I was keen to read this after being hooked by the blurb, unfortunately it didn't love up to my expectations.
I found the pacing too slow & the story quite repetitive & unbelievable.
Would a supposedly competent medical director be so naive & gullible really?
I also figured out who was behind the murders at the very beginning and didn't find any of the characters to be particularly likeable.
Overall it passed some time, but I wanted it to have been better.
My thanks to Netgalley and the Publisher for my eARC in return for my honest review.

An excellent story in a medical setting- I really enjoyed it. Alison moves to a new post as medical director in a smaller hospital than she previously worked in, to hopefully improve its overall performance. Someone appears to be stalking her, but who is it, is it really her they are after and why?

The Doctor is a 2023 thriller I found on NetGalley, written by Annie Payne, a new author to me. Set in a small village in England, Dr. Alison Wilson leaves London after some distressing personal situations and accepts a role running a hospital. As soon as she arrives, things look bad. Colleagues dislike her. Patients are dying when they shouldn't. The man previously in her position seems to be stalking her. And her wayward husband won't give up on their marriage. Someone clearly wants Alison gone and will go to extremes to make it happen. I enjoyed the plot of the book; getting to know various administrators, nurses, doctors, and patients helped set a strong tone and provide a bunch of suspects to consider. The writing was okay, a bit too light for my taste. It felt like a lot of telling and facilitated scenes as opposed to something more natural. Too many cliche scenes where she hears noises but lets it go... someone is accessing her files and laptops, yet she doesn't push hard when everyone keeps saying she deleted her appointments. I can see some promise from the author but I think this one needed some more polish to really standout as a medical thriller. I liked her relationship with some patients, which helped give her a stronger personality. But many of the chapters also ended with a switch in POV to the killer's POV basically telling us what (s)he was going to do next; while it was meant to bring suspense, it felt too forced and on the nose. It did make me keep guessing who was after her tho!

I really enjoyed this book ,a London Doctor takes on the job of New Medical Director in a seaside hospital and opens a can of worms ! Poor performance ,faulty equipment,missing medical supplies and a very high death rate .Dr Alison Wilson is determined to solve all the problems but a killer is out to stop her but Alison is a fighter and doesn't give up easily .A great medical mystery thriller .Thank you to NetGalley for my ARC.

DNF @ 23%

This reads more like a medical drama than a medical mystery which it not really my cup of tea. I felt like it jumped between scenes too quickly as well. It might've been the formating of the e-book version, but I also found that it wasn't obvious when it changed perspectives within a chapter.

this was a great book. i really enjoyed it . many twists and turns and my type of thriller.

thanks to netgalley and avon books.

all thoughts and opinions are my own

I was really looking forward to reading this new book from Annie Payne as the synopsis was very intriguing.
There aren't many medical mystery books out there maybe because of the sheer amount of knowledge and research that is required for the book to be creditable.
I was in the mood to explore this new angle on mystery books and I was not disappointed. The book flows easily and opens your eyes into a world we are all very thankful for but know very little about.
Not to be read if you are about to get into surgery (LOL) as there is a killer on the loose at the hospital!
The journey to the discovery and unveiling of the culprit is a pleasant one and very informative indeed.

1.75/5 stars! Considering I listen to a lot of true crime podcasts and there have been murderous surgeons/nurses/etc, I was really excited by the premise of this story. I thought the story had a lot of potential, however, it played out more like a telenovela than a medical mystery. It was just so unbelievable at times. The premise was there; the early world-building was great, but everything else was ridiculous.

I received an advance review copy for free through NetGalley, and I am leaving this review voluntarily

A medical thriller with plenty of suspects to keep you guessing. There is also a mix of medical drama as wel so it is suitable for a mix of readers with different elements to keep you engaged. The pace was a bit slow for me with some parts seemed to be a bit repetitive with the staff not agreeing with Alison and the changes she's making and Alison trying to forge ahead - this seemed to keep repeating a lot during the middle of the o=book and I did find myself getting slightly bored and skimming. However the first and last parts were good and I found it interesting having a killer who you're meant to place all your trust into and I did want to read on to find the motives and the killer. I just don't think it's the best mystery/thriller I've read.

This is a delightful gem from beginning to end. I have been captivated and completely unwilling to put this one down.

A medical thriller, I really enjoyed this book.
Alison Wilson is a doctor who has moved to a new town to get away from her past and take on a new challenge as Medical Officer at a failing hospital. She soon finds this job is not plain sailing, there are issues with staff, with paperwork going missing and equipment failing, and patients who should not be dying, do. There is a killer somewhere in this hospital, Alison needs to find out who before more lives are lost.
Lots of twists and turns in this book, a gripping read, thoroughly recommended.

This book as you will imagine from the title is a medical drama. I have read very few such novels previously but was drawn to it as a thriller and with the thoughts of how the profession has coped through the pandemic. To begin with I was hugely sympathetic towards the main character, Alison and in awe of her role. It made me think about the pressure doctors and staff in general are under in the NHS. As an aside, I am in awe of them all!
However, as a story of fiction, I soon got board with this book. Yes, I did finish it (having guessed the outcome about a third of the way in) but found myself skim reading the majority as it was just more of the same. A good idea but needed a greater variety of scenes and characters.

A very good medical mystery! I wouldn't say a thriller, but definitely a mystery. A very easy read and it was easy to guess who was responsible!

I kept changing my mind over who was responsible and, I have to admit, I did scroll to the end a few chapters before I finished it as I was impatient to know. This should show how much I was enjoying it. The characters were believable and easy to like/ hate. The plot was good and reminded me why I hate hospitals!!

Love thriller books and the cover for this book was great. I do love a book that keeps you guessing but I'd guessed from not long it who it was. Great story line though in what felt like a real life hospital setting.

Although the plot line is promising the book moves at a fairly staid pace, not usual for a mystery/murder plot.
That said the characters were good and the background given was believable- I could have just done with a bit more pace!
A good holiday read to while away time where the odd distraction will not make you lose your thread.

Dr. Alison Wilson has accepted a job as a medical director in Wayleigh because she had to resign from her job in London. She arrives for her first day with a positive attitude that she can do this, only to be met with false accusations and resistance. She soon learns there's more going on at the hospital and starts to figure it out.

I didn't love this book but I didn't hate it either. I was interested in finding out who was killing all these patients, but as the book went on I figured it out before the ending and it just fell flat.

#NetGalley #TheDoctor

This book started off really well but the plot got predictable towards the middle . All in all not a bad read but not the best . Would make a good holiday read , easy and not too taxing.

I didn't love this one- the writing style was more "telling" than "showing" and I thought that the plot was predictable. The story centers on Dr Alison Wilson, who heads to a beachside city in the London suburbs to take a job as Medical Director at a fledgling hospital, after an embarrassing exit from her job in London where her personal and professional life awkwardly converged. She discovers some discrepancies both related to money and patient care, and then weird things start happening, like files disappearing or being changed, escalating to vandalism at her house. She has a few choices of who it might be that is trying to get her out, as she didn't receive a warm welcome from many people when she arrived.

The book ready kind of like a YA novel to me- the writing was very straightforward, told from Alison's POV but in the 3rd person, and lacked some of the descriptors, as well as any deep inner thoughts from Alison that I would have expected. The author also talked a lot about how important and senior she was and I felt like the book was trying too hard to explain her role in the hospital, like you would do with a younger audience. Alison also made many painfully terrible decisions- while I appreciated her grit and persistence in some cases, she turned a blind eye to what was happening in other cases, and flat out broke the rules entirely in one case. I knew who the villain was from the get-go, though this may be just because I read a lot of books in this genre and know the pattern. I was disappointed that Alison never figured it out until the person literally told her.

Overall, this book wasn't really for me but hoping others will enjoy it if they like the medical mystery genre. Thanks to Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I really wanted to love this one!! It just wasn't for me.

~ Quick Summary ~

- Doctor Alison Wilson moves into a new town to start afresh as a Medical officer in a hospital where she tries to improve the hospital’s performance.

- The hospital is disorganised, understaffed and there is a killer amongst them.

~ Pick this up if you enjoy/don’t mind the following ~

🎭 Hospital drama with a side of mystery.

🏥 Medical setting

🐢 Slower pace

~ What I didn’t enjoy ~

- The blurb sounded so good but sadly I didn’t enjoy it. I had to reread the blurb to remind myself what this was about. There isn’t much mystery or surprise in what Allison was running away from and Alison’s investigation into the hospital’s dark past didn’t feel suspenseful at all.

- The majority of the book was about Alison’s role as a medical officer and how the hospital was performing. At the start it was fine because I thought it was setting the scene and the dynamics between the characters, but it continued on and on I kept waiting for something to happen and for dark discoveries. So it felt more like a drama with a speckle of mystery sometimes.

- In the first half, the main “mystery or thriller” component was that someone was messing with Alison’s documents and emails but she kept on shrugging it off and thinking it was just her. In reality, yeah you might think you're being forgetful for the first few times, but as a reader it was very frustrating because it kept on happening and there wasn't much other suspense or tension. There were a few other incidents of vandalism and seeing a suspicious person around but otherwise nothing hooked me in.

- The mystery person sounded cliche and immature.

- I wasn’t mind blown by the reveal or the why. The trigger for the reveal was because the character decided to spill the beans rather than Alison making a clever discovery.