The narration was fantastic with the perfect tone and cantor. The pace of the story was great, the buildup was great, the reveal was disturbing in a what the hell, suspenseful sort of way.

Emma is so flawed in her deepest betrayal almost to the point that you can't believe all that happened. I'm going to guess Zadie is her story because Zadie is always bright. Debut novelists 'write what they know' so I suspect there is a lot of the author in this story.

I loved the medical backdrop and there were only a few instances of my pet peeve in novels of too many details about unnecessary things, however the medical details were excellent. Fierce and loyal at times, jealous and deceitful at times. The relationship between Zadie and Emma was familiar in its complexities of female relationships. Its rare to find women's fiction with this level of intelligence and it elevated the story to a cerebral place. I wanted to write them down to remember for this review, but I was driving. I found myself cheering when a word I don't hear very often was used, like superfluous. What I loved most about this book was the level of vocabulary. When you take the long way home to listen to more. You know a book is good when you can't wait to get back in the car and listen to more. As it becomes evident that Emma must have known more than she revealed about circumstances that nearly derailed both their lives, Zadie starts to question everything she thought she knew about her closest friend. Nick's unexpected reappearance at a time of new professional crisis shocks both women into a deeper look at the difficult choices they made at the beginning of their careers. Their lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, are chaotic but fulfilling, until the return of a former colleague unearths a secret one of them has been harboring for years.Īs chief resident, Nick Xenokostas was the center of Zadie's life - both professionally and personally - throughout a tragic chain of events during her third year of medical school that she has long since put behind her. Now they're happily married wives and mothers with successful careers - Zadie as a pediatric cardiologist and Emma as a trauma surgeon. Zadie Anson and Emma Colley have been best friends since their early 20s, when they first began navigating serious romantic relationships amid the intensity of medical school.

A powerful debut novel, praised by The New York Times, Bustle, Southern Living, and Hypable, that pulses with humor and empathy as it explores the heart's capacity for forgiveness.

The queen of hearts kimmery martin