A hilarious dark and honest look at the life of a doctor at a hospital and the patients they have to look after and all their little quirks. I found this to be a brutally honest eye opener. It's humorous banter lightens the plot.

If you didn’t know better, you’d be forgiven for thinking that A Little Unwell was a memoir. Riddled with the gallows humour that can only come from having worked in healthcare herself, Jewell writes about Amy, a junior doctor navigating the complexities of a hospital night shift rotation and some semblance of a personal life.

It’s rare that I ACTUALLY laugh out loud when I read but this book had me in fits of giggles from the start, before it had me bawling. The book paints a grim and unfortunately extremely realistic view of the Australian public healthcare system and some of the vast challenges our doctors are faced with every day - gruesome injuries, difficult patients, difficult colleagues, compassion fatigue, actual fatigue.

I enjoyed the tone and pace of the book and found it a very engaging novel, despite its often heavy content. I think this book will resonate deeply with anyone who has worked in frontline healthcare, and be equally valuable to those readers who haven’t. My only qualm was that I found Chris so infuriating, but I understand that this was purposeful!

TW: The novel is quite graphic in parts, uses strong language and addresses suicide. Read at your discretion.

Dark, wickedly funny, tragic and powerful - if you loved “This is Going to Hurt” then you will love A Little Unwell!

I finished A Little Unwell feeling a lot more emotional than I expected to. On the surface, it’s warm and funny and very readable; the kind of book you can easily sink into, but underneath that there’s a quiet depth that really stayed with me.

Amy completely won me over. She felt like someone you might actually know. She’s messy, tired, trying her best, and not always getting it right… and that’s what made her so compelling. There were moments where I genuinely felt for her, especially seeing the pressure she’s under and the constant balancing act of caring for others while barely keeping herself afloat. It made me think about the real people behind hospital doors: the ones working long shifts, carrying huge responsibility, and still expected to show up with compassion every single day.

I loved how the book didn’t lean too hard in one direction. It has humour and warmth, but it also allows space for vulnerability and emotional honesty. It felt authentic rather than dramatic, which made the emotional moments land even more.

I think medical professionals will see a lot of themselves in this story, but you definitely don’t need to work in healthcare to connect with it. At its heart, this is a story about people , about exhaustion, resilience, connection, and trying to do your best in imperfect circumstances.

It’s not flashy, but it’s heartfelt and genuine- and that’s exactly why it works.

Loved loved loved - I laughed , I cried , I had a blast . This was exceptionally well written , realistic to the point I thought I’d accidentally picked up a memoir. A delightful , heart wrenching insight into the world of medicine and the hero’s that work in those professions. Fast paced and Kerry nailed the balance between entertaining and grotesque. An easy five stars and front runner for best read of 2026.

I went into A Little Unwell expecting something insightful… but I was not prepared for how deeply it would get under my skin.

This book feels so real it’s almost unsettling. If you didn’t know better, you’d genuinely think you were reading a memoir. The way Kerry writes Amy’s world, the chaos of night shifts, the exhaustion, the emotional toll of patient care, it all feels painfully authentic. It’s messy, overwhelming, and at times almost suffocating in the most intentional way.

Amy as a main character completely pulled me in. She’s ambitious, capable, and trying so hard to hold everything together, but you can feel the cracks forming from the very beginning. What hit the hardest for me was how much of the pressure came from within. That constant need to prove herself, to not fall behind, to keep pushing even when she’s running on empty, it was exhausting to read in a way that felt incredibly honest.

And yet, despite how heavy this book gets, it’s also so funny. The humour is sharp, dark, and very “if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry”, and honestly, I did both. One minute I was laughing at the absurdity of hospital life, and the next I was sitting there with a lump in my throat.

What this book does so well is show the cost of ambition. Not in a dramatic, over the top way, but in the quiet, creeping losses, relationships that strain, parts of yourself that slowly slip away, the way your whole world narrows without you even realising it. It doesn’t romanticise the medical field, and it definitely doesn’t sugar-coat it.

I also really appreciated the supporting characters. They’re not there to fix Amy or magically make things better, but they challenge her, ground her, and reflect back the things she’s trying to ignore. It made the story feel even more layered and real.

This is one of those books that will hit differently depending on your experiences, but I think anyone can appreciate what it’s trying to say about ambition, burnout, and identity.

As someone who works in a hospital. This felt raw and real and fresh. A story that everyone should read. I saw someone talk about this on Instagram as they read it here on netgalley and I instantly knew I had to read it as well. I may even need a trophy copy for my bookshelf now.