Book Review: Sara In The Army

A very pleasant surprise.

How often am I going to read a chick-flick romance novel? - almost never.  But this book had three things going for it before I ever started reading. 

First - It's about a young doctor who gets thrown in the deep end (after medical school and residency I can relate)
Second - It's based in the military (I worked in mental health at the Veterans Hospital for the last 3 years, and having treated PTSD and much more, I found this very intriguing)
Third - The author is one of my best friends from High School - Brenda Hodnett.

I was very impressed.  The characters were real, they were fun, and you cared about them.  The medical situations were real, well described, and kept the plot moving without getting bogged down in medical minutiae.  The jokes were funny, the character development was paced just right so you could learn to love the characters as you went.  The reader wasn't expected to instantly love one character and hate another (except for Mr. Evil, but the nickname kind of gave that one away)

It was apparent rather quickly that the book was written by a female.  There are far more descriptions of the love interests good looks and sculpted chest and deep seated integrity than there are of the protagonist and her attributes.

What can I say? -  it's a good story.  It's fun to read, it's clean, fast paced, realistic.  It draws you in so you really care what happens.  It isn't all rose colored perfection - bad things happen, and people are left to deal with the aftermath.  Hodnett's descriptions of PTSD are accurate, which makes them all the more heart wrenching.

My main complaint is the ending - it ended like a chick-flick instead of a plotted story.  I didn't feel there was enough resolution.  It reached one conclusion, and left the entire world and outside plots hanging.  Maybe that's because there are sequels to be written, or maybe that's because the point of this book was just that - Enjoy the little victories, the good times, the heart-felt moments - because the world keeps on turning whether you do or not.

Here is where you can purchase the paperback ($10.15) or Kindle Edition ($2.99)