A good medical thriller. Lots of character players but not to hard to keep up on who is who and their roles. Thank you @netgalley for this ARC

Medical devices are supposed to help. Implanted medical devices require a lot of trust. Doctors are often elevated to a position of demigods. When doctors implant medical devices and they start “going bad” we lose faith. Multiple failures lead to doubt and suspicion. So the story goes in this dark tale.

(Note: please see the link below for my Goodreads review- the post to Goodreads button does not work with my account).

The major thing that gives this book massive points is the totally screwed up (in a good way) and utterly freaky ending. While I suspected the villain had something to do with the mystery, I did not think the character would have gone so far!

Speaking of, calling this a mystery is a bit of an exaggeration. It was more about finding the perpetrator than figuring out what was going on with the medical devices. I was going to give this 2 stars because it was extremely confusing with more characters than a Raymond Chandler novel, all of whom were terribly hard to follow and easy to get mixed-up.

So this is a medical thriller. It's about a brand new uber special heart device called the Kadence. I've recently learned more about people who have heart conditions, and I feel great sympathy for what they go through. Thus, this was quite freaky. The Kadence begins to malfunction more and more frequently in its patients causing a "misfire". Essentially, someone is hacking the device (hooked to the cloud of course because it's modern day!) and causing patients' hearts to do strange things: irregular heartbeats, rapid beating, slow beating, etc. These "misfire" attacks have started causing suspicious deaths.

As interesting of a premise as that may be- it takes the book a VERY long time to get to the point which was a big problem. Mind you, I barely wanted to give this a 3 stars.

On a personal note I'm not sure why I read this because it definitely isn't the time in my life to read a medical thriller, and it did do a good job of freaking me out (especially the author's note mentioning that this book is not unrealistic). See the thing is I might be getting brain surgery within the next year- a procedure called deep brain stimulation. I'm on the Mayo Clinic waitlist. They explained this to me as being, in essence, a "brain pacemaker". While I believe it is an elective surgery, if my rare movement disorder doesn't improve within the next year (and I'm rapidly declining) it's a last resort procedure that could fix me, as risky and expensive as it is. They apparently put a battery pack in your chest and somehow run electrodes under your skin into your brain through holes they drill in your skull. Does anyone else want to throw up? My doctor told me two days ago that I had the worst case of cervical dystonia (this is a neurological movement disorder of the cervical spine- not the cervix as people seem to get extremely confused about) that he's seen. My physician is upset, my family is upset, and I'm unable to process it. So yeah hey strangers there's my little rant off my chest.

So if I had electrodes in my head could I get hacked? Yikes! Anyway this was a pretty quick read. I could have done it in an afternoon if I had to, but it took me a while because I was terribly bored and confused by it for about 75% of the book.

I don't particularly recommend it. I really don't recommend reading this if you have a serious medical problem that's irking you.

I was given this book by netgalley for an honest review -
A defibrillator misfires and Dr. Kate, an anesthesiologist saves the patient. But when a second one misfires, Kate seeks out Nikki, a cardiologist. They say its a bug they are working to fix - but is it? or is someone trigger it? and if so - why?
The conclusion is shocking!

This book was a delicious little twist mystery, that kept me guessing until the end.
This is the 2nd book in the Dr. Kate Downey series, and hopefully not the last. Kate is a great character. In this book, someone is targeting patients with pacemakers. Kate’s beloved great aunt has one of these pacemakers and Kate is determined to figure out how to save her despite the consequences.
This is my first book by this author but I will definitely go back and read the first in this series! Hopefully there will be more.
Thanks Netgalley and publisher for the opportunity to read.

Intriguing, full of suspense. A fast-paced medical thriller with gripping twists. Definitely recommend this for fans of Freida McFadden as early works.

This ARC was provided to me via Kindle, Oceanview Publishing and by #NetGalley. Opinions expressed are completely my own.

Suspenseful, thrilling, tense, intriguing main character.