Review by Asunta -- The Surgeon's Wife by William H. Coles

[Asunta]

[Following is a volunteer review of "The Surgeon's Wife" by William H. Coles.]

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1 out of 4 stars

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The Surgeon’s Wife by William H. Coles is a story revolving around medical professionals. Michael Boudreaux, trauma surgeon and Chief of Service at a hospital, faces a dilemma when he has to deal with his former mentor, Clayton Otherson, who is now an impaired surgeon obstinately performing unnecessary Bariatric surgeries. The majority of the medical staff across departments want him gone for risking the lives of patients as well as disrupting peace at the workplace. Michael cannot get rid of Clayton because of his history with him and hence, tries to utilize informal meetings to persuade him into giving up dangerous surgical practices for a while. During these occasions, he inevitably gets to spend time with Clayton’s wife Catherine and they end up having an affair. Clayton is only one of several disasters waiting to wreak havoc in Michael and Catherine’s life.

Honestly, right off the bat, I did not enjoy reading this book.

I understand this book talks about the lives of doctors and hence there had to be technical events that contribute to the growth of the story. However, the technical terms and narratives in so many places were unnecessary, so were a lot of conversations and details. The constantly changing point of views were confusing; I couldn't understand the need for quite a few of them. Characters that did not mean much to the story had an awful lot of description.

Now, one may argue that description could be a style of writing, but the book is barely two hundred pages long and up until about eighty pages, Catherine – the surgeon’s wife who is supposed to form the crux of the story, is barely a ghost in the background, who we don’t learn much about because we’re reading about surgical procedures and skimming through a load of medical terms that non-doctors wouldn’t understand.

I was so confused when Michael and Catherine fall in love out of nowhere. Really. Of course, they cross paths a few times but there’s no conversation that could stir some feelings, neither is the otherwise descriptive narration shedding any light on either characters’ feelings about the other. There is no build-up. And once they get together, so many things happen at once that they, in my opinion, could be isolated as other individual story plots: Catherine has a lot of baggage, Clayton turns into a psychopath, there’s an action movie going on.

It gets more frustrating when the narration just gets bland in the second half of the book. It’s rushed, it’s confusing and it just doesn’t hold your attention because it's overwhelming for the storyteller themself.

Unfortunately, I cannot state a single instance when I liked the story.

The book is also not edited properly, so there are some grammatical errors. I would rate the book 1 out of 4 stars because I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

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The Surgeon's Wife
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