Found out the author of 'The Silent Patient' basically wrote it as a dare

I was reading a piece in The Guardian about how Alex Michaelides wrote the whole book because a friend bet he couldn't write a thriller with a huge twist. He finished the first draft in just six months. That kind of changed how I see the whole plot structure, honestly. Anyone else have a book where the backstory totally shifted your view?

3 comments

3 Comments

ray_sullivan5d ago

Honestly that makes the twist feel a bit cheap to me now. It's like the whole book was built around a party trick instead of a real story. Does knowing it was a dare make you question the author's actual investment in the characters?

ray_sullivan5d ago

The characters still felt real to me though.

lucast815d ago

Does a book's origin story ever make you question if the author cared about the message or just the gimmick?