I have so many problems with this so I'll start with the pros: I liked this better than The Silent Patient. I enjoy Michaelides' writing and prose - you can really fly by this book and the reading experience is enjoyable, light and engrossing. I enjoyed the fact that the protagonist was an unreliable narrator, someone who we couldn't really trust or understand. I really enjoyed how "reality" was subverted multiple times during the timeline. I really didn't mind the epilogue, the tiny reference to The Silent Patient; in fact, I enjoyed it.
What I did not enjoy was the fact that this book "borrows" (very lose term) from so many themes, books, movies??? The setting has been done to death, the characters have so little redeemable qualities I couldn't cheer for any of them besides minor background characters, the twists were predictable and poorly executed, the fact that the whole "I wrote down my crimes in full detail in a journal" is a literal call-back to The Silent Patient, which is referenced in the book? It's the exact same plot-device from his best-selling novel! Did he think it was ok to recycle this so blatantly? That no one would have read one of his prior novels?
The tiny paranormal subplot was cute and symbolic, but unnecessary. The plot twists were a direct ripoff from at least one other work - which also takes place in an island. With a fake death. With both characters working against other character's knowledge.
I don’t like books like this because they’re at the same time ridiculously predictable and also impossible to fully predict because you aren’t really given all of the information to begin with.
All in all, I'm done with Michaelides. All I could think throughout this book was "I'm having an ok time" but I could have been having a great time with Karin Slaughter, King, Mons Kallentoft, and many other authors who inject brilliantly written twists and character progression into their novels.