4 out of 4 stars
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Parkhill Mays is a third-year medical school dropout from a prestigious university who wakes up from a failed suicide attempt in Bellevue Hospital. There, he meets Thomas Bonicelli (whom everyone calls T-Bone), a self-described “human lab rat.” T-Bone helps Mays escape the hospital and take him under his wing. Living beneath the streets of the city in the “Bat Cave,” they make ends meet by selling sperm and other bodily fluids and parts for product and pharmaceutical trials, culminating in an extended Phase Three clinical trial for a new anti-depressant wonder drug. All the while, Mays struggles with his mental illness and with trying to find a place between his new underground existence and the “topside” world he left, struggling with love and various degrees of “The Rage” in this young man’s life as he tries to find a meaning to it all.
Mays Landing is an amazing book by J.C. Mercer. Mercer takes a very original story and executes it perfectly. This book is not full of unnecessary content or dialogue. Everything in this book seems to have meaning; it all furthers the plot and conveys the story the author wants to get across to the reader. While I realize the summary to this book is short and not very telling, don’t let that fool you.
Mercer spins a tale that will draw the reader in and won’t let go until you have finished every word. My favorite part of Mays Landing was how realistic everything is. From the people underground that seem to live and speak and entirely different language than the “topside” world, to the “topside” people who are oblivious to how they live their lives by “the man” and are “corporate zombies.”
The book appears to be free of grammatical and spelling errors; the main and supporting characters are clearly defined. There also seemed to be a lot of research done to get proper facts and statistics to support the writing of this book. For example, the book is told in Mays’s perspective and when he uses a term he learned while in medical school, the reader gets a full explanation of the term. There are also various facts used about New York City, as well.
I have to rate Mays Landing 4 out of 4 stars. This is a book that keeps the reader enthralled until the very end. There is wit, romance, hardships, friendships and heartbreak. I would recommend this book to anyone, though there are only a few mild moments that might be too much for the younger crowd; I think 16+ would be great. I guarantee readers will not be disappointed in the time they invest in this book.
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Mays Landing
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