We gravitate toward the bodies that keep us alive.
★★★☆☆
With The Quiet Tenant, writer Clémence Michallon makes an unforgettable debut.
“You like to think every woman has one, and he just happens to be yours.”
Single father Aidan Thomas is one of the most loved people in his small town – always ready to help, shy, and good looking, on top of it. He really has it all.
Even a girl in his shed.
Rachel is the lucky one that came out alive from her first encounter with this serial killer, and yet being alive is the only thing going on for her. The life in the shed is the only one she has experienced in the last five years.
Between mind games, psychological trauma, and a survival instinct that is harder to suffocate than his victims, Clémence Michallon made The Quiet Tenant into a book that will be featured in the Goodreads Choice Awards. Mark my words!
“Rule number one of staying alive outside the shed: You don’t run unless you’re sure.”
Fast paced and intriguing, The Quiet Tenant will appeal to a vast audience, not just to fans of mysteries and thrillers. The book will have you turning pages expectantly, until its delicate conclusion.
What stands out most in this book, apart from the elegance with which some parts are written, is how this book tackles some psychological issues. They’re all dealt with well, and it surprises me that it wasn’t the author’s field of study.
And yet.
Without getting into any spoilers, on more than one occasion I didn’t understand the main character’s choices – I guess it’s normal considering the situation in which she’d been depicted, which we can only call extraordinary. Those same reasons can make sense after stopping to properly analyse them, but with this book I felt somehow detached from her psyche.
If it’s difficult to enter Rachel’s psyche, it’s pretty easy to do that with the character of Emily, the woman that shares the different POVs chapter with the protagonist. I found her to be “too much” and stereotyped at times, so naïve and noisy, borderline annoying.
The important theme of “bad things happen to women” is rightfully present, but exploited at length. The fact that the story is narrated exclusively from women’s perspective is a testament to the intent of Clémence Michallon.
Final Thoughts
Even with its flaws, the best seller The Quiet Tenant is one of those fast-paced page-turning books that conquers readers’ hearts, and gives a lot of exposure to authors not for the complexity of their work, but for the guilty pleasure of a cosy mystery. The perfect book to read this fall with a cup of tea and a warm blanket.
About the book
Clémence Michallon Discusses The Quiet Tenant | Clémence Michallon Notes
Author’s contacts
Website | Instagram | Twitter | Independent
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