Radclyffe

Trauma surgeon Saxon Sinclair does not want Jude Castle filming a documentary in her top-rated NYC trauma center. Jude Castle does not want Bossy McBossersons Sinclair telling her a damn thing, ever. Both have emotional baggage and dark secrets to hide.

Again, Radclyffe gets so many things right, the romance was a joy to read. Each character, for all her dark emotional turmoil, felt relatable in basic and fundamental ways.

However, a caveat:

Passion’s did have some disconcerting moments for show more me— during the sexxoring, both characters were often described as getting “hard”. Ok, sure, I know clitorises (clitori?) engorge, etc., but I kept thinking, “you feel it get hard? really?” And then I flashed on Lisa Valdez’s books and some of Robin Schone and started giggling over over-the-top anatomical scenes of erotica and the sexxoring got a little less hot.

I’m not gonna lie, describing a clitoris as erect/hard/engorged — penis-esque, if you will— just gets weird for me (I’m not saying I want to read sappy “touch my lady flower” books either, though).

Three out of five stars. show less

Provincetown, oh how I've missed you. (Okay, not really, I'm weirdly reading these pretty much one after another with some Lisa Yee DC Super Hero High in between).

This time it's Nita, Tory's 'new' Doctor at the clinic and Deo, a contractor in town and Pia's cousin. Both Deo and Nita have baggage that has to do with their families and are both very skittish when it comes to relationships (for slightly different reasons). Oh, and then add in Aliie and this book is quite a twisty mess show more sometimes.

Also, Reese and Tory have a story that has to do with the aftermath of Reese going to war in the middle east.

And then there's the end. Holy crap. I've only been through what happened to everyone at the end a couple of times, but, just thinking about how it would be at the very tip of the Cape in Provincetown, and then reading how Radclyffe described it gives me the super shudders. Yeesh.

I think this was nearly my favorite book of the series yet. And I can't wait to read Returning Tides. show less

I always have such high hopes for Radclyffe stories/novels. And this one was pretty good too.

It's the story of Harper Rivers, a doctor at a community hospital that has had a Rivers at the helm since its inception. She (and pretty much everyone else) assume that when her father Edward (also a doctor) retires she'll take over. Unfortunately the Board of the hospital has a different idea and sells the hospital to a humongous medical conglomerate called SunView. That's how the character of show more Presley gets introduced into the story. She's the VP from SunView who comes to town to either bring the hospital into the SunView network or shut it down if she finds it not profitable enough. Of course, everything gets very complicated when Harper and Presley fall for one another.

The plot didn't go anywhere that was surprising to me, but it was the characters and their relationships especially that were my favorite part of the novel. The Rivers family characters, Flannery, Carson, Harper, and Margie as well as Ida and Edward, the parents, were awesome and all the complicated relationships between them just made those parts of the book jump off the page. There was also Carrie, Presley's assistant, who was a very interesting character and I wish that we'd gotten to see just a bit more of her. And then there was Preston, Presley's twin, the CFO of SunView and apparently the competitor to Presley for their whole lives. What was interesting about Preston was that we barely got to see him (or hear from him) yet he had such a big part in the book.

It was a fun and interesting story set against a real problem (loss of Community Hospitals). A definite must read.

I got this advanced galley through Netgalley on behalf of Bold Strokes Books. show less

I was familiar with Radclyffe by name, but had never read any of her work before now. I was under the impression that she wrote historical fiction, but “Trauma Alert” is without doubt a contemporary romantic drama. And it is very well done - I can see why Radclyffe is so popular and prolific. The author quickly built a realistic setting; she obviously did her research and I felt like I was observing real medical professionals. The main characters are believable, and fully developed. I show more felt real suspense when they were involved in emergency rescues, or surgeries, and kept me turning the virtual pages to see what would happen next.

I also appreciated that the characters didn’t immediately fall into lust-filled gazes, and heightened sexual urges the moment their eyes met. The two women assessed each other, and continued with their professional responsibility like real people do. Not every romance has to start with earth shattering sexual attraction. The two women are polar opposites with their own baggage, and masks protecting who they really are inside. That is not to say that the story has no steam – this is a healthy book, not a novella parading as a novel, so readers have time to see a relationship build.

One of the best things about the writing is the way characters are matter-of-fact about their sexuality. A gay couple is treated as almost ordinary in the story, which is a refreshing break from the angst gay romances usually have. I am not sure if this is typical of F/F, or this author in particular but it was nice. Recommended. show less