Wherein we find the newest cohort of medical interns at a fairly prestigious internship program for up-and-coming doctors, booting up for their first of four years of interning. At the welcome party, rumors immediately start flying about one of the women in the cohort having slept her way into the program. It must have been Sapphire Rose (who goes by her middle name, Grace) because of course it is the woman whose name sounds like a porn star. She meets Julian, another intern, at the party and he immediately snubs her because she’s obviously a slut who didn’t deserve her spot. Then we meander through the years of their internship and the cohort can’t really ignore each other, so they all develop a tenuous and then full-on friendship. Julian and Grace are at odds with each other until they strike up a deal to help each other with their weak spots as medical professionals (he’s a brilliant tactician, she’s a genius with the medical knowledge). This allows them to get to know each other and develop a deep relationship that slowly and carefully turns into love. But Grace has been burrrrrnnned hard before so she’s reticent when it comes to giving her heart away, especially when she’s supposedly the town harlot and it could ruin Julian’s reputation.
Rating: ⭐️
Spice: 🌶️
If slut shaming, misogyny, on-page sexual assault, rampant sexism, and medical nerdom are your thing, then have I got the book for you!
This type of shit happens every single day. I get it. I am a woman who has worked in the tech industry since the early 2000’s. I’ve been the only woman on my team in multiple situations (in a few cases, the only in the entire company). I’ve been sexually harassed and discriminated against. I know this stuff happens. I have literally won awards for my work to empower women in the tech space so this shit doesn’t keep happening. But as a romance book set to an undercurrent of this kind of deeply problematic behavior, it just wasn’t a pleasant read. In fact, it was downright awful.
Let’s start with Grace. Baby girl needed therapy SO BAD. Grace not only came from an extremely toxic relationship that severed her self worth and ability to love freely, she then enters this medical program wherein she is immediately slut shamed SOLELY ON THE BASIS OF HER GOVERNMENT NAME. And and and the slut label sticks like a fucking scarlet letter on her stethoscope. No one really ever comes to her defense and although she grins and bears it, she gets discriminated against by her seniors because they think she’s undeserving of her place in the program. So much so that additional rumors start flying about her. And then just wait until the third act breakup where shit gets REALLY wild.
Then we have Julian. Julian, who immediately writes her off because she’s obviously a slut since she walked into the kick off party wearing a red dress. I mean, her name is SAPPHIRE and she’s wearing a RED DRESS. Could we victim blame any harder? But once he sees how much the accusation hurts her, he suddenly is a feminist because, and I quote, “he has sisters.” Julian does eventually fall into her good graces (pun intended) and wins me over just a smidge, especially when he kicks the shit out of a guy who sexually assaults her because he heard she’s easy. That’s right. That happens.
Oh but you know what else is crazy? Julian’s got a crush on Grace but so does their colleague Asher (who is not the sexual assaulter). And there is literally a part in this book where Julian cannot BELIEVE that Asher hasn’t closed that deal yet - something must be off with his game if Grace isn’t even looking Asher’s way. It’s obviously something about the way Asher is approaching it because it couldn’t possibly be as simple as Grace not being interested in him. For fuck’s sake.
Grace and Julian fall in love somewhere in the middle of all this.
Okay but then then THEN we get to the third act breakup. (🚨Spoilers ahead) She breaks up with Julian because them going public with their relationship will undoubtedly soil his golden reputation once everyone finds out he’s dating the town trollop (Yeah you read that right. She did it for him, people!). He is distraught and a mess. Honestly, one tiny thing I liked was that they got into a real actual fight about this silly breakup logic and it actually made sense and he actually expressed real feelings and anger about it. It felt more real than most book breakups. Okay, so then she comes crawling back cause she misses and loves him. She realizes that the grand gesture here is that she must tell him about her past relationship. Now, up til this point, Grace has only mentioned to Julian that her ex was a piece of shit who told her she was an “ice queen” and basically said “put out or get out” while also cheating on her. Truly a real piece of work. (This is the point where if I was possibly considering giving this TWO stars, one of them dissolves to dust.) She reveals that her ex not only called her an ice queen and emotionally abused her, he also sexually assaulted her, consent was questionable, and he made her do fairly violent sexual acts that she didn’t want to do but she also didn’t want him to leave her. BLESSINGS UPON THOSE WHO READ THIS BOOK MAY THY MEMORY BE CLEANSED. God damnit GET THERAPY, GRACE. This is horrendous. HORRENDOUS.
Thank God Julian loves her anyway despite her being a not-therapized mess. (She deserves his love. She does. But my god why did we do this to this woman?)
Now how do we resolve all the slut shaming? OH via a corporate task force, OF COURSE. Which Grace joins because it’s great to make the oppressed do the work of fighting their own oppression. (FWIW she is given the opportunity to decline and she agrees to do it anyway. And per the epilogue, it makes great strides in creating a new culture void of insidious gossip! Ta daaaahh!)
Fuck.
🫡 Tropes deployed: medical romance, workplace romance, all the trigger and content warnings, etc.