Thank you to the publisher for allowing me to read and review this ARC. Full review to be found on Goodreads and on my website.

Sometimes life throws people together. Three ordinary people with extraordinary jobs (paramedic, police officer and 911 operator) work somewhat together but do not really know each other. When the tragedy erupts, they understand that they are connected but all cracking under immense pressure of the situation and their jobs.

I was intrigued by synopsis and was looking forward to the Waiting Hours. I was looking for a deep insight of these simple but extremely difficult jobs. I was looking for a glimpse of how to be a cop, how paramedic works tiresome shifts and how 911 operator has strength to answer the phone with all-the-time-present possibility of witnessing one’s last minutes of life.

I got so many secondary characters (that I assumes were suppose to help the protagonists) that I was lost who was who, whom story it was and what the heck was going on. The non-linear narrative did not help to understand the story. Their reminiscence and memories, past events and dialogues were mixed with present storyline, and I felt confused more and more.

Overall, I grew tired of never-ending secondary stories, which in my opinion did not bring much value. Main protagonists were not fully developed, they were drawn in brushes and to give the reader an idea but not a whole fully created character with past, present and hopes for the future.

Thank you Negalley and Penguin Random House Canada for e-ARC The Waiting Hours by Shandi Mitchell in return of my honest review.

I always enjoy reading books by Canadian authors and I'm always so proud when it's such a great one! This was an emotional and pretty fast-paced story.

The story focuses on three Emergency Response Workers. Tamara, a 911 Operator, Mike a Police Officer and Kate an Emergency Department Nurse (and part time Search and Rescue Worker.) It tells the story of their day-to-day lives at work and home and how one tragic event sort of links them all together.

This was a well written story. I felt like I was a part of their lives. I could feel their emotional panic at times, along with their frustrations and sadness. It was interesting to see how this one tragic event affected each person individually and how they tried to cope with it. I enjoyed the story a lot and it ended quite dramatically. I think I would have preferred more closure as there are still some lingering questions I needed to be answered.

An emotional book that really makes you think about what our First Responders must go through day in and day out after witnessing some rather distressing events.

I don't think I'm the target audience for this book. To me, it was hard to get over the schmaltzy writing style.

I was intrigued by the concept of the book - being a story about disparate lives that are linked together when something awful happens in their vicinity (kind of similar to The Association of Small Bombs by Karan Mahajan). Unfortunately, the execution did not work for me. It felt like a Hallmark movie in novel format (in terms of tone, dialog, etc), which is not something I am interested in.

Canadian author Shandi Mitchell's powerful debut 'Under This Unbroken Sky' is one of my all-time favourite books. So you can understand that since I waited 10 longs years for, I was excited to read this, her second novel.

In 'The Waiting Hours', Mitchell has given us a window into the lives of the people--police, EMTs, 911 operators, ER staff--who work overnight to protect our society. In the waiting hours between 3 and 6am, when the night 'traffic' is finished and the day traffic is just starting, it's the unexpected that will make the quiet dark erupt.

This book is a window into the lives of those people and, according to the Globe and Mail, "a literary thriller that is as suspenseful as it is introspective".

I greatly enjoyed this, although it didn't have the emotional impact on me that her first book did. Truthfully, I don't know how it could have done.

The writing is visual and precise and the research is spot-on, but the threads didn't intertwine as well as I had hoped. An immersive read nonetheless.

I really enjoyed this book. I loved reading about the first responders and how they deal with the aftermath. Thanks for the chance to read and review.

I loved the premise of this book — a novel about first responders and how they are effected by their jobs, how they deal with the trauma they see, who takes care of them…
The descriptions and the research that went into this book are great. The author did a terrific job and everything felt authentic, from police procedures to 911 calls.
However, this book just didn’t come together for me. The characters were good and fleshed out but I feel that there was something missing. It seemed like there were a bunch of scenarios from these 3 people’s lives that were strung together. It could have been made more cohesive, but it wasn’t. It’s hard to put my finger on exactly, but I did find the book dragged on.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for a review copy of this book.

Thank you NetGalley for an advanced copy of The Waiting Hours by Shandi Mitchell.

In The Waiting Hours, the reader is introduced to three characters who work as first responders. The young twenty-six year-old Kate, a nurse and also part of a Search and Rescue Team. Mike, a police officer with a young family, who is battling his own demons, and Tamara, the agoraphobic 9-11 operator. Throughout the novel, the characters are loosely connected, however not on a personal level. Each has his/her own life to contend and a thin thread ties their stories together.

This is Mitchell’s second novel and to be sure, she excels at descriptive writing. Page after page is filled with well-chosen phrases, words, and imagery. Mitchell gives the reader this gem to describe how Kate’s SAR dog tracks… “A scent was the past, a memory. He was gathering a story assembled through pheromones, skin cells, follicles, bruised grass, snapped twigs, and the molecular compositions of man-made scents- the traces left behind...Presumably, with a human he could smell the cheapness of their shoes, the sourness of their pants, the soap used, the scrape of a knee, nicotine on fingers, alcohol in pores and the cancer in their bones.” Wow, what’s not to like about that? What I found though, is that I began to quickly read through passages rather than savoring them. Too much of a good thing perhaps?

I eagerly requested this book because I found her first one to be outstanding. However, with The Waiting Hours, I found myself… waiting…and that disappointed me! The premise of the book is a good enough one, but it just didn’t keep my attention. I felt as though I was reading three independent stories about characters who just happen to be on the front lines; three stories hurriedly wrapped together at the end. The transition from one character to another I also found to be choppy and confusing at times. I had to re-read certain sections because the story would flip from one scene to another without warning. I wonder if this needs to be further edited.

Mitchell is a great writer. I loved her first book. I wanted to love this one too, but I'm still waiting...