Review of The Fifth Surgeon by Faith Prize

Love and a little frustration sum up my feelings on this book perfectly. This was my kind of book. I love medical romances and an unapologetic ice queen, put them together and this is exactly what I want to read. The frustration part, which I will explain more later, is really because this should have been a full 5-star read. It was so close and had one thing been different, it would have been. Still, this was a fantastic debut and I would definitely consider getting this if it comes out in audio.

I love medical romances but I prefer them to have at least as much medical as romance if not even more medical. I want a lot of scenes to take place in the hospital. I want to hear about interesting cases and all the sort of soap opera drama that comes from working in a high-stakes environment where relationships can blur work lines. I grew up watching E.R., and I loved Grey’s Anatomy -until the past two seasons that have gotten kind of weird- so I look for a similar vibe in my medical romance reads. I’m happy to say that this was everything that I wanted. The medical scenes were excellent and it was clear the author was writing from a place of knowledge that took this book to another level.

While I loved the medical, and clear knowledge that the author had on this subject, that realism was sort of shattered at one point. This was the frustrating part I was talking about. I’m going to keep things vague for spoiler reasons but the author chose to have one of the doctors do something that was so ridiculous, and in my opinion, against the code of professionalism and keeping patients alive, that I could just not swallow it. I get why it was done for drama’s sake, and I like drama in my medical romances, but how it was done was a real disappointment. I appreciate all the fantasy around romances, and I would normally not mind this as much, but because the medical was so well done in this book, I couldn’t forgive such an out there moment so I had to take a half star off.

Now back to some good stuff. I loved the character of Nadia. She will be a character that I’m not sure if ever reader will like, but I enjoyed her iciness. I loved that she was who she was, blunt and honest, and full of herself like most surgeons are, and I found her to be the perfect ice queen for a medical romance. I was also happy that she didn’t just thaw right away. While we got to know her better we saw new sides of her, but she still was the same person she always was and was not about to apologize for it.

I found that I also really enjoyed the romance. It is different than the norm, but I like different and it worked well for me. This is actually enemies to lovers which is another favorite trope of mine. And the romance progresses in a way that is different but very interesting. There is also a bit of an angry sex scene that is pretty steamy too. And while there is a lot of angst in their relationship, even that follows a different timetable than the average romance and I can’t tell you how refreshing it was. I wish more authors would mix it up this way.

While I am still a little frustrated, it is only because I really wanted to give this book the full 5 stars it should have had. However, I still loved the story and am very impressed with this debut. This author knows how to write medical romance and I hope there will be many more to come. This book was almost twice the size of a normal romance but I was so into the story that I didn’t even notice. It never felt long and I didn’t feel like parts dragged. Except for the one frustration, I honestly enjoyed everything else. I would absolutely recommend this to medical romance fans. I believe this is a great example of what a book from that genre should be. 4.50 Stars.

An ARC was given to me for an honest review.