CarlAlves

In Side Effects, Kate Bennet is a pathologist at a New England hospital, who has two female patients who have inexplicably bled to death. A third patient, a friend of hers, is exhibiting the same symptoms, and Kate must figure out why this is happening, although nothing is readily apparent. Meanwhile, she is going through marital issues with her husband.

There was very little to like about this novel. First of all, the characters are weak. Kate is mildly interesting as a character, but most of the other characters blended together. Her husband, Jared, is a self-centered, sniveling, whiner, who has nothing likeable about him. He keeps on complaining because Kate doesn’t revolve her life around him. Well, she’s a doctor. If he wanted this, he should have married a housewife. So, when at the end of the novel he all of a sudden becomes heroic, I wasn’t buying it for a second. Secondly, once again the antagonist is the evil pharmaceutical company. The malevolent drug company has become so tired and cliché that I can no longer even tolerate reading about it. Is it too much to ask of an author to get some originality? This is a novel that brings little to the table and I would recommend skipping.

Carl Alves – author of Blood Street