Hiding Places, by E.J. Post, MAY 2024 LTER
Talk Reviews of Early Reviewers Books
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An electronic copy of this book was provided for review by publishers BDA Publishing, via Library Thing.
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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 pretty unlikely romance thread, and the whole thing threatens to come totally unwrapped.
Ellie Paxton is a traveling ER physician, providing backup and temporary services in various hospital emergency departments. She enjoys the travel and the short-term nature 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? And 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 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.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
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 pretty unlikely romance thread, and the whole thing threatens to come totally unwrapped.
Ellie Paxton is a traveling ER physician, providing backup and temporary services in various hospital emergency departments. She enjoys the travel and the short-term nature 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? And 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 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.
