that the story was told non-chronologically. I was mostly disappointed that the narrator repeatedly TOLD the audience that he was unreliable and untrustworthy. This, combined with literary quotes to open each act which, in my opinion, revealed too much of what was to come, left me (correctly) anticipating each simplistic plot twist. I wish there had been more mystery to our narrator, or that he didn’t continually expose himself as a deceptive fraud. It also didn’t help that, because the narrator was the perpetrator in his last book, I was expecting Michaelides to pull the same tricks again (and was disappointed when he actually DID).

Overall, with the success of TSP, it was essentially an impossible feat for the author to surpass his previous work—and The Fury confirmed this. While I will excitedly await Michaelides’ next work, I’’ll stick to recommending TSP over this one.

Lana is a former actress who becomes fed up with the dreariness of London and invites her husband, son and two best friends to her private island for an escape...or is it for something more sinister?!?!

The Fury is a story of betrayal, murder and revenge as told by Lana's best friend, self proclaimed author and romanticist, Elliot!!

I enjoyed the first half of The Fury, each chapter peaked my interest with more suspense but the second half is long, slow burn and not an enjoyable one! The narrator, Elliot, is hard to relate to and unreliable! In many instances, he continues with a part of the story only to backtrack and tell you that that was not what really happened! The book was pretty predictable and the ending anti-climatic. It's primary plus was that it was an easy read with short chapters.

Thank you Netgalley and Celadon Books for the E-ARC in exchange for an honest opinion.

Alex MIchaelides has delivered once again! Dare I say I even liked this book more than The Silent Patient. The narration in The Fury is so unique because it broke the fourth wall between narrator and reader. As a narrator, Elliot Chase was completely unreliable, intolerable, and certainly suspicious. He tells a dramatic tale of his famous friend Lana Farrar and her vacation to an isolated island in Greece. Elliot, Lana, her husband Jason, best friend Kate, son Leo, and loyal house keeper Agathi, arrive on the island with secrets and motives that come into question when someone is murdered. This is a who-dunnit story, but the most fascinating part is WHY! There are so many twists and suspenseful moments in this books. The short chapters made it a bingeable read too. Pay attention to two fun cameos at the very end.

In theory, The Fury by Alex Michaelides has everything needed for a perfect, five star bingable winter read. Unfortunately, when all those wonderful elements were put together, the book fell a bit flat.

Unlikable characters can generally be saved by an interesting plot and twists and turns that keep readers at the edge of their seat. The twists and turns that I was so looking forward to after loving The Silent Patient didn’t quite materialize. They just did not have enough “Oomph” behind them to make up for the cast of unlikable characters. Much of the dislike for these characters stems from the unreliable narrator of the story. Repeatedly being told that the narrator was unreliable took away from the immersive experience as well. Each time it was mentioned, I was dragged right back out of the story and was only able to focus on the fact that not one character had a chance to be well rounded.

That being said, the narration style did lend itself to creating an atmosphere on the island. Every once in a while there was a glimpse into what the story was meant to be, a thrilling mystery. When those moments happened, usually when the island was being described, it was a breath of fresh air.

In conclusion, I just can’t recommend this book when Alex Michaelides has the Silent Patient available, which is just so much better of a read.

⅖ stars

Thank you to Netgalley and Celadon Books for the opportunity to read this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

I haven't read the Silent Patient or Michealides' other works, but I've heard such good things that I was excited to get this as an e-ARC. Unfortunately, I just don't think this book was right for me.

Content warning:

- Alcoholism
- Death
- Drug usage
- Intimacy
- Mental illness
- Murder
- Violence

The Fury starts with a quirky introduction from our narrator, who claims he’ll try to tell the story well, but that we can’t fault him for messing up. He claims this is the kind of story you would tell your friend over drinks at the bar.

We learn that he’s friends with a famous movie star, Lana. According to our narrator, Lana is going for a walk when she decides to invite her friends to a vacation on her personal island. She invites Kate, who’s starring in a Broadway play, Elliot, our narrator, and brings her husband Jason and son Leo.

The group arrives on the island and meets Nikos, the caretaker who’s been alone on the island for years, looking after the property. Agathi also comes along—she’s a Greek woman who’s been a nanny and housekeeper for Lana since they first came to the island.

As they move around the island, the characters have some moments of feeling wary, like someone is watching them. Jason, Lana’s husband, has taken up shooting and hunting as a new hobby, and the sounds of him shooting can be heard throughout the island.

Lana and Leo work on planting a garden on the island, then the members of the group have a picnic. Kate is late because she’s constantly drinking, and that’s when she comes across Jason practicing his shooting. This is when we learn that the two of them are having an affair. As they talk, and then kiss, Jason gets the feeling that someone is watching them.

The wind is picking up around the island as the day goes on, and the group decides to have dinner at a fancy restaurant on a nearby island. during dinner, tensions are high, and Kate makes a bit of a spectacle of herself. They take a boat over there, and the boat lurches on the ride back because of the wind, which the book refers to as “the fury.”

Agathi goes to bed for the night, and when she wakes up, she finds Lana’s body in a pool of blood beyond the olive grove. Leo arrives and screams, holding his mother’s body. The narrator feels for a pulse, then tells Jason and Kate as they arrive that Lana is dead.

After discovering Lana’s body, the narrator re-winds again and retells the story, detailing how close he and Lana are as friends. We learn that Lana found out about Jason and Kate’s affair before the trip, and went to Elliot to ask what they should do. Elliot came up with a plan to punish Jason and Kate for what they did—by faking Lana’s death. So she invites everyone to the island and they go along with the plan.

Elliot has his own plans, however, and goes behind Lana’s back to try and manipulate the situation further. He plans to agitate Kate and get her to shoot Jason so Lana can marry Elliot instead.

Tensions escalate, and Elliot manages to get a gun into Kate’s hand, and has her walking down to Jason, ready to confront him. Before Elliot’s plan can unfold, Nikos finds him watching the scene from the bushes, and makes him walk out to where Kate and Jason are.

They all confront him, revealing how he’s been trying to manipulate things, and Jason and Kate decide they’re going to kill him instead. Elliot screams for Lana to help him, but she appears and reveals that she’s been in on this plan from the beginning.

Once again, we reverse to the beginning of the story and learn new facts. After Lana went to Elliot and came up with the plan to punish Kate and Jason, she discovers Elliot’s journal, in which he tracks the affair (which shows that he’s known about it for longer than he lets on). He also details his plan to kill Jason and marry Lana instead.

Lana is horrified by this, and goes to Kate, who admits she’s been having an affair with Jason and apologizes for it. Lana explains what she discovered about Elliot, and Kate devises a plan to get back at him in the same way.

We fast forward to the present moment, where Elliot is being humiliated by all of them. They leave him on the dock after he’s wet his pants and Lana tells him to get off the island, then the group goes back to the house to have lunch. Elliot turns into “the fury” like the wind around the house and goes in with a shot gun, killing Lana for real this time.

We end the book by discovering Elliot is in jail and is telling us this story from there.

I loved the idea of the layered scheming on paper, but I don't think The Fury nailed the execution. It was hard to feel invested in Lana double-crossing Elliot when I didn't feel invested in any of the characters. They weren't lovable and relatable, nuanced and layered, or even just plain hatable-they felt lke cardboard cutouts rather than real people.

Elliot also comes in with all these cheeky interjections that I just don't think the character has earned. Rather than being charming or even deliciously awkward, they just served to make me cringe and want to put the book down. I felt like I was never rooting for or against Elliot, and rather just waiting for him to be done talking.

All in all, The Fury was not the right book for me. I felt the characters were too flat, like they were pieces moved around a chessboard, rather than complex and interesting people. Because this wasn't character-driven, I felt it became plot-driven, but the plot was just not enough to redeem it.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-ARC.

Personally, I will always read anything Alex Michaelides writes. I love a good unreliable narrator and he excels at it. I jumped at the chance to read this early, and I was not disappointed in the slightest. The dynamics between the characters kept me reading constantly when I could, and I devour murder mysteries, so I loved it!

This was a fun book to read.
I always enjoy the stories Alex Michaelides has to share with the world.
I especially think that he writes unreliable narrators very well.
This felt similar to to And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, in the way that we get to meet our cast of characters individually before getting the the mystery element. However, everything you find out about the characters beforehand, though it may not feel like it at the time, is relevent to the actually mystery story.

I wanted to love this book since I was so excited to read it. However, I am sad to say I didn’t. The narrator and the way the book was presented was frustrating to me throughout the whole book.. I have a feeling this presentation will be what many people love about it, but for me I didn’t like it. The short chapters were good, but I picked up this book and read a chapter just to put it down to pick up something else several times this month. Finally, I kept reading just to find out what the twist would be. And then I wasn’t shocked. The last 1/4 of the book was exciting which is why the 3 stars, but overall the book fell flat for me. I have enjoyed the last two books by this author, so I will continue to pick them up, but for me this was my least favorite.

I absolutely love Alex Michaelides's writing. He weaves so many details into every page of his novels, carefully pulling them taught as you near the end of the book, until you can finally step back, slowly, to see the intricate tapestry before you. Ok maybe that's a bit dramatic, but it's fitting.

This is in no way a fast thriller. It's likely not the book for everyone. It doesn't quickly grab you and hold you tight every single chapter. It's a slow-burn mystery/thriller and I loved the pacing of it. There's loads of character development, arguably making up most of the novel, to explain WHY this murder took place and all the messy steps that led to the present situation. Loved it.

I agree with the current Goodreads score, which is 3.65 stars. I loved The Silent Patient and DNF'd The Maidens, so I was very curious to read this book. Like many have said, it was a slower pace to begin with, but it didn't take too long for me to start enjoying the book and I felt like the end of the book had lots of twists and turns that made up for the slow pace. I loved the way the narration broke the fourth wall and was self-aware of the story structure. I listened to the audiobook and I think the narrator added a lot of personality to the story.

Heads up: there's a spoiler for The Silent Patient in the epilogue.

"The Fury" by Alex Michaelides is a psychological thriller that really works to build up anticipation. Chapters were short, so despite being a quick read for me, some readers might find the pacing to be slower than expected. The author's skill in creating suspense and the overall plot make it a compelling experience, but the pacing may vary based on individual preferences. The author talks directly to the audience which was odd at first but this is Alex Michaelides we’re talking about. This book felt very similar to The Silent Patient…just not as good. And if you haven’t read Silent Patient. Read that one first. The ending sort of spoils the big twist in The Silent Patient.

*Thank you to Netgalley and Celadon Books books for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review*

The Fury by Alex Michaelides

Alex Michaelides has blown my mind again with his crazy twists and creative storytelling. The Fury is narrated by Elliot, a playwright, who is invited to spend the Easter holiday with his glamorous movie star friend Lana, and several others on a private island in Greece.

Then there is a storm - the fury - a murder. At first it might seem very Agatha Christie, with all the different personalities and motives gathered on this island, but then Michaelides keeps taking the story to different places I did not expect. Elliot reminds me of an Edgar Allan Poe narrator; his past is dark and shady. He and most of the other characters are unlikeable, but all very compelling. I don’t want to go into details because I don’t want to spoil things!

The Silent Patient and The Maidens were both 5 star reads for me, and I gave this a five as well. This one had a slower pace as Elliot is unraveling the story like he’s having a conversation with you at a bar, but it was equally riveting for me.

There are also some references to those two other books - this is not in any way a sequel - but I’d read those first to avoid potential spoilers.

Also, this is the second book I’ve read recently set in Greece and I want to book a trip!

I received a free ARC copy of The Fury from Celadon for review.

This was an interesting take on the thriller genre. I enjoyed the way it was written as if someone was telling it like a story to their friend. I enjoyed the various characters, even the ones I couldn’t stand, and their various secrets. The descriptions of the island were great, I felt as if I was there.

There were so many other things going on in this story that the setting took a bit of a backseat this time. This is such a minor grievance, but it’s truly one of the reasons I love Michaelides’s work as much as I do.

However, the writing and storytelling more than makes up for any misgivings. The twists here shook me and spun me in a hundred different directions. By the time the story ended, I was in awe. There is a genius to the art and level of twists that Michaelides reveals, and it’s truly captivating. The Fury is a suspenseful page-turner, one that will be difficult for readers to put down.

Great story! Wonderful set of characters. So many twists you never see coming. Have been waiting for another book since Silent Patient and she definitely topped it.

✔️ Murder mystery
✔️ Unreliable narrator
✔️ Isolated setting
✔️ Unlikeable characters
✔️ Quirky
✔️ Meta
✔️ 2nd person point of view
✔️ Quick read

With this book, you might think you know what’s going on at all times, but you’d be wrong. It’s not only a whodunn𝘪𝘵, but a whodunn𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵, and takes the idea of an unreliable narrator to a whole new level.

This felt a little bit like The Guest List, a little bit like White Lotus, and a little bit like Looking Glass Sound. And despite having aspects of all of these stories, and feeling extraordinarily familiar at first glance, The Fury stands apart because of its bizarre narrative structure. It is written in 2nd person point of view, which isn’t commonly used in much these days beyond short stories, which makes it immediately feel different. Our narrator, Elliot Chase, breaks the fourth wall often, and refers directly to the reader, pulling us into the story and investing us more deeply in its outcome. I would say that if you can enjoy this style of narrative voice, then there’s a good chance you will like this book. If you find it off-putting and can’t get past it, there’s a good chance this won’t be for you. Luckily, I was able to get used to it fairly quickly, and even found it kind of fun when all was said and done.

And although being billed as a psychological thriller, I would say this book is much more of a mystery that has psychological components than a true thriller. The storytelling is not quite as fast paced as you’d expect from a thriller, and the narrator takes his time peeling back the layers of this twisted tale. However, the author compensates for the pacing with short chapters and small reveals sprinkled throughout, always giving you just enough to want to turn the page.

Another aspect I feel deserves mentioning is the tone of this book. Alex Michaelides’ writing always reads a little pretentious to me, but in the case of this book, I think it actually works. The writing fits well with the narrator’s personality, and makes it seem as though the pretentiousness is meant to be a part of his overall character and is not of the writing itself. This pretentiousness even comes across quite playful at times—like he, our narrator, is the cat and you, the reader, are the mouse. I don’t think the same effect could have been achieved had this been a multiple POV book like The Hunting Party or The Guest List, but because there is only the sole narrator this worked in the book’s favor and lended itself well to the vibe.

I can only imagine this book will be polarizing for many people, and so I hope that my small insights will be found helpful when deciding to read this. (Let me know if you do and what you think!)

Thanks so much to Celadon Books and NetGalley for the advanced copies in exchange for an honest review.

Dear Reader, this won't be long -

Upon opening The Fury, whether by opening the book's covers or by clicking your preferred device, be aware that you'll be having a book-long conversation with Elliot Chase. He's charming, witty, wise even. Don't be sucked in. Listen closely, and do stay up. Don't let the spaces between reading and not reading be long. He'll be sure to take good care of you (he knows you've bought the book and so are invested in this tale), although he digresses from time to time. Not that those digressions are unimportant. . .you might want to take a few notes. . .

After this read you might suffer from whiplash, need to strap your jaw back into place, and do something about those tall eyebrows and wide-open eyes. . .

Other than that, happy reading, enjoy with a tasty beverage of your choice. (And don't trust Elliot as far as. . .oh, wait. jk. jk. . . .)

*A sincere thank you to Alex Michaelides, Celadon Books, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for an ARC to read and independently review.* #TheFury #NetGalley 52:10