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Was this book a quick and easy read? Yes.
Was this book reasonably diverting and moderately entertaining? Yes.
Did this book follow the exact same plot as every other Robin Cook novel? Yes.
Look, if you like Robin Cook and have accepted that every single one of his novels includes a reasonably young, reasonably accomplished, reasonably attractive doctor who likes to go running and has at least 2 suitors, then you should read this book. As with every other Cook novel, Marissa Blumenthal falls into all of the categories above and, if you've read other Cook selections, you can guess by about 20% into the book who "the bad guy" is.
Plot-wise, it was fairly interesting and it was cool to learn about about epidemiology and containment strategies -- particularly on the heels of our own real-life Ebola "scare" recently. However, as many other reviewers have noted, you really only need to hear about the containment strategies once to understand them and it's a waste of time/space to tell us every single time Marissa puts on her protective gear and takes it back off and puts it on for the next patient. Really, we do understand the process and with her overwhelming fear of the situation, I think we would understand that she went through proper procedures without being hand-held through it.
Additionally, I think that this was rather dated. Obviously it was written in the '80s, so things like not having a cell phone and the internet are expected, but the attitudes were also rather dated. For example, Marissa being so upset about the fact that she did not welcome her boss's advances and then blaming herself the entire time. That's ridiculous (even in the '80s) and honestly made me kind of resent Marissa for being so absurd. I get that often in cases of sexual harassment or mistreatment that it's common for a victim to blame themselves, but that was not what was going on here at all and. quite frankly, belittles what others have actually had to deal with.
All in all, I think it deserved the two stars as GoodReads says that two stars means "it was ok" and I think that is the perfect way to describe this book. It was ok.
Was this book reasonably diverting and moderately entertaining? Yes.
Did this book follow the exact same plot as every other Robin Cook novel? Yes.
Look, if you like Robin Cook and have accepted that every single one of his novels includes a reasonably young, reasonably accomplished, reasonably attractive doctor who likes to go running and has at least 2 suitors, then you should read this book. As with every other Cook novel, Marissa Blumenthal falls into all of the categories above and, if you've read other Cook selections, you can guess by about 20% into the book who "the bad guy" is.
Plot-wise, it was fairly interesting and it was cool to learn about about epidemiology and containment strategies -- particularly on the heels of our own real-life Ebola "scare" recently. However, as many other reviewers have noted, you really only need to hear about the containment strategies once to understand them and it's a waste of time/space to tell us every single time Marissa puts on her protective gear and takes it back off and puts it on for the next patient. Really, we do understand the process and with her overwhelming fear of the situation, I think we would understand that she went through proper procedures without being hand-held through it.
Additionally, I think that this was rather dated. Obviously it was written in the '80s, so things like not having a cell phone and the internet are expected, but the attitudes were also rather dated. For example, Marissa being so upset about the fact that she did not welcome her boss's advances and then blaming herself the entire time. That's ridiculous (even in the '80s) and honestly made me kind of resent Marissa for being so absurd. I get that often in cases of sexual harassment or mistreatment that it's common for a victim to blame themselves, but that was not what was going on here at all and. quite frankly, belittles what others have actually had to deal with.
All in all, I think it deserved the two stars as GoodReads says that two stars means "it was ok" and I think that is the perfect way to describe this book. It was ok.