Thank you to NetGalley, Anthony Lee, and AuthorBuzz for the ARC to read and review.

I will preface this by saying this author has potential and for a first book, it wasn’t awful. There are some improvements needed but potential for future 4-5⭐️ books is there.

Writing:
It was fairly evident that this was a debut novel. The writing fell short for me. Many times I skimmed pages to just get through some sections. Often there was over explanations of medical diagnoses which came across as condescending. I have a background in healthcare so perhaps that’s why I interpreted as such. I’m sure non-healthcare readers would appreciate the in depth explanations. The writing felt more diary or journal entry to me. If it had been structured as such, it would have been great. I did not care for lengthy sections on song selection, his Spotify playlist or is navigation through town. That was all filler content that should have been cut. Ideally, 30-50 pages could have been cut out and the content wouldn’t have been missed.

Additionally, the author goes on about Covid-19 numerous times. I don’t know about other readers but I could do without mention of that dreaded time. The author’s opinions and stances shine through quite vividly. I got the sense that he may be jaded and bitter and it came out in his main character. While not necessarily a bad thing, I don’t think it really worked for this book. It seems like this book was his outlet for his own personal feelings. The main character also assaults several people by “kicking them in the balls”, kinda threw me off. Why is a ball kicking the go-to method of choice? Seems weird for a grown, professional man to do that.

Plot:
As for the plot, I loved the idea of having a cyberattack cause havoc in the hospital as a plot to a thriller. It is a very believable thing to happen and I was excited to read how this would play out. I feel like there was some twists and angles that could have been pushed more to give this book the wow factor. It was so close to gripping my attention but fell short. Some more development on how to catch him and what he did to cause mayhem would have been interesting. And if I had to read “Lucifer Worm” one more time…

Characters:
The main doctor, Dr. Lin was so beyond irritating. I could not stand this character. He was whiny, annoying, unprofessional, arrogant and just flat out stupid. He had numerous interactions with Dr. Lucifer but really did nothing about it? His patient e-charts were hacked and no one thought to switch to paper like the old days? The rest of the characters had little to no development.

Takeaway:
The book is okay, it’s not very fast paced and took me longer than usual to get through. I skimmed about 20 pages of just filler content. The plot was interesting but lacked any real thrill. The characters were weak and minimally developed. It’s a good way to kill some time but I wouldn’t say it’s the next best thing. The author has huge potential and I think could put out some big things in the future. As a debut, it’s not bad. I would likely read another book from this author.

⭐️⭐️

Thank you NetGalley, Anthony Lee, and AuthorBuzz for providing me with this ARC of Dr Lucifer.

Dr. Lucifer is about hospitalist Dr. Mark Lin of Ivory Memorial Hospital. We meet Dr. Lin on his last few days before his 6 day off break when he gets a company wide email regarding a computer hacking program called Lucifer’s Worm. Little does Dr. Lin know that he’s about to be targeted by a hacker calling himself Dr. Lucifer in a race against time to stop the harmful deeds being done to his patients.

Honest thoughts: 3/5 stars
I would like to start by saying this author has potential for a higher rated book. I felt this book was written in a manner that felt like a play by play or a dear diary of someone’s day. It felt like there was a lot of explaining of what was happening as well as detailed descriptions of the medical terminology used in the book. In addition there was quite a bit of dialogue, but it lacked serious character development. We also got numerous descriptions of songs and how they made our MC feel, which I didn’t love. This book starts to get really interesting for me only after deciphering a far fetched poem sent via email to our MC. At this point it becomes very twisty and you want to know what happens next. The last 50-75 pages were the best part of the book in my opinion. With that being said I would read the second installment of this series or a similar book by this author.

This review is cross posted on Goodreads and Instagram

First, I want to thank the author and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC.

Overall, the book was written beautifully and the MC character development was great to read. The hospital setting was really fun to read and immerse myself into. I was worried it would be hard to read with the medical terminology but Anthony Lee made it extremely easy to follow along. The plot was flawless and the plot twist kept me on my toes.

I rated the book 3 stars only because COVID-19 got mentioned SEVERAL times and it did not need to be mentioned as much as it did with it not furthering the plot of the book. I read books to get away from the real world and having a recent/current world issue in a book was a bit hard for me to get through.

Great writing! Kept you guessing who did it! Some parts went into too much details for my taste, but overall great writing.