primordial - /prʌɪˈmɔːdɪəl/
adjective: primordial existing at or from the beginning of time; primeval.

Biology (of a cell, part, or tissue) in the earliest stage of development. "primordial germ cells"

Not exactly sure what I was expecting when I first picked this book up, but it exceeded any expectations I had! It's a healthly mix of science, history, and mystery.

Jonas is a lawyer at a prestigious hospital and his job is pretty straight forward dealing with and preventing law suits. One day a guy comes into his office and says he thinks that patients at the hospital are being murdered. Jonas doesn't directly believe him as it's a hospital and people die all the time, the guy hands him a list of patients he think will be next and leaves.

Jonas then sends an email to his superior and asks what he should do with the list. That email starts the chain of events that makes up this story and what a journey it is!

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes a bit of science and adventure and mystery!

I really enjoyed this story as I do enjoy a good historical scavenger hunt for life changing information. The only thing that felt a bit lacking was the characters were a little two dimensional, but that wasn't enough for me to mark it as anything but 5 stars as they were a tool to tell the story and maybe didn't need to be more then what they were.


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*As some of the story takes place in a concentration camp during Nazi occupation in Germany/Poland a few trigger warnings: Abuse (physical, mental, emotional, verbal, sexual) - Suicide - Excessive or gratuitous violence - Needles - Kidnapping (forceful deprivation of/disregard for personal autonomy) - Death or dying

Two doctors, separated by decades, but united in their obsession to find out the physical location of the soul in a body. This obsession knows no morals or bounds, suddenly patients are dying in a hospital under mysterious circumstances, and everyone is under a threat.

This was such an enjoyable read, like, truly! Very different from the typical thrillers, and very reminiscent of Michael Crichton. I'm a huge Michael Crichton fan, and this made me super nostalgic. This is a super-fast, edge-of-the-seat medical thriller (I mean when was the last time you read a fast-paced medical thriller? They're such lulls, except a few, imo!), and very interesting! And it sure gets bloody gory too (I'm no chicken but I got shivers!). So, what I'm trying to say, if you like medical thrillers, and grew up reading Michael Crichton, absolutely do not miss out on this one!

Yeah, this was somehow a 50:50 read for me. I like the idea of the story, it a decent piece of its flow, the mystery part was good, the precision of the medical terms (if I'm not mistaken, the author is a urologist)…. yeah, that's about all that I liked. Some parts were simply too hard to get attached to, the characters and the relationship dynamics just didn't work for me, and the big conclusion fell flat. It's hard to write a decent review when the book just doesn't get to you *shoulder shrug*

Thank you, Stonewall Publishing and NetGalley for the ARC.

Book Review for Primordial
Full review for this title will be posted at: @cattleboobooks on Instagram!