Review: Really bad
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 17, 2014
I love a good medical thriller -- there's something so intriguing about the concept of those who have dedicated their lives to healing instead subverting their talents and using patients as guinea pigs.  I love a good medical thriller.  This is not a good one.  I'll be discussing some elements of the plot below.If you had a bingo card for everything that could go wrong with a medical thriller, you'd fill your card rapidly on Schneider's offering.  There's the beautiful young intern who sees what nobody else can see, her spunky friend, the handsome young attending physician who instantly falls in love with her, pregnant women dropping like flies, improper use of psychiatric drugs to silence patients, pointless faux attacks as she "gets too close to the truth," a lecture where 101-style information is given to fill in gaps for the audience (I certainly hope none of the interns in the audience needed that basic information), the heroine bravely carrying on despite threats to her career, attacks on prostitutes, underground secret labs that are someone equipped with millions of dollars in equipment, a stupid henchman, the hospital attempting to cover up the truth (and at the end of the book, this really doesn't make sense), an obviously unhinged professional who manages to fool everyone, a nursery full of creepy super-babies . . . it's exhausting.If you've read even a handful of medical thrillers, this will feel very familiar to you.  It's just clumsier and sillier than your average offering from a mainstream publisher.  I don't think one has to be a doctor to write one of these, but it obviously helps and the author's lack of grounding in the world really shows (I don't think asking her husband questions served as a decent substitute).  It seems . . . just off, as if it is based on second-hand experiences and medical shows.  The main character is always at work, but she never seems to have much of anything to do (I hope she didn't have any patients waiting on her while she wandered around abandoned wings of the hospital and went through old records).  Various elements of the plot are never wrapped up and certain questions are never answered.There are some exciting moments and some grotesque "science" in this book, but an educated reader is going to struggle with the suspension of disbelief necessary to enjoy the book.