Major Surgery

2.5 stars Where was the chemistry? :(

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC!

Pros:

- The main characters feel very grounded, like actual people whose lives we're peering into. They have their likes, dislikes, quirks, way of working, etc. and there's not a lot of talk about said backstory because they are 40(ish) and most of it it's not relevant to the story, at this point in their lives it's just part of them as persons.
- There's also a definite lack of drama for the sake of drama compared to other romance books I've read before, which is certainly refreshing. When they have a discussion or fight either they stop talking without petty interactions or make up by directly apologizing without skirting around the topic. It definitely makes them feel like the inteligent adults they sure are.
- The antagonist also felt very real and like an actual person with their own interests instead of a caricature bent on ruining the main characters lives for petty reasons.
- The medical setting didn't felt like it was chosen just to have a quirky/cool medical romance and use it to “hinder” the romance until a certain word count (“oh we're so busy, we can't date”). The novel is actually set most of the time inside the hospital or in settings/situations surrounding the hospital (like a nearby cafe, or during a medical disertation(?), etc) and the characters are actually seen working, through the common everyday, mid disasters, and you can tell the author did their research and knows what she's talking about: there's actual medical jargon and more than once we peer inside the operation rooms and it's dynamics, wether it serves the romantic plot or no, because that's part of the life of the characters.

Cons:

- Sometimes the discussions or certain topics are glossed over with a time skip, so if, for instance, they fight in a chapter, they make up at the beggining of the next chapter, which makes it feel a bit unearned? Like there was no time for them to change their mind or meditate on the situation because there was barely a couple of pharagraphs in between one and the other.
- Although the book is classified as enemies to lovers the actual “enemies” portion was so brief that it felt more like a friends to lovers story, it would have been nice to spend a bit more time with the “enemies” dynamic since that's what the reader wanted to read and was expecting coming into the book.