Thank you for the advanced reading copy from NetGalley.

I love thrillers, medical dramas, and a good mystery with plot turns and twists. I thought I'd love this book more than I did. While I enjoyed the mystery parts of it, I got bogged down in the medical terminology, and the plethora of information that seemed to detract from the pacing of the plot itself.
I liked the multiple points of view approach, I enjoyed the characters as I got to know them, and I did enjoy the ending once it got there. It took me a lot longer than usual due to the details that slowed me down.
A decent read, with lots of detail and information, but overall a solid mystery thriller.

Thrilling read that will keep you on the edge of your seat. It was well written and flowed well and was easy to read. One you won’t want to end

This medical thriller starts fast and doesn’t let up. The story is told from multiple points of view. It is a page turner. I love a good medical thriller and this is a good one. It is an inside look at the world of the hospital intern and resident. My one comment recommending this book is that it has a lot of medical jargon and, unless the reader is familiar with the terms and medical conditions, (which I am) they might be confused and lost at times. I hope this is a new series and that we get to see these very likable characters again!

An interesting medical thriller with lots of medical detail and well developed characters. It held my interest and kept me guessing.

Being a medical student I usually try to stick with books in other genres instead of medicine. Nonetheless, I really enjoyed this book! I like how it intertwined the realities of medicine with solving a mystery. I also appreciated that the medicines and procedures done in the hospital were realistic instead of grossly exaggerated. If you want a book that enticing and an easy read, I would recommend this book!

What an amazing thriller! Absolutely loved the storyline and the heroes. The writer spins a beautiful tale abd draws you in slowly but surely.

This is a competent addition to the medical thriller category, but it didn't ignite much interest from me. The details about med students and pharmaceutical research were good but I felt that this story has been told before in more exciting ways.

A superb read! A gem!

Autumn Johnson is a struggling first year resident (intern) who dates Jay Abrams a few times. When Jay is admitted to the hospital with a life-threatening heart problem, Autumn is in the ICU with her supervisor, Cassie. Reviving Jay takes twice as long as Cassie should have attempted, yet she does manage to get a heartbeat. Autumn faints when she finds out the patient is Jay.

Jay's mother and step-father seem a bit more refined than Jay's father, Larry. They all clash when a decision has to be made as to Jay's future.

But the question is - why would a healthy 27 year old man go into cardiac arrest? Suicide? Drugs? Jay had been working on his PhD/MD and was close to the end of his research.

Cassie thinks a digoxin overload may have caused the event. Autumn thinks the plant, foxglove, had something to do with Jay's situation. Mark, an intern buddy of Autumn, plays detective with Autumn and the help of a patient who is an ex-detective. Meanwhile, Cassie is desperately looking for Xanax from a shady pharm rep, Chris.

A definite MUST READ! Suspenseful and enjoyable.

Highly recommend!!!

Many Thanks to IBPA and NetGalley for a great read!

This was a great medical thriller. The story went this Jay came to the ER with gastric problems which became cardiac and he had to be shocked multiple times. There was something wrong with his heart rhythm which didn't really go with any of the known poisonings till something clicked in the intensivist Cassie
On the other hand Jay's friend Autum investigated and made few shocking discoveries even at the threat to her life
My first book by Dr Dawn Sherling had me stuck to kindle. The intrigue and suspense had me turning pages faster. There were a lot of medical terms but being in the same profession, I enjoyed it thoroughly.
Overall a great mystery revealed at the end

Anyone who has ever worked in the medical field (along with everyone else) will really enjoy this book. This story is told from two different points of views, the patient's, and the doctor's, which I really liked. This suspenseful story will keep you on your toes, and make you question what you thought you knew about the medical profession. I highly recommend!

Not Quite Dead
by Dawn Harris Sherling
Published: December 10, 2018 by Dawn Harris Sherling/Independent Book Publishers Association
Dates Read: May 4 – May 6, 2019
Genre/Category: Medical Fiction, Medical Thrillers
Read For: NetGalley Review

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
4 stars

I’m a sucker for a good medical mystery. Heck, I could be considered a sucker for a bad medical mystery as well. Not Quite Dead made it onto one of those lists, and with 4 stars I bet you can guess which one.

Book synopsis from Amazon: Doctor Autumn Johnson is convinced that someone wants the promising young researcher, Jay Abrams, dead. And as a newly minted medical intern, Autumn tries to outsmart death on behalf of her patients every day. But she just can’t seem to get it right. Not knowing the answers her residents expect her to, prescribing the wrong meds, and nearly passing out as a patient is wheeled into the ICU—is not how she had pictured herself as a physician. Determined to do better, Autumn decides to prove someone tried to kill Jay. When the trail leads her to Jay’s mysterious notes, Autumn has little time to discover who wants Jay, and now her, dead. With the help of the only other intern she can call a friend and a self-destructive perfectionist for a supervising resident, Autumn will have to solve a mystery that reaches deep inside the medical establishment, threatening us all.

There’s not much to say about this book for me. When you are in the medical profession, reading medical fiction is always fun, you can read about all the mistakes other people make without feeling guilty. The book can be the most poorly written medical story and it can make you feel like the smartest person on the face of the earth. Sometimes you get all the feelies and you cry, or you get angry, or you yell, but you still walk away OK because it was just a book and you didn’t kill anyone today. Fortunately, for those of us in the know, Dawn Harris Sherling wrote a pretty good book.

Not Quite Dead’s story revolves mostly around interns and residents, our main character being Autumn. She is your typical nervous nellie newbie, and I felt the author did fairly well describing the typical characteristics seen in this type of person. When Autumn’s not-so certain boyfriend (more like hospital hook-up) Jay is wheeled into the ICU in a coma, where Autumn is on rotation, she finds herself trying to solve more than just his medical diagnosis. This becomes a cute medical mystery that involves a lot of the typical ins and outs that medical professionals deal with on a daily basis in a hospital and clinical environment. There is a decent amount of medical jargon, but it is used in a manor that if you are not medical in any way, you can still follow the novel with complete understanding. (And as an ICU nurse I did not want to scream at anyone during any of the medical senerios.) There was a good flow to the writing, and it kept my attention, which is extremely important. All of the characters portrayed were very sterotypical of residents and doctors that I have worked with, and you may think that is a bad thing but it is not. I loved that aspect of the book because it nailed each and every one at each stage of their career. I applaud Ms. Sherling for her interpretation. The ending was satisfying, about as satisfying as any medical drama can end, considering how it ends. There was some heartwarming and very insightful comments made that can be appreciated as well.

I give this a good solid 4 stars. Normally I would probably have put this in my 3 star range, it was a quick read that kept my attention, but didn’t give me a headache, and usually I would have just forgotten about it a few days later. Not only did it have all the general basics that I require (see rating scale) but for a few days afterwards I was still thinking about this case. As an ICU nurse, a lot of times you take your work home with you. Its easy to review your day in your head, think about what you may have forgotten, or may have done differently. When you take care of some of the same patients day after day, you’d be lying if you said you didn’t get attached. So in reading this book, these patients became my own. I reviewed their cases like they were my own, and of course I reviewed the novels ending questioning if there was something I would have done differently. I did this for days. Nurse or not, when a book stays with me for this long, whatever the topic, I consider it to be at the very least 4 stars. It’s earned it. This one surely earned its stars, it was well written and stayed with me. If Ms. Sherling writes a second book, I most certainly will be in line to get my copy!!!

Thank You so much to NetGalley and to Crooked Lane Books for the free copy of Not Quite Dead for an unbiased and honest review.

I chose this book because the description says it involves a doctor and her medical intern. As a nurse who lives north of Boston, it was really awesome to have a medical story about characters and a hospital so close to home.

It starts with a typical, crazy day for medical resident Cassie and her intern Autumn Johnson. Suddenly, a young researcher, named Jay Adams is rushed into the ICU with cardiac issues. Autumn is overcome with disbelief when she sees that it’s the guy she has been seeing for the last few weeks.
Cassie and Autumn are determined to solve the mystery of why this young, healthy man is lying on a hospital bed, unable to talk or breath on his own.

I love thrillers so tying it in with medicine is even better. This was a great read!

I had the opportunity to read a free copy provided by NetGalley.

The author wrote a thriller that started with a bang and just kept going! The twists kept coming, so I couldn't put it down. I cannot wait to read more from this author!

3.5 stars.
I did really enjoyed the book, but found it hard to read due to some medical terms. I read this book on my kindle, so had to use the dictionary a lot to look up words.
I really liked the characters specially Autumn.
I didn’t understand what Cassie brought to the story line, hence why I’ve lowered my rating. Once the story concluded, I realised she wasn’t really linked to the main story, and didn’t understand her role in the story.
I did like the main story though, and this helped me read to the finish.
Thank you for accepting me to review this book.

I do enjoy a good medical thriller and this had a fascinating plot about a drug trial with hidden consequences for a young researcher. Maybe it's because I'm at home recuperating from a hip replacement, but there was so much medical terminology, that I felt I was inundated with information I didn't understand--or need to for the rest of the story. But the novel does address how difficult it is to work as an intern with the long hours and little sleep, the minute mistakes that can create life or death situations, and the pain of dealing with grieving loved ones. And I certainly have a heightened appreciation for the doctors and nurses that cared for me while dealing with many more patients! So while I skipped some of the jargon, the story was a good one and informative as well as entertaining!

Not Quite Dead is a gritty medical thriller set in a Boston teaching hospital, written by a practicing physician, which took me right back to the horrors of my hospital training in the UK, which is quite a long time ago now! This is the third book I’ve read this year about dodgy clinical research, which is probably not a coincidence since I work in this field.

Autumn Johnson is an inexperienced intern working gruelling night shifts when her new boyfriend, Jay, a medical student who’s taken time out for a PhD in drug research, is brought in to the ICU with inexplicable cardiac arrhythmias that leave him comatose. Her supervising resident Cassie, a driven perfectionist, is wracked with guilt at not making the diagnosis quickly enough, and this is made worse by the unrealistic expectations of his family. When Autumn visits the lab to look for clues, the assistant who worked alongside Jay slips her his notebook, which hints that something suspicious might’ve been going on. What is the pompous Principal Investigator hiding, and did he target Jay to shut him up?

This was a well-written suspense novel but may have too much medical detail for lay readers - you don’t really need a step by step account of how to insert a central line, or how a cardiac drug works, unless it’s to reinforce that the author is a real doctor. These added to the fun for me but would be wasted on most readers I suspect. The mystery was pretty simplistic and predictable, it seemed obvious who the baddie was as soon as they were introduced. I liked the characters - there’s a bit of a Greys Anatomy vibe, but without the humour.

Where this stood out for me was the accurate descriptions of the brutality of medical training, the impact this has on young doctors and the cynicism it engenders which can last a career. I saw the light early, and chose Life over Money with a career in General Practice, but even that’s no picnic and burnout is everywhere. I now partly work in clinical research, and found that those were the unrealistic aspects of this book. I can’t explain without spoilers but drug development takes many years, and many trials in many sites, you don’t just go from giving it to mice to giving it to patients.

I did find the running commentary on the American medical system interesting, as the culture is quite different there, where everything is driven by money and religion. Patients who have no chance at all are kept alive through endless treatments and procedures because families refuse to give up hope, nobody has the courage to tell them, and a hospital that earns from this has an interest in keeping the insurance money coming. The title Not Quite Dead is a perfect description of many of these ICU patients, but also describes how most doctors feel during those horrendous training years.

I liked the way this was told from multiple POVs, including Jay’s horrifying experience as the patient. Autumn had a good ending but I would’ve liked a clearer resolution for Cassie, and to know the fate of the perpetrator, which was left open. Overall this was a very good read, which will hopefully make you think about - and have conversations with your family about your wishes.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the arc in exchange for an honest review. Not Quite Dead is available now.

Not Quite Dead is a wonderful thriller. I could not put it down. This is a enjoyable read that is well written and I liked the characters.

Doctor Autumn Johnson is convinced that someone wants the promising young researcher, Jay Abrams, dead. And as a newly minted medical intern, Autumn tries to outsmart death on behalf of her patients every day. But she just can’t seem to get it right. Not knowing the answers her residents expect her to, prescribing the wrong meds, and nearly passing out as a patient is wheeled into the ICU—is not how she had pictured herself as a physician.

Determined to do better, Autumn decides to prove someone tried to kill Jay. When the trail leads her to Jay’s mysterious notes, Autumn has little time to discover who wants Jay, and now her, dead. With the help of the only other intern she can call a friend and a self-destructive perfectionist for a supervising resident, Autumn will have to solve a mystery that reaches deep inside the medical establishment, threatening us all.

What a crazy read!! There was so much that Autumn had to do to figure out what was going on and why Jay was murdered. It reminded me a little of a classic whodunnit story. It was very good and well worth the read!

Thank you #NetGalley for the ARC of #NotQuiteDead
Pub Date: 10 Dec 2018