Guest Post: A Review of The Surgeons Wife by William H Coles

See? Adorable.

Here is a review from my friend Jaymie. I'm hoping she enjoyed reviewing an adult book, because at Snacks for Max  she reviews kids books (and shares pictures of her adorable son.) 

SUMMARY:

(From Amazon – and the back of the book)

Mike Boudreaux, as a trauma surgeon Chief of Service, must discipline an impaired surgeon performing unnecessary and dangerous surgery for the obese. He is Boudreaux's former teacher and mentor, and Boudreaux falls in love with his young, beautiful, New-Orleans-socially-prominent wife.

Boudreaux cannot hide the adulterous affair that erodes his career authority and reputation. Family and society reject the woman he loves unconditionally; when she moves in with Boudreaux, her rebellious daughter disappears.

As Boudreaux tries to retrieve and convince the daughter to support her mother, the jealous husband's surgical career declines; a young patient dies; the public is outraged. The crazed husband blames his wife and Boudreaux for his decline and threatens violent revenge. The couple plans marriage and strains to regain pride and confidence amidst the hostility of accusatory taunts of friends, family and society.

REVIEW:

Coles is a good writer – especially as he’s describing hospital scenes and setting the reader up to understand complex medical and political issues. I am by no means even an intermediate in these areas, and I think I had a pretty good grasp of what was going on in the book.

My mental love affair with Patrick Dempsey, wherein I watch Grey’s Anatomy religiously and pretend I’m Dempsey’s love interest, probably helped with that understanding.

However, I had a couple of big problems with The Surgeon’s Wife:

The main character, Mike Boudreaux, and his mentor’s wife have a buddy-buddy, friend-of-the-family type relationship throughout the first 17 chapters of the book. Then, right in the middle of the book, she’s all of a sudden in love with him.

It’s not clear whether he loves her back at this point or is just as suddenly in lust, but it only takes the good doctor a day or two to decide Catherine, who he sees every once in a while at hospital events and sometimes a friendly dinner, is more important than his mentor, with whom he interacts every day.

Apparently Boudreaux doesn’t subscribe to the bromantic “Bros before ‘hos” adage.

I know readers are asked to suspend reality in most books, but at least lead me into the love story gently!

What I took to be the main thrust of the book – hospital ethics and mores – is all of a sudden dropped once the affair gets going. WHAT?!

That’s the part I was invested in, not this surprise love between Boudreaux and his mentor’s wife (okay, not surprising factually, since it’s the indication of the title and introduced on the back of the book, but surprising because their feelings for each other are apparently too well hidden in the first half of the book).

VERDICT:

If the entire book had concentrated on the surgery for the obese, rather than straying away from this important issue once the adulterous relationship emerged, I would have loved it. Coles could have axed most of the “rebellious daughter” storyline and added more about the professional angle of the story.

As it is? I’m not a huge fan.