E.J. Post

I thoroughly enjoyed this book but found it hard to recommend to any one group or particular audience since it doesn’t quite fit as a romance, nor as a courtroom novel, nor as a pure thought-heavy lit-fic.

The first third had me convinced this would be a story of a woman overcoming, but then the romance shows itself. The romance then settles and takes a backseat to her past and the topic of gun violence/control as we begin to near the courtroom.

Regardless, I immediately found myself show more connecting with Ellie and invested in all she went through. The ending was satisfying and felt realistic in the saddest yet truest way.

Why Not a Five Star Rating?
I was riveted through the whole thing (I essentially finished it over 2 days once I actually set time aside to read it 😅) but would have loved to see more immersive stories of her childhood and current journey combined to how it all tied in and led up to the heartbreaking and difficult experiences/growth that she has in the book. I wanted to experience the depths of her pain with her, rather than just watch it unfold, ya know?

I’m excited to see what else E.J. writes in the future! show less

An electronic copy of this book was provided for review by publishers BDA Publishing, via Library Thing.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Hiding Places starts off with an interesting premise, but loses its way as author E.J. Post can’t seem to settle on a theme. Does she want to write about surviving trauma? Media influence on the justice system? Gun control? Abused kids? The shortfalls in the American medical system’s ability to recognize and treat depressive disorders? Mix all that in with what is, frankly, a show more pretty unlikely romance thread, and the whole thing threatens to come totally unwrapped.

Ellie Paxton is a traveling ER physician, providing backup and short-term services in various hospital emergency departments. She enjoys the travel and the changing locations of her assignments, sandwiching in time with her husband between gigs. They are enjoying just such a weekend in Chicago when a leisurely brunch erupts in violence as a lone gunman enters the restaurant, spraying bullets in a random but fatal sweep. Ellie’s husband is one of the first victims, killed instantly by a bullet to the brain, and Ellie, acting almost on instinct, grabs the first wounded survivor she can reach and hauls him out of the deadly arc of bullets to shelter behind the restaurant’s bar.

That’s a pretty high mark to start with, and it definitely yanks the reader into the action. Ellie’s heroism saves lives, but at what cost? At this point, Post could have concentrated on her character’s struggles to deal with her own grief and loss along with public and professional fallout from her actions that day. She could have traced Ellie’s increasing obsession with understanding the shooter’s background and determining what brought him to that place and time. She could even have gone with a slow-build romance as the trauma-born relationship with the man she saved brings feelings of being unfaithful to the man she couldn’t save.

Rather than choosing one, or even two areas to explore, Post goes off in all directions at once, fast-forwarding the romance angle in a way that strains credibility. Ultimately, she never gets far below the surface, and is all too quick to have “anonymous donors” smoothing out many of the bumps in the road her heroine is traveling. A last-minute plot complication feels less like a plot twist and more like an annoyance that the reader just has to plow through before getting to the end of this ambitious, but ultimately unsatisfying tale. show less

A free electronic copy of this book was provided for review by publishers BDA Publishing, via Library Thing.

I had a hard time with this book. On the one hand most of the writing was beautifully detailed and really kept my interest. On the other, there were clumsy errors that I would get distracted having to reread to the point of frustration as well as strong author biases and unlikely plots that just left me rolling my eyes.

I'll start with the biases. The author's (main character's) biases show more are made pretty clear from the 3rd chapter when she mentions "the shooting of yet another young Black man by police" and just goes on from there. You are hammered over and over again how pointing at the mental health crisis in this country rather than gun control laws as the cause of mass shootings is just the rich gun lobby's work. The main character is charged with negligence, and this is also blamed on the gun lobby pulling political strings - I find this extremely unlikely, especially in liberal Chicago of all places... Later she stereotypes all older individuals as not being understanding of mental health needs at all, which was just odd, in my opinion. Several "G**damns" and mentioning how a bad person has a cross necklace multiple times seemed to point to an anti-Christian bias, also, which certainly turned me off.

One of the main plots is a romance after loss. This happens literally within 4 days of the loss. Absolutely unbelievable. It was very hard to reconcile her supposed love for her husband and how quickly she fell for this new person she doesn't even know. It's not that love can't happen after loss, but as a person who has suffered a major loss, it is all consuming in the first weeks. Introducing this plot point as part of the trauma would be believable, but it is presented as real love and connection, which is beyond plausibility for me.

The writing is clumsy at times. I'd have to go back to try to figure out who said something because it wasn't clear often, or sentences would be out of order (the first sentence saying the characters arrived, but then the rest of the paragraph talking about the ride there, for example). Verb tenses would change mid-paragraph a few times. Incorrect words for things were used a few times (postured instead of posited, clamored instead of clambered). It was mostly minor things that could have been caught with one more good edit, but it detracted from enjoyable reading.

Overall, I believe this author has promise - the writing detail did keep me engaged. I just can't recommend this particular book. show less

I really enjoyed this book and was sad when it ended. I couldn’t put it down. The author had me riveted from the beginning. The book started out with the “action” and then only went into the characters back story of it was needed, so there wasn’t a lot of “fluff” that could have made this book a lot longer. I was really happy with the length of the book. It was just what was needed to tell a 5 star story. The protagonist was well developed and believable. I felt like I knew her, show more and she could have been me. She was a PA that worked in an ER and I was a nurse that worked in an ER, so I really identified with this character. The only thing unbelievable about this story is that the PA that treated one of the main characters was actually being blamed for the crime the shooter committed in any way. That would just not happen in todays world. No one would be ok with a mass murder where a physicians assistant gets put on trial and blamed for the crime of the shooter, that simply would not happen in the real world, but it did make for an interesting story. I mean, this poor PA lost her only ability to work and pay for her life because of this mass murderer, and the entire story line was just too unbelievable. The egregiousness of the act of blaming her and trying to hold her responsible solely, and not the shooter, was just so wrong, and that no part of the story line had anything to do with the public being ok with this. The author could have had public protests outlined in the book, or at least some people on the PA’s side of this, but the author appeared to have the PA shouldering all the responsibility for this shooting, and this is just completely unrealistic. I really liked how the author developed the bond between the PA and one of the other victims though, and this other victim turned out to be a famous actor, so that was a bright spot in this story and the PA got lucky that he was single and took her in without question because of what happened. He, being rich and kind, actually saved her life after being blamed and shunned and losing her job and her husband during the shooting. It was a really fun book to read and the author kept the story moving so I never wanted to put it down. I really enjoyed this story. Regardless of my complaints about the believability of the PA being blamed I still gave this book 5 out of 5 stars because I couldn’t put it down, and any book that does that for me I feel earns the best rating. show less