I give this book a mixed grade – somewhere between 3.5-4.25 stars. I know that is vague. I really, really appreciate what the author was going for, but I think it suffered in the execution a bit. One of my biggest issues was that it should have been longer to really give the characters time to develop. I almost never feel that way. I’m usually wondering if the author was paid by the word since they are dragging things out.
Theme wise, this book was *amazing*. No-nonsense doctor, Callie Anders, meets Hank (Hazardous) Lazarus half an hour before a terrible accident changes his life. Hank is an hard-partying Olympics-bound snowboarder and crashes at an exhibition. He finds himself in the hospital being told he is paraplegic and his family is demanding answers to what kind of recovery they can expect for him. Callie steps in and tells his family to back off. There’s another run in at the hospital months later where Callie won’t take his nonsense, and then his family puts the pressure on for a new therapy. The Lazarus family is really wealthy and will bankroll a huge study at the hospital if Hank will participate. Hank will only participate if Callie runs the study. So, the set-up is contrived, but that is often the case, and I can get over it if the premise plays out well. I think it really does here.
Hank and Callie are very interesting characters and each are dealing with their own set of issues. Callie has worked very hard for her career and is pretty satisfied with it, but she is worried about the toll it is taking on her personal life. Her last boyfriend (another doctor) cheated on her and is recently engaged. Her best friend (apparently the heroine of the first book in this series) is recently married and had a baby. Callie is in her late 20s and wondering what she needs to do to get the personal life she wants, and if it is even possible with the career she has. This all rang very true to me, and I found it a refreshingly ‘real’ dilemma for a heroine to have. And, Callie takes steps on her own to move in the right direction. I always appreciate that in a heroine.
Hank, unsurprisingly, has some bigger issues to deal with. He is a former athlete that is now wheelchair bound. (And he’s still in the wheelchair at the end guys! I am really loving the current trend in romance that allows differently-abled people to still have fulfilling lives. I consider this important literature.) Seriously – this book addresses erectile dysfunction. Has that ever been done in a romance before? (Certainly not any I have read). Hank basically loses his identity and has to find himself again. He has to figure out how to best physically function in this new world, as well as find a vocation and whether he can have a romantic relationship they way he wants. The way he sees himself and how he thinks Callie sees him is very interesting. The characters are also pretty decent at communication, which I liked.
My only real problems with the book were (1) dialog and (2) follow-through. The dialog was questionable at times. Hank, a 30ish man, says things that I would have trouble believing out of the mouth of a teenage girl. One of the big conflicts of the book is that Callie, while not technically Hank’s doctor, is leading the study that he is a part of and that he insisted she run. Getting that position was a big step up for Callie’s career and she worried a long time about getting personally involved with Hank. There is some resolution in the story about how that is handled short term, but after that resolution there is not another reference to her job in the entire book. It’s really weird. The epilogue, which takes place a year later, mentions that she’s been working the whole time, but there are no details. Maybe these details are addressed in the third book (which I believe overlaps some of that same time period). I will eventually get to reading it as well as the first in the series.