The room I was ushered into was obscenely white with glaring splashes of color, like a mischievous child had been finger painting.

Ninety degrees but the heat made me feel safe, like walking underwater.

The booze hits me fast, probably because that was how I was drinking it.

Good for a second book, although Michaelides‘ debut, The Silent Patient, still takes the cake. As in his first book, this book has such an unpredictable twist, I‘m still thinking about it. The writing is poetic and contemplative in the beginning, however as the story continues, the focus clearly becomes on the plot, and the writing takes a back seat.

This book is the definition of a page-tuner. The writing isn‘t as poetic as I typically like, however the plot really keeps you on your toes, which made this book an entertaining, quick read for me.

Because isn‘t that the point of every relationship: to be known by someone else, to be understood? He gets me. She gets me. Isn‘t that the simple magic phrase?

All of a sudden you see reading in bed, and waffles on Sunday, and his mouth on yours. And it‘s so far beyond fine that you know you can never go back to fine. That fast. You think: Oh, here is the rest of my life. It‘s finally arrived.

And you go home to a cold bed and think, that was fine. And your life is a long line of fine.

Give me a man with a little fight in him, a man who calls me on my bullshit. (But who also kind of likes my bullshit.) And yet: don‘t land me in one of those relationships where we‘re always pecking at each other, disguising insults as jokes, rolling our eyes and “playfully” scrapping in front of our friends, hoping to lure them to our side of an argument.

A happy, busy bumblebee of marital enthusiasm. I positively hum around him, fussing and fixing. I have become a strange thing. I have become a wife. I find myself steering the ship of conversations— bulkily, unnaturally— just so I can say his name aloud.

With Nick, I realize it actually, truly doesn‘t matter if the electricity bill is a few days late. It doesn‘t matter what color I paint our room, or how late traffic makes me, or whether our recycling really, truly does get recycled. It doesn‘t matter, because I have found my match.

I‘d never known that skin could be so luminous, so translucent: ivory white with occasional blue veins just beneath the surface, like threads of color in white marble. She was a statue, a Greek goddess come to life in my hands.

And you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

Suppose one of you has only one sheep and it falls into a put on the sabbath; will you not lay hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a human being than a sheep! So it is lawful to do good on the sabbath.

Autumn was coming; the evergreens might not have noticed, but the sycamores did.