“There’s nothing between us but secrets and threats.”

I really liked Payne’s book The Lucky One so I was excited to read another one by her. I didn’t like this one as much as that one, however it had a lot less swearing in it which is a plus.

What took this one down a few notches for me was a lack of mystery, a pretty one-dimensional plot, too much coffee, and the whole oft-used scenario where someone discovers something alarming and gets mad and hurt and even though the other person is like ‘Let me explain…’ the mad/hurt/scared person says ‘No. I will not listen to potential answers. I shall flee the scene and live in confusion and misunderstandings because I just can’t even. And don’t ever touch the same ground as me.’ And if they would have just listened for five whole seconds, everything could have been avoided.


As to the lack of mystery: there is a disclaimer at the beginning which warns readers of physician-assisted suicide in the book. I suppose that’s important in case that’s a trigger for some but for a thriller it felt like the author was giving away information that lessens the suspense.

Thus, I went into it thinking the book was going to be about deaths happening in a hospital and then them realizing it was a doctor assisting patients to die. This is partially right, except we find out pretty soon that the main character, Chloe’s ex-husband (Jameson), is a doctor who does physician-assisted suicides so the ‘mystery’ becomes more about whether or not the higher death rate at the hospital is actually because of him or someone else.

And that part I figured out at like 20%. To be fair, there were a few times where I thought maybe I was wrong after all, but overall, the book didn’t feel like the twisty psychological thriller it promised to be.



Another Annoyance #1:

It’s repeated and hinted at multiple times that Chloe and Jameson have some sort of shared secret that they’re guilty of.

“I never thought I’d get a second chance at happily ever after. Not after what I did, and to someone I loved, no less.”

“After what we did, he isn’t allowed to be the love of my life.”

I got annoyed with all the cloak and dagger stuff surrounding her past because when we find out what they did, we really aren’t surprised at all.


Another Annoyance #2:

The coffee and the wine. I get that it’s the Pacific Northwest and they are coffee fanatics out there and that doctors and nurses require much coffee, but I feel like every time the author needed to move the plot forward she used coffee or wine to do that- Hey let’s get drinks! Hey, can I grab you a coffee? Can you grab me a coffee? Should we go drink coffee? Can you reinsert my coffee IV line?

If you don’t believe me, here are the facts: the word coffee is used 85 times and wine is used 87 times. Folks, that’s much times. I cross-referenced these numbers with a few other digital books I have just to see and those books used these words less than 20.

Perhaps a reader who actually likes coffee will love this, but for me it felt like coffee was it’s own character. And a bitter one at that.


Another Annoyance #3:

I feel like there were a lot of plot holes required for this story to be a thing. I just think it would be pretty hard to hide all of this at a hospital. Especially when they have had a task force created to research the high death rate and determine a cause and then results go missing and people on the task force start dying.

And the hospital has cameras. Sure the camera was off during some of the deaths, but wouldn’t that also be a red flag?

At the end when a character goes missing from their room, even though Chloe had been looking at the cameras previous times, she doesn’t check them at that point. Probably would have helped.

I’m not familiar with how hospitals work and typically I can suspend reality for the case of a book in a lot of scenarios, but considering the whole high death-rate in a hospital where people might be killing patients is the entire premise and setting for the book, I wish it would have been a more plausible situation.


Another Annoyance #4:

They have a soap dish in their bathroom at home. What kind of psychos prefer bar soap to wash their hands??


Another Annoyance #5:

Chloe finds herself in a bit of a love triangle with her ex-husband and her current fiance. She suspects her ex-husband of murdering patients, but to her fiance it just looks like she’s obsessed with her ex-husband and he’s not super thrilled they’re working so closely together.

It creates some tension between her and her fiance. But no matter how bad it gets, she is just not ‘ready’ to tell him the truth. I get how this is important to the story as Payne wrote it, but I don’t like when a story requires a character to withhold information from a person they wouldn’t. Maybe at first, but there comes a point when withholding the information makes no sense anymore.



Physician-Assisted Suicide

Because this is a major part of the book, let’s talk about this controversial subject. (Also sometimes called ‘death with dignity’ or ‘right to die’ or ‘aid in dying’- AID.)

Whether or not physician-assisted suicide is ethical or moral is not really discussed in the book, it’s kinda just a given:

“he was doing it because he believed people had the right to choose when they died when they were terminally ill. When they were actively in pain and suffering and there was no light at the end of the tunnel.”

“I also knew how much he cared about people. How much he hated to see them in pain, and I knew this came from a place of caring.”

“Jameson was offering a great kindness. A great, horrible kindness.”

“he was so honest that he told me he was doing something that while ethical, was illegal.”

PAS or AID is different than euthanasia because the patient is administering the drugs, not the physician. The physician merely prepares the drugs and is present.

PAS should also not be confused with palliative care which is care given to patients by trying to alleviate symptoms and pain as best as they can as they are dying, which with modern medicine is usually pretty effective.


This is a controversial issue that has a lot of gray areas. Like the character in the book who had ALS, an incurable disease and a painful way to die, it’s hard to think about ‘forcing’ someone to endure that in the last days of their life.

I don’t know if I land on a concrete black-and-white stance in regards to this issue as I think there are so many factors to consider in each case and medical things that I don’t know about.

But here are some thoughts and information about it. It’s worth pondering and thinking through the implications of PAS.

The main argument for PAS is patient autonomy. People want to be in control of when and how they die. It is often driven by severe pain and discomfort that they want to be free of. They believe they should have the right to choose when they die.

However, a Canadian physician interviewed in this article reveals that research studies show that the driving force for patient autonomy is less about their pain and more about their desire to control their death.

He also says, “When death itself can be considered as a medical benefit, the sky seems to be the unfortunate limit for patient autonomy, and it introduces a level of subjectivity into medicine that we wouldn’t otherwise tolerate.”

Oregon, where this book takes place, is one of the eleven states that currently allows PAS. There’s some information coming out of there that gives pause.

After a high profile PAS death in 2014 in Oregon, numbers showed that others who ended their lives this way more than doubled. PAS can actually lead to more PAS just like how the show 13 Reasons Why led to an increase in suicides in teenagers.

Research also shows that doctors weren’t present for one-fourth of the cases. It’s unknown how frequent there are complications with this method of death.

Additionally, another factor often not considered when patients are electing to die is that their judgment may be clouded by clinical depression which can be treated, but this is rarely taken into consideration.

This article listing the arguments for both sides of the issue states, “Opponents of AID are concerned that in Oregon, greater than 70 percent of patients who elect AID are elderly and have cancer, but fewer than five percent are referred to a psychiatrist or psychologist to rule out clinical depression.”

While patient autonomy is important, I am a firm believer in the sanctity of human life. And that life should not be taken. While there are some gray areas as it stands, I think the ‘slippery slope’ opposing argument of PAS is a really important one to think about.

If we start legalizing PAS when patients want to alleviate their pain- where are the lines drawn for that? At what point is it too much pain? Which diseases qualify a patient? It would easily start applying to a broader and broader patient base than it should.

As Wayne Grudem fleshes out in his book Christian Ethics, the ‘right to die’ can also easily become ‘obligated to die.’

“If euthanasia is allowed for some patients, who are suffering, then how can we prevent it from being applied to more and more patients who are suffering?… a society can quickly move from merely allowing the ‘right to die’ to the belief that there is ‘an obligation to die’ on the part of the elderly and the very ill people who are ‘draining resources’ from the society.”

He then goes on to reveal alarming statistics coming out of the Netherlands where euthanasia is legal. It is estimated that “in 1990 nearly 6000 of approximately 130,000 people who died in the Netherlands that year were involuntarily euthanized.”

While there are some examples of people who used PAS that seem right, it’s hard to deny that the legalization of PAS and euthanasia can lead to more and more death. Death of patients that could still recover, death of patients involuntarily, death of infants of children who can’t make those choices for themselves, and an overall subjective scale on what quantifies a life worth living.

Just some thoughts to ponder!


Recommendation

I won’t write Jessica Payne off because I liked her other book and this one shows me she can write without using a lot of swearing. However, there were a few things, as listed above, that made this book a hard one to recommend.

I think if you’re easy to please when it comes to thrillers, you’ll probably enjoy this.

If you’ve read a lot of thrillers and have become a bit picky, my annoyances with this one may be yours as well.

I also would not recommend if physician-assisted suicide is a trigger for you.


[Content Advisory: 17 f-words, 14 s-words, a couple sex scenes are implied but only a few sentences of content]

**Received an ARC via NetGalley**

4.5 rounded to 5.

"It turns out sometimes you have to do the wrong thing. Sometimes you have to make a big mistake to figure out how to make things right. Mistakes are painful but they're the only way to find out who we really are."
- Denny Duquette, Grey's Anatomy

Jessican Payne does it again. This book was described as Grey's Anatomy but with murder so of course I knew I needed to read it.

This book was told from Chloe's POV, with alternating timelines. I love this layout especially when the past catches up with the present... you get a little more explanation. I really also LOVE medical thrillers. What makes it even more believable (and terrifying) is to think that stuff like this actually happens in real life. I had no idea what was going to happen which is always the best when reading a thriller. I also loved the chemistry between Chloe and Jameson. The only reason this didn't get 5 stars from me is because I was left with a couple questions, that went unanswered. Overall, another amazing thriller from Jessica Payne. Can't wait to read more.

I do love a @jessicapayne.writer book. This is a stand alone medical thriller which I have devoured in just one afternoon sitting.

This is fast paced and unpredictable. I loved the dual timeline and perspective of this one. It really let me get a feel for the characters and events.

I found myself transported by the writing. I felt as though I was watching the events play out in front of me.

I found myself continually changing my mind about the guilty as I read. I loved how unpredictable this has been. Payne has quite possibly written her best book yet with this one. It’s definitely my favourite.

I’ve read all of this author’s books and each one gets better and better. The Good Doctor is unpredictable, gripping and unputdownable. This is a book unlike anything I’ve read previously and I’ve loved it.

I cannot wait to see what’s coming next from this author.

A must read.

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Chloe thought her life was finally back on track. After she divorced her husband Dr Jameson Smith she decided to travel using her nursing qualifications. She meets Elton, who is also a nurse and quickly becomes engaged to him. They realise that they both have had enough of travelling and it is time to come home and buy their own house and get permanent jobs. Chloe is very excited when she starts her new job at the local hospital but is totally devastated when she discovers that her ex husband Jameson is a doctor there and that she will be working under him. When the mortality rate begins to increase at the hospital she is asked to look into it and then realises that Jameson could be involved as events and a dark secret that happened when they were married make her suspicious. The book is told from Chloe and Jameson’s perspectives, across now and then timelines and is full of unexpected twists and turns. A gripping read.
Thanks to Netgalley and Bookouture for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.

I love love any sort of medical thriller and this one didn’t disappoint. Fast paced and twisty, this book was perfect

Such a good read. The twists where very well executed and shocking. It left me on the edge of my seat, and I couldn't put this book down. It was my first read by Jessica Payne, and certainly will not be my last!

I've enjoyed Payne's other books but this one just wasn't doing it for me. I didn't like the main character and I think that just set the wrong tone for me. It was a really interesting premise and that kept me reading but I was never fully invested in this one.

Wow !!! What a book. I couldnt put it down. Loved the medical setting. I love the show Greys Anatomy so I got a very similiar vibe.

Actioned pacted physiological thriller. This deal with a highly complex topic a medical serial killer. Told from the pov of chloe and her ex husband Jameison. She had escaped and found a new life with elton her fiancee but now she is determined to get the killer.
There is a lot of twists and tuns on this. The backstory is filtered through their iterqcyions and i was hoked from abot 505 but i wrongly picked the tre killer. There were on reflection a lot of red herrings i felt with the final reveal i was blown away. This is what make it a some what unbelievable 5 atar read for me. I never saw the ending and alrhough parts seemed ott it showed thevqualiry of the writing. I was so wrapped ip.in the relationship s of the 2 pov and their past i didnt look beyond. Sadly this happens a lot in real life.
Well done to tge autho for touching on such a sensitive issye and telling a fab stoey. Thank yoy netgallery abd publisher.

A twisty medical serial killer thriller? Yes, please! In this novel, we meet Chloe. She left her husband and the hospital where she was working to become a traveling nurse. While traveling, she met Elton, who is now her fiancé. They are so happy together and they both get a job in a hospital in Portland, Oregon. When Chloe shows up for her first day, her ex husband, Jameson, is there. The reason she left him and the hospital in Seattle in the first place is all coming back to her, and she’s determined to find out the truth. To top it off, she has to directly work with her ex. Once again, all these patients of Jameson’s are dying. Is he responsible?

Told via dual points of view, The Good Doctor has everything in a thriller that you could want – suspense, mystery, twists, and a fantastic ending. This book discusses voluntary assisted death and it makes for an interesting discussion if you were in a book club discussing this book. The author makes it really easy to feel specific ways towards specific characters.

I will say this – I figured out the major twist just before half way into the book. I probably would be raving about it a little more if I hadn’t figured it out, but either way, it did not take away from the enjoyability of the book as a whole.

This book is PERFECT for those that love thrillers, especially medical thrillers. I would HIGHLY recommend it!

This is the first I've read a book on physician assisted suicide and medical serial killers. Good that these triggers are mentioned right at the start.
- The characters are good.
- The plot in first half is so good that climax have not satisfied me...and I have no idea what alternative would do good.
- The build-up till 50-60%, later it became kind of obvious and felt little dragged at some point. Like blaming every character.
- A point for the hardwork done. Because, this kind of plot needs a lot of research and understanding.
I would rate this one a one-time 3-star read.

The Good Doctor by Jessica Payne

Psychological thriller | 380 Pages
Publication Date: 14 June 2023

This is my second Jessica Payne book and as I have said before it won’t be my last.

A medical thriller following the story of Chloe Woods, a recently graduated nurse practitioner who is looking for her next chapter with her new fiance’ Elton. Chloe gets a new job in Portland Hospital with her fiance’ (who is also a nurse) and is utterly shocked when she finds out she will be working alongside her ex-husband Jameson, especially when patients start dying. She thought she escaped him three years ago. Can Chloe’s new life be in jeopardy?

The Good Doctor was a fast read for me and I enjoyed a lot of this book especially the hospital setting, never knowing who to trust and the serial killer theme.

Thank you Netgalley and Bookouture for the gifted e-book copy for my honest book review.

The Good Doctor by Payne was an addictive read with great characters and a twist at the end!! Five stars

Twisty medical thriller! I loved the tension throughout the book between the narrator and her two live interests. The grisly deaths lent to the creepy vibe. A must read.

I received an arc copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for my honest opinion of it. I didn't really care for this book. So many things just seemed far fetched and it played out like a romance novel. It really didn't get interesting until about 80 percent through and it was really predictable. The main character just was very annoying.

With its spine-chilling twists and expertly built suspense, this narrative had me nervously turning pages, half afraid of what I might discover next.

This book kept me on the edge of my seat. Multiple times throughout the book, I thought I knew where Chloe was going to end up and with who, but I was surprisingly mistaken every single time. This book is the true definition of a psychological thriller and discusses a topic that is generally taboo - medical assisted suicide. It starts to make you think and while at a surface level you think you know whose character side you would take in these situations, the more you learn about this process and how this affects the doctors and nurses that perform these, fictional or not, you truly start to second guess your original gut instinct.

The Good Doctor
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Author: Jessica Payne

I requested a digital advanced readers copy from NetGalley and Bookouture and providing my opinion voluntarily and unbiased.

Synopsis: I finally have everything I’ve ever wanted: a career saving lives, my dream home among the pines, and my caring fiancé, Elton. He doesn’t know about my past. And I’ll do anything to keep it that way… I’m so excited for my life with Elton—we’ve even discussed which room would make the perfect nursery. And we’re working together in our new jobs in the ICU at Portland General hospital. But when I walk in on my first day, I see my ex-husband Jameson. His familiar broad shoulders are unmistakable in his white doctor’s coat. The shock knocks the air from my lungs. I’m thrown back to the moment Jameson and I gathered around that hospital bed as the steady beeping on the monitor slowed. We did something unforgivable that day. And for the first time, I saw who Jameson truly was. The truth scared me more than I can explain. So I ran. If Jameson tells Elton what I did, I’ll lose everything. Will he destroy my new, perfect life? Is he still a danger to the innocent patients all around us? And how far will I have to go to stop him?

My Thoughts: This was an excellent read. This gripping, compelling psychological thriller will keep you on your toes! A very interesting premise, not one that I have read before. I have read all of Payne’s books and she has a way of storytelling that will captivate you and keeps the twists coming. Chloe left the traveling nurse scene when she met her fiancé, Elton, and settled in Portland, leaving Seattle and all of the deep buried secrets. When she begins her new job, she soon realizes that the secrets might get exposed when her ex-husband, Jameson, is her direct boss. Will the secrets get exposed?

The story is narrated in a dual POV by Chloe and Jameson with flashbacks from the past. The characters are morally grey, to the extent that I did not know who to trust. Even though Jameson was questionable, he was still swoony. The characters were built with depth, a deep profound relationship building, mysterious, and creatively woven. The author’s writing style is complex, multifaceted, suspenseful, twisty, creative, and brilliant. The author’s slowly builds the characters with their backstory, delivers the chaotic plot in twisty layers, and the flow and pace is excellent with a shocking ending, that still has me thinking about it. I really loved the interwoven controversial topic compounded with a psychological thriller. The author did include TWs at the beginning of the story, which I loved. The author’s background as a RN added an authenticity that elevates the details.

If you love to read Freida McFadden or John Marrs, you will love Jessica Payne. This has everything you could want in a thriller, slow burn suspense, twists, medical serial killer, betrayal, and secrets, with a sprinkle of romance. She is an author that I will read blindly as I know I will get a twisty psychological thriller, no matter the synopsis. I highly recommend this one and all of Payne’s backlist.

What an excellent medical thriller!! Two of my favorites wrapped into one. This is a well written, fast, easy read. The characters are great, it really keeps you guessing all the way through.
Thanks to netgalley, the publisher and mostly the author for this amazing book.

I feel like a complete outlier here, but this thriller fell totally flat for me. Maybe it the nurse in me, but this story was just so bleh for most of the book and I figured out the twist fairly early. After taking countless travel nurse contracts across the country, Chloe and her fiancé Elton are ready to settle down. She is a new nurse practitioner, excited to start her first job in the role when she finds out that the physician she is working with is none other than her ex-husband who might potentially be a murderer.

I found the pacing to be off, and I was disappointed by how repetitive the book was. It almost felt like a word count was trying to get completed, so sentences were repeated just with a different sentence structure. This book was just not for me, unfortunately, as I love a medical thriller. It does seem that most people enjoyed it however, so it might be right up a different readers alley.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an advanced copy of this book. All opinions within this review are my own.