This book surprised us. From the synopsis, we’d expected a breezier
read but the book is chock-a-block with serious backstories and characters
grappling with their own demons.
Amy Spencer is a surgeon in a mid-sized community hospital.
Ellis Hall is a business consultant whose job is to optimise public spend and
budgets for hospitals which means her recommendations often lead to
reorganisations of hospitals. Neither women have much time or inclination for a
relationship but use a dating app to set up an assignation for casual sex. They
meet using aliases for something that should’ve been a one-off but ends up
being a weekly tryst. Despite not speaking about themselves, they find the
other taking up a lot of mind space and their Thursday afternoon encounters
become the most important thing in their lives. That is until Ellis is assigned
to study Amy’s hospital. Suddenly they seem to be on opposite sides of a
prickly issue.
This book started off like A Perfect Balance by Laura Ambrose but became just way more serious
as it proceeded. Amy is almost forty, Ellis is in her mid-forties – so both
have pasts affecting them in different ways. In the past, Amy was involved with
a person suffering depression who took to self-medicating. Amy stayed with her
trying to help her in every way for five years before throwing in her towel. Ellis
used to be involved with a lady who had a young child and walked away from them
after three years without any explanation. In their back stories, Amy is a hero
and Ellis not really likeable. Given this, it was very interesting to us that in
their current realities, we found Amy an ass for being combative, untrusting,
aggressive and an overall jerk with Ellis. We really liked Ellis in the
relationship, though she remained passive and non-committal, though just on the
right side of helpful, in handling a teenager going through a difficult time
and needing Ellis. However, in the relationship with Amy, Ellis carries the
entire emotional burden and makes all the effort. But there is no denying great
chemistry between the two. There are interesting side-stories with secondary
characters which would also make interesting stories by themselves.
While this was an okay read, it wasn’t particularly
enjoyable to read Amy’s nastiness with Ellis who really kept putting herself
out there for the relationship continually.
⭐⭐⭐
