Book Review: "Critical Care" by Candace Calvert

Summary from BN.com: After her brother dies in a trauma room, nurse Claire Avery can no longer face the ER. She's determined to make a fresh start—new hospital, new career in nursing education—move forward, no turning back. But her plans fall apart when she's called to offer stress counseling for medical staff after a heartbreaking day care center explosion. Worse, she's forced back to the ER, where she clashes with Logan Caldwell, a doctor who believes touchy-feely counseling is a waste of time. He demands his staff be as tough as he is. Yet he finds himself drawn to this nurse educator . . . who just might teach him the true meaning of healing.

Medical fiction is something that you don't normally see too much of in Christian fiction. Every now and then there will be books that feature doctors/nurses/paramedics/midwives but most of the story tends to focus on the romantic relationships between these people. Even though this book does have romance in it, the majority of the story is focused on the medical field and all the "fun" that does go along with it. If you've ever seen even just one episode of Grey's Anatomy, you can't help but compare this book to it. Minus the sex, this book is pretty much just like an episode of the show down to the hot lead doctor who gets a "Mc-nickname".

While I understand Claire's sadness over the loss of her brother, I felt that it had been while since he's died and if she was still feeling that much grief then she needed to get therapy. It's never a good idea to wallow in sadness that long by yourself and there is nothing wrong at all about seeking help. The point at which we meet her in the story sounds like she's gotten a bit obsessive over his death to the point of idolizing his memory. No wonder Logan thought her brother had been her boyfriend/husband because 1) she never clarifies it at first and 2) at how much affection she was showing to his memory. I didn't really warm up to Claire that much in the book. This was probably mainly due to the fact that she's supposed to be helping other people but she's not helping her own self so it feels a bit hypocritical.

I was more interested in the medical/ER aspects of the book and I wish there had been more of it. This first book is a decent entry into the genre but I hope that by the next book more attention will be given to the medical side of the field and less of the romance.

Critical Care by Candace Calvert is published by Tyndale (2009)

This ARC was provided by the publisher