I quite enjoyed parts of this hospital-based thriller, however I felt it was pretty predictable... I correctly guessed the killer early on and that is something I never usually manage to do! The writing was mediocre and the plot was overly detailed / long winded in places. 2.5 stars rounded up to 3.

I enjoyed this book, it had great characters and a good storyline. Absolutely loved the authentic hospital setting, i do love a medical thriller.

This was a fascinating story, full of tension the whole way through. Some good characters and a realistic storyline. The conclusion unfolded very rapidly and was very satisfying.

DNF at 20% This book was just so slow, and the writing felt so segmented I couldn't get into it. I know to expect some level of grammatical and spelling errors in an arc but this had so many I sometimes had to reread the sentence multiple times to even understand it.

Thank you netgalley for the earc in exchange for an honest review.

"Thriller" is a genre that promises to keep readers on the edge of their seats, and this definitely delivers. From the very first page, the tension is palpable, and the plot twists and turns in unexpected ways, making it difficult to put the book down. The characters are well-developed and the author does an excellent job of keeping the reader guessing as to who can be trusted and who is hiding something. The pacing is spot-on, with just the right amount of action and suspense to keep the reader engaged. The writing style is gripping and evocative, making it easy to visualise the scenes and feel the emotions of the characters. The author's attention to detail and ability to create a believable world adds to the overall experience of the book. Overall, this is an excellent example of the thriller genre. It's a page-turner that will keep readers guessing until the very end and is sure to satisfy fans of the genre. Highly recommended for anyone who loves a good suspenseful read. This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and I would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

Running away from a past she’d rather forget, Doctor Alison Wilson has moved to a new town to take up the role of Medical Officer at failing hospital Saint Margaret’s.

Tasked with shaking things up, she quickly learns that things are worse than they initially seem: patient records are in disarray, staff morale is low, and there’s something afoot that she can’t quite put her finger on…

As Alison starts to dig into the hospital’s past, she gradually discovers a trail of lies that runs deeper and darker than she could have ever imagined.

The blurp sounded so good and I was excited to read it.

Unfortunately it was a little too clinical, not enough thriller! It wasn't a book for me. I couldn't warm to Dr. Alison. The book wasn't fast paced, lacked drama and some parts were actually boring.

Thank you Netgalley & Avon Books UK for the advanced copy. I do feel bad that I didn't like it more.

I liked this book , but I couldnt say that I loved it. I found it way too predictable . I didnt connect to the characters and the storyline..

Long time ago while I was still a teenager I was making the jump from reading Agatha Christie novels into “proper grown-up books” which is to say I was ready to leave behind Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys and Tintin and start buying crime stories which you didn’t find in the children’s section of our local bookshop. That said, as I draw ever closer to my 50th birthday I still love a Tintin book!

One of the first authors I discovered – one of the early few that replaced Agatha on my TBR – was Robin Cook. He wrote medical thrillers, most notably Coma, and all his murder mystery stories were set in and around hospitals and featured a wealth of sinister phsyicians or medical staff who could (quite literally) get away with murder on their wards. There are far too few medical and hospital crime stories out there these days so when I saw The Doctor and read the blurb (as above) I was hit with a wave of nostalgia and knew I had to read this book. Boy was I glad I did!

Alison is taking over as a senior administrator in a failing hospital, she is leaving a busy London hospital and moving to a smaller place as she is leaving her broken marriage (after her husband had an affair) and seeking new challenges and a fresh start. Her introduction to the hospital isn’t the best as nobody seems to have known she is arriving, then when she starts trying to suggest changes there is resistance. While a certain amount of pushback is not entirely unexpected for a “new broom” looking to shake up a chaotic/shambolic operation there seems to be something not quite right at St Margaret’s hospital.

We follow Alison as she tries to integrate the new controls and measures which are badly needed to make St Margaret’s a more efficient operation but it is clear something isn’t right. Her meetings are inexplicably cancelled, reports she requests don’t arrive, colleagues are waiting for guidance on issues they brought to her yet Alison isn’t aware of their requests. She is blaming tiredness, mixups and she knows she is turning to a calming glass of wine far too often. These slips are undermining her self-confidence but they are also making her colleagues question her competence.

More alarmingly is the reader knows there is a killer in the hospital. We shadow them as they usher some patients to their deaths. It’s chilling and unsettling. The medical staff at our hospitals aren’t meant to bring death to their charges. Equally chilling is that the killer has their eye on Alison – she’s a threat and is going to be turned into a scapegoat or possibly even a victim.

Annie Payne is serving up a mystery, a thriller and a tense pageturner which I really enjoyed. As I alluded to at the start of my review, there are too few medical or hospital thrillers and I will always lap them up. More like this would be very welcome thank you.

A good solid knowledge of hospitals and the NHS helped to give credence to this book. Alison the main character won some sympathy for her back story but her boss was absolutely everything you wouldn’t want in a medical CEO role. He almost ended up as as a caricature of himself.
The plot holds together fairly loosely and I found myself ignoring some ‘that would never have worked’ moments in order to enjoy the read.

As a long standing NHS worker, I throughly loved this book. All the NHS protocols and pressures are so true and it was very well written. Highly recommend!

Thanks to NetGalley and Avon UK. This one was not for me. I just found it a bit flat. Maybe it is me, reading way too many thrillers as always and sometimes it causes me to already know how this is going to go/end. The book was not bad in anyway but it was not for me.

A very enjoyable easy read. A good story with interesting characters and a lot of wine being drunk!
A tale of sneaky deception and stressful life in a new job. Alison is determined to meet the job head on, to help her over a marriage break-up, but life is not that easy. She meets prejudice and jealousy.

Dr. Alison Wilson is starting a new job as Medical Director at St. Margaret’s hospital. Her first impressions are that the place is in dire need of improvement both in updating the hospital and motivating the employees to do a better job. Alison is living in a small place with her cat, Paws.

Some of the doctors resent Alison and her questioning of their jobs and how they do things. The resentment runs deep. But the longer Alison is there, the more she realizes that there are some very serious problems not only with the treatment of patients but also with the procurement of proper equipment.

The story is scary and shows the degree to which someone is willing to go to make Alison look bad while completing their own agenda. There are some frightening things that happen and the worst - to me - is the poisoning of Paws. I am a huge cat lover and the thought of harming a cat really guts me. But, all in all, this is a very good book that will keep readers on the edge of their seat. It is also quite informative about navigating the NHS. Enjoy!

Copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

An enjoyable and quick read but nothing that blew my mind.

Strange things start happening when Dr Alison Wilson starts her new job as Medical Director in a new hospital in a new town. It quickly becomes obvious that someone doesn't want her to be there and is doing all they can to undermine her in any way they can.

Whilst I found this quite predictable and had pegged the protagonist early on, I did quite enjoy how it got to the end. I quite liked the character of Dr Wilson and the way the dynamics between the various staff members was portrayed which I found felt authentic.

Maybe not the thriller I was expecting but enjoyable nonetheless and my thanks go to Avon Books UK and NetGalley for enabling me to read and share my thoughts of The Doctor.

Alison starts a new job as Medical Director at a local hospital. She moved from London for this post., after her marriage broke up. She has no idea what she is walking into & the mess she will find. Nothing goes right & someone is out to make her life hell.
A well written book, which shows the complexities of Alison's job. The added romance lifts the story, which I really enjoyed. Recommended Read.

I don’t read meant thrillers but this one appealed to me. So many secrets and strange goings on. Lots of suspects and unkind people. This was a book I was desperately trying to finish to see who would survive.

The Doctor is a book that had a decent storyline it just lacked any connection with the characters for me to care about them.
Dr Alison Wilson has uprooted her life from London to a small village in England. Her husband has been having an affair and she now wants a divorce. Due to his affair it made life difficult for her in her last position at a hospital in London and agreed to leave. Her new position in this hospital is one where she needs to find tge failings of it and fast but the more she digs the more she finds. From substandard equipment, drug thefts and too higher death rate are just a few things she’s found out but this has got someone’s back up and things start to happen to her making her feel afraid and isolated.
The storyline was there in this medical thriller, there wasn’t much in the line of thriller and this is where it lost a star for me as a little more character development and a few twists would have had this at a higher rating from me. Unfortunately I didn’t care about the characters and found Alison quite abrupt. The knowledge of hospitals was good and I did enjoy this, I just feel a few weeks could have made this better.
I would like to thank Netgalley and Avon Books for this ARC I received in exchange for an honest review.

I used to read medical thrillers regularly but I haven’t read one for a long while, having read this, I shouldn’t have stopped. A fairly slow paced psychological thriller with added extras; the author obviously has inside knowledge of hospitals.

Dr Alison Wilson is appointed the new medical director at St Margaret’s hospital. She has moved from London, seeking a new start professionally & personally. The hospital is failing & despite her grand plans, she finds herself battling computer hacking, vandalism & a few murdered patients too. Is she in danger?

A taut read with some clever twists. Recommended.

Hi and welcome to my review of The Doctor! A.k.a. another episode in my ongoing series: “going in with the wrong expectations can and will severely impact your reading pleasure”.

Yes, dear reader, I managed to go in with the wrong expectations again. Especially with that tagline, and that cover, I expected a medical thriller, most likely with a bit of an angel of mercy angle. This is not that. This is a psychological thriller set in a hospital. Which, to my mind, are two very different things.

Recent examples of medical thrillers might be Jack Jordan’s Do No Harm, or Sometimes People Die by Simon Stephenson. These are books in which the medical aspect and the fact that the main characters are medical professionals, are so inextricably woven into the plot, the setting, the whole book, that the whole thing would just fall apart without that medical aspect.

That is not the case with The Doctor, which, to me, felt a lot like any other psychological thriller, only it just happens to be set in a hospital. Don’t get me wrong, I did like the setting. The author is a former NHS nurse and it does show, she clearly knows what she’s writing about and the setting felt very authentic.

However, the main plot line is our protagonist Alison Wilson, sorting out an administrative mess and trying to figure out who wants her gone so badly that they are messing with her head, her computer, her car, and yes, her cat. Oh, and Alison happens to be a doctor. Even with the suspicious deaths, this plot would have worked just as well in an office building with Alison as the CFO. The cold-blooded killer-who-is-actually-a-caregiver angle seemed like a bit of an afterthought to me.

When you go in expecting a medical thriller like the ones mentioned above, The Doctor falls just a little bit flat. It did not help that I had the killer pegged from the moment they first appeared. For me it was all very predictable and rather stereotyped. Maybe I’ve just read too many thrillers but this one felt mediocre at best, for me there was nothing to make it stand out amongst its peers.

The Doctor is a quick and easy read, and if you’re looking for a psychological thriller with an authentic setting, and you go in with the right expectations, who knows, you may well enjoy it more than I did.

I do love a book with a medical theme but this one didn't quite hit the mark for me. I didn't feel there was much of a storyline and I didn't take to any of the characters. I did finish the book however.and enjoyed the ending