This newest book by Kimmery Martin centers on three women who have been friends since med school. They reunite with a larger group of friends in Spain and have their first encounter with a virus that will not only upend their lives, but lives across the globe.

The author wrote this book before the COVID-19 pandemic. It was very interesting to see how she envisioned a pandemic and the way the country and world handled it. At its heart though, this is a story about deep friendships and the love of mother and child. The chapters have alternating points of view. The book opens with the pandemic mainly over and ends on a hopeful note. But the middle definitely kept me turning pages. I especially enjoyed the deep friendships between these women and how supportive they were of each other as they navigated both personal and professional crises.

Thank you to Berkley Pub for my copy of this book.

Damn, talk about a book that ripped my heart up and then helped put it together again. My goodness. Kimmery Martin has such a beautiful, passionate writing style. You can tell just by reading her books that she is very smart, and very educated, she knows.her subject matter, and she knows how to draw you in.

This book is about a fictional pandemic written before our actual ongoing pandemic which runs incredibly parallel to our experiences. It wasn't a coronavirus and it struck faster and more deadly and once you got it you weren't necessarily immune. It was like chicken pox where your chances of getting shingles are greater and your chances of getting the next strain are higher.

Wow I cried so hard a few times during this book just relating so hard to the impossible choices and loss that was experienced. This story follows a group of women doctors who have been friends since medical school and they have kept in touch even though they are spread out across the US and the globe. Their different specialties came into play to help out and see the hospital side of the pandemic and the impact this virus had on them personally and professionally. There was sickness, loss, birth and there was a light at the end of the tunnel. I enjoyed traveling with them and being stuck at home on Zoom.

Thank you berkleypub, kccpr, kimmerymartin, and letstalkbookspromo for the gifted book and for having me on this book tour and for my honest and voluntary review!

This book had me equal parts sobbing and laughing. This book follows a group of med school college friends, all women, as they deal with a pandemic. They were on vacation together where the pandemic started it all, following them during the pandemic into the aftermath. What is even more shocking is this fictional book was written pre-pandemic about a fiction pandemic.
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It is seriously shocking the similarities. I didn’t realize there are two other books in this universe that I will be going back to read. I am hugely invested in these characters.
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Huge thank you To @berkleypub

I love stories about hope and resilience in the face of adversity because it reminds me that there is still good in the world and we are not in this alone. Even though Kimmery Martin wrote Doctors and Friends prior to Covid-19, the similarities are uncanny. A group of female doctors who have been close friends since medical school are vacationing together in Spain, when an outbreak of a fast-spreading virus changes their lives forever. It is a highly emotional story, even more so since we continue to experience life during a pandemic, yet there is beauty amidst the tragedy and chaos.

In this book, the beauty lies in the strength of the characters, their friendships, and the ways in which they care for and support one another. The doctors lean on each other and learn to cope and adapt as they not only deal with their own crises but put aside their needs to help others. I’ve often thought about doctors, nurses, and other first responders risking their lives to save others, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, but I never truly considered what it’s like to be in their position or what they deal with on a daily basis. Although this is a work of fiction, it will give you a new perspective about what it means to be a hero during these trying times.

While I recognize not everyone may be ready to read about something that hits so close to home, I highly recommend this moving and beautiful book about friendship, hope, resilience, and love.

Prescient, engrossing, heart-breaking, and incredibly well-researched.

Probably the most important thing to realize is that even though this novel centers on a group of woman doctor friends, forced to face hard decisions and support each other through a pandemic, the author explains in the foreword that it was written before COVID 19. As such, it’s incredibly prescient.

I’ve read several of Kimmery Martin’s novels and an author, she doesn’t just decide to write about a given medical topic, she tackles it with gusto, taking the reader on a memorable journey that blends well researched fact with fiction, and unforgettable situations and characters.

This novel follows a group of doctors, with a focus on Kira who works for the CDC’s special unit, as they face hard decisions, both personal and professional.

I’ve heard Margaret Atwood talk about how she captured the spirit of a moment (a conversation about control over women’s bodies) and merely took it to its logical extreme conclusion in The Handmaid’s Tale. In a similar way, Kimmery portrays the emotional toll a pandemic takes on the doctors on the front lines. She takes us on that journey from the inside out.

In my opinion, just like The Handmaid’s Tale, this book will go into the cannon of literature because Martin got it so right. She approaches the heart wrenching choices required with raw honesty – more so than any book written later (during the actual pandemic) could have. As such, it makes for excellent book club discussion.

It was heart-breaking at points, but I appreciated the under-current of friendship as the women support each other through a series of traumatic life-changing situations. Martin also portrayed exceptionally well the dilemma of balancing the emotional detachment needed for accurate science or medicine with the human desperation and heartbreak you experience as a doctor.

The role of fiction is to let us live another’s life and come out the other side, having learned lessons and with hope. This was exactly what Kimmery Martin achieved with the ending she chose.

A book I couldn’t stop thinking about. The current title and cover don’t capture the importance of this novel. It’s a memorable piece of literature that ‘s worth your time and will have a runway long past these present times.

I received a gifted galley of DOCTORS AND FRIENDS by Kimmery Martin for an honest review. Thank you to Berkley Publishing Group and Let’s Talk Books Promo for the opportunity to read and review!

DOCTORS AND FRIENDS begins with a group of women, close knit friends taking an annual trip overseas together. What they don’t know in the planning is that the world is about to be hit with a terrible and terrifying new disease that will hit close to home for all of them. They met in medical school, so have a bit more understanding of what is beginning to happen than the average citizen, but even they are shocked when they witness one of the early cases first hand.

Soon the world is being hit hard, hospitals are overwhelmed and the population lives in fear. The story follows three of the friends in alternating points of view. Kira is a mother and an infectious diseases doctor with a specialty in this type of disease. Compton works in the ER in New York, one of the cities hit hardest first in the U.S. Hannah is an ob-gyn desperate to have a child of her own. Each of these women will have impossible decisions and terrible hurdles in their path as they balance work, family and friendships.

So this sounds a lot like Covid, right? Well, the eerie part is that this was written before Covid. The disease is not the same and things progress differently in some ways, but the way her predictions mirrored what actually wound up happening are pretty astounding. I loved this book, but I do urge caution if you’re not quite ready for a Covid-ish story just yet.

I loved the women at the center of this story. Their friendships reminded me of some of the people in my own life – travels with friends in the past and the Zoom happy hours in more recent days. The author did a great job of giving each woman her own personality and also fitting them all together as a cohesive group. I loved seeing that support network in play as the women faced difficult circumstances.

This is a book that will need tissues at hand, but it kept me hooked throughout! Kimmery Martin has been on my want to read list for a while and this absolutely solidifies my need to get into her backlist!

DOCTORS AND FRIENDS is available now!

Doctors and Friends was written a few years before Covid-19 hit our world, but the similarities and parallels are so close. Kimmery Martin does an excellent job at portraying life in the midst of a pandemic from the perspectives of a group of friends who met while in Medical school. These friends meet up on a trip to Spain so that they release stress and enjoy each other. While they are traveling, the first patients who come down with the virus happen to be in the area that they are in. Their lives change in the blink of an eye and continue to change as the book progresses.

The themes of friendship and love are intertwined within each chapter as we get to know the doctors before, during and after the pandemic. I really love this book, though I admit it was a lot harder to read than I thought it would be. There will be plenty of triggers for people right now. What I think is important is the way that Martin wrote Doctors and Friends. She writes with blunt honesty and allows the reader into a look at a close group of friends that go through hell. These friends represent the medical staff during a pandemic, which helps the reader see with compassion what our doctors and nurses face everyday. I love the friendships, that defy all the odds from these doctors who all get to share their own stories. Very well done!
#doctorsandfriends #letstalkbookspromo #bookstagram

Thank you @beritalksbooks and @berkleypub for the complimentary copy of this novel - hardcover and ebook.

An important factor about this novel, it was written pre-COVID. The level of foreshadowing to what we’ve experienced since March 2020, is astounding. Martin has truly captured the atmosphere, the isolation and loss of life from a pandemic.

Doctors and Friends is broken into three parts, following a close knit group of female doctors:
Before Artiovirus
During Artiovirus
After Artiovirus

These doctors bonded in Med School, and have remained steadfast in friendship even though they are spread all over the country in practice. Together, they share a story before, during and after on how the pandemic personally and professionally affects their life. The heroic nature of these women is inspiring even though its medical fiction.

In the author’s notes, Martin mentions she made structural changes to the story in response the COVID. And, also how she contracted COVID and points to the irony of writing a novel focused on a bizarre side effect during a new pandemic, only to promptly develop a bizarre side effect during a real pandemic herself.

The “realness” of this novel is emotionally overwhelming. Doctors and Friends is filled with love, hope and survival. Friendship is a powerful force when fighting the unseen.

This is a story about a group of friends — the ups and downs in their personal and professional lives amidst a pandemic. Yep, content warning there. It should be noted in the author’s note that she wrote this back in 2018 when no one expected COVID-19 in the very near future. The book dealt with a different and fictional virus (artiovirus). There were some eerily similar scenarios to the current covid pandemic, i.e. quarantine and lockdown, heavy burden on hospital settings, high mortality rates, mass wearing of PPEs and zoom meetings. But the story had a better grasp on what should have been done to prevent further spread and contain the virus. Some readers might not be ready to read about pandemic stories since we are still very much not out of the woods yet. But fret not, the story also focused on the friendship aspect - how they supported and were there for each other in times of celebration and tribulation. I love that despite living in different places, the friends make it a point to get together once a year. This made me miss my own group of friends from medical school to which I am fortunate enough to still be friends with. As this is also a medical drama, there were some heartbreaking subplots that made me bawl my eyes out! The story gripped me and I wasn’t able to put the book down until 2am! Bear in mind that some terminologies might be too scientific for non-medical readers, but not too much that it will be difficult to follow the storyline. All in all, I adore this book and I thank the author for ending it with a positive note! We all need to see the rainbow especially in these trying times!

“...we learned humanity is resilient beyond all reckoning. We shared a mutual hope. Women still gave birth, nurturing tiny new humans first inside and then outside their bodies. We still created art and music and literature. Our scientists continued to innovate, our doctors to heal, our educators to teach.”

Quick Summary: A group of friends from med school gather in Spain for vacation - just in time for a new virus to throw the world into chaos.

I was so excited to be offered an ARC of this novel by Kimmery Martin. I’ve been aware of her for some time but haven’t had the chance to pick up one of her books yet. I feel like I have lots of connections/similarities with Martin so I’ve been eager to see how that translates her work! She is from KY (where I’m from), lives in Charlotte (where I live), and used to practice emergency medicine (my fiance is a doc)!

My only hesitation going into Doctors and Friends was that it centers around a fictional pandemic and quite frankly I worried it would feel too real and be less enjoyable. I was pleasantly surprised to not feel this way. I was gripped by the story of these med school friends. I also think it’s important to note that Martin finished her first draft of this novel in 2019 and it is in no way based on COVID. Although, there will undoubtedly be comparisons as we read from our own lens of experience.

I loved that this story primarily focuses on three of the doctors (each working in a different field) and their friendship. Kira, an infectious disease doc at the CDC; Hannah, an OB-GYN in San Diego; and Compton, an ER doc in NYC. On top of dealing with their pandemic, each character has their own individual struggle with which they must grapple.

I think the best way to describe this novel would be women’s fiction in a medical setting. I have great admiration for the amount of research that went into writing this as well as Martin’s own expertise as an emergency room physician.

I recommend this for fans of Grey’s Anatomy, Kimmery Martin’s other novels (The Queen of Hearts & The Antidote to Everything), and medical dramas.

4 stars

This one just isn’t for me. While I like the way it is written, it is about a Covid-19 world (although it’s called something else) and I am just not ready for that yet. If you’re a fan of Contagion, you will prob enjoy this. I liked the characters, it just hit too close to home right now for me.
Thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this Arc in exchange for my review.

So very close to reality. Kimmery Martin's latest, Doctors and Friends, is a spin on a worldwide pandemic and the doctors fighting it on the front lines, their lives and how it affects them. Really great read!

This medical drama was intense and compelling -- love, loss, hope, and resilience when a viral pandemic wreaks havoc on the work and personal lives of a group of women physicians who have been best friends since medical school.

I absolutely could not put this book down and read it over a couple of hours yesterday. When I finished, I was completely wrung out and totally satisfied. I am sorry to report that everyone I know will be inundated with my continual recommendation to get this book and to read it.

The characters were so well-drawn and I loved them all. Their personalities leapt off the pages and their different voices gave such depth to their experiences during the pandemic described. All of the women are physicians with varying medical specialties and each has her own story to tell so the point of view shifts. I really liked that the author lists their names, where they live, and each woman's type of practice at the beginning of the book so you can refer to it if it is hard to keep them straight.

Yes, this novel contains a lot of medical jargon and detail. I'm an RN and come from a family with many who work in the health care field, but I think Kimmery Martin, herself a physician, did an excellent job of making everything understandable so that all the science was easy to comprehend. The virus causing the pandemic in this book is not Covid-19, and the author wrote this before the real one struck our world, but there are some eerie similarities that parallel what has happened to us all over the last year and a half. Perhaps you are not quite ready to go back to the beginning or to re-experience the uncertainty, pain, and panic of Covid, however the artiovirus in this story is just a bit worse.

This author was new to me, but I note that she has written 2 other books that feature some of the same characters in this one so I plan to get those shortly. I think this would make an excellent choice for a book club, especially to help us all understand everything that we have been through and also to remind us that there have been many heroes during our own trials, particularly the health care workers and scientists who did so much with so little.

Thank you to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing Company for this e-book ARC to read, review, and highly recommend. I rarely give fiction 5 stars, but this might just be my favorite book this year.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Berkley Publishing for gifting me a digital ARC of the latest novel by one of my favorite authors, Kimberly Martin - 5 stars!

A group of doctors met during medical school and have remained a tight group, including meeting once a year for a girls getaway. This year, all but 2 of the group headed to Spain. The main characters - Kira is an infectious disease doctor, working at the CDC; Compton an emergency room doctor; Hannah an OB-GYN. Kira's two children joined them on the trip and they met up with her ex-boyfriend as well. Little did they know, they were at Ground Zero with the start of a worldwide pandemic (not COVID). All of the friends experience complete upheaval in their worlds as they try and battle their professional and personal worlds in a new time.

Written before COVID (be sure and read the Author's Note at the end!), this book still mirrors our current pandemic fight. Kimmery Martin is a former emergency room doctor and really shows us what heroes first responders are (in case we didn't already know). This also shows the personal and ethical battles that go along with new vaccines and treatments. If you've read the author's other books (and you must!), you'll recognize a few of these friends' names, which was fun to see and left me anxiously awaiting more books. I couldn't put this one down - don't miss it!

Thank you to @berkleypub and @letstalkbookspromo for providing an ARC of one of my most anticipated reads! I love how Kimmery Martin writes women's fiction in a medical setting, so I knew I had to read this one. Paired with a flower pic taken a few weeks ago because daisies always make me smile.

Pub date: Nov 9
In one sentence: A group of friends from med school gather in Spain for vacation - just in time for a new virus to throw the world into chaos.

Martin wrote this book before COVID hit - the virus in question is distinct from COVID in the symptoms it causes and how it impacts society. But there are similarities in the themes of isolation, loss, overwork in the healthcare sector, and most of all, uncertainty. I've read a few COVID books already, and I work in biotech, so I was fine reading about this topic, but some readers might want a little more distance before picking this one up.

The response to the virus in the book was much more logical and far-reaching than what we saw in the beginning of the pandemic in the US - it made me sad to see again how many opportunities we missed to stop the spread of the disease and protect affected families. I loved getting the perspective of MCs Kira and Compton, a CDC doctor and ER doctor, respectively, and seeing how they dealt with the overwhelming workload associated with a pandemic.

Beyond the medical content, Doctors and Friends leans heavily into the friendship among these women and how they show up for each other even in the hardest of times. Reading about these relationships was a highlight, as I love books about friends.

If you're looking for an emotional ride that will pull at your heartstrings (and also teach you more about human health), I'd recommend this one! 4.5 stars.

For anyone else who isn't sure if they are ready for a pandemic book, I feel that this is a good place to start. While it was written before the covid-19 pandemic, there are a lot of parallels within the story, but since it's about a fictional virus that has side effects and consequences different than the ones we've been learning about for the last 1.5+ years, there is still some distance- though because of the time we've all spent in this world, I also do think that there are elements of this story that readers will comprehend better than they would have in our pre-pandemic lives. This story was deeply emotional, and the author really effectively used characters we've met before as secondary characters. It's easily the author's best work yet.

An "of the moment" novel about a global pandemic. Following these doctors, who are also close friends, and watching them navigate life and difficult decisions was a thrill-ride!

Discussed on episode 142 of the Book Cougars podcast.

https://www.bookcougars.com/blog-1/2021/episode142

Although it was written before the COVID pandemic, it may well be triggering and distressing but know also that there is some light at the end. Kira, her kids, and her friends from med school are in Spain for a vacation when the first cases of a mysterious and deadly virus turn up in the region. She's a CDC researcher and her live interest Declan is working on antiviral drug in a lab in Spain. Compton is an ER physician in NYC; her husband Ellis and their three kids didn't join her on the trip. This is the third in a. series and those who, like me, have read the first two books, will enjoy seeing more of them, as well as of Georgia and Hannah, who are both based in California. Don't worry if you haven't read the series, the characters are so strongly drawn and the plot so compelling that it won't matter. No spoilers from me but know that this pandemic, like COVID is relentless and that everyone will be affected in some way. It surprises me that I so highly recommend this given how I felt about it in spots but it's very well written and thoughtful. Don't miss the afterword (and the last line of it in particular). Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. Excellent read and I'm looking forward to the next part of the journey of these women.

The first thing that struck me about this novel is the note to the reader explaining that this novel was written before Covid. I don’t quite understand the impact of this note, as we are reading this novel during Covid; we can’t simply erase that fact. And this book was certainly published a year and half after Covid, no matter when it was written. This little note at the top in fact negatively impacted my reading of the novel because I was left thinking, am I supposed to be focused on the story or how much the author got right about a pandemic? Since I was led to focus on that, the story because almost secondary.

But I digress. This novel is about three close friends – Hannah – an ob-gyn, Kira – an employee of the CDC and Compton – an ER doctor in New York City, who met in medical school and remain friends, traveling to Spain for a reunion of sorts just as a Covid, (not Covid) pandemic breaks out. When the women leave Spain, their worlds have changed. Hannah finds herself about to bring new life into this chaotic new world. Kira’s job at the CDC takes on new heaviness. And New York, as Compton once knew it, is decimated.

This novel looks at what it means to survive both physically and emotionally through a pandemic. While I felt there was a cool distance to the characters, readers who enjoy novels about pandemics and female friendships and smart characters may enjoy this novel. Thank you to Berkley Publishing Group and Netgalley for the advanced review copy of this book.