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Clinical Trial
Dr. Georgia Laurence’s patient is going to die without an immediate heart transplant, and a rare blood type makes a donor nearly impossible. There’s a sliver of hope when she learns about a clinical trial right at her hospital. The only problem is the stem cell researcher is Dr. Matt Mancini, a man from her past who has absolutely no reason to help her.
Matt could soon be sharing the cure for heart disease with the world and can’t risk using such a sick patient as his first human candidate. While his attraction to Georgia tempts him to reconsider, the stem cells are stollen and his career is jeopardized.
Georgia and Matt must work together to save his study before her patient dies. As they get closer to the truth, they find the thief will stop at nothing, not even murder, and they’ll have to decide what matters most: her patient, his study… or their lives.
Matt could soon be sharing the cure for heart disease with the world and can’t risk using such a sick patient as his first human candidate. While his attraction to Georgia tempts him to reconsider, the stem cells are stollen and his career is jeopardized.
Georgia and Matt must work together to save his study before her patient dies. As they get closer to the truth, they find the thief will stop at nothing, not even murder, and they’ll have to decide what matters most: her patient, his study… or their lives.
- GenresBook Club
122 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 28, 2020
1 person is currently reading
18 people want to read
About the author
Tammy Plunkett
4 books14 followersTammy Plunkett left her career as a registered nurse to stay home and raise her four children. It turned out that she could only take so much Sesame Street and returned to her first love—writing. Tammy spent a few years working solely in fiction then switched gears to non-fiction while she practiced as a life coach and writing coach. After her third child came out as transgender, she focused her work on helping parents of transgender kids, blogging, and writing articles such as her well-read one for Today's Parent. She continues to return to her love of writing both fiction and non-fiction and has titles that will be released in both categories soon.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 11, 2020
Easy reading and a perfect book to curl up with by a cozy fire on a weekend afternoon. Delightful.
October 10, 2020
Exactly the kind of book I am enjoying during the pandemic. A quick read that kept me engaged.
October 8, 2020
I love a good mystery and it kept me guessing. Strong well thought out characters. I highly recommend this book.
August 30, 2020
I super loved this book! It was engaging (I read it in two sittings), with awesome representation. The mystery element kept me guessing and the steamy scenes were done just right. This isn't usually my go to genre, because I often find the characters lack any kind of substance, and I'm happy to say this isn't the case here.
October 5, 2020
A great read!
A really fun read, I was almost sad when the book was done. I love stories with a strong female lead and this did not disappoint!
A really fun read, I was almost sad when the book was done. I love stories with a strong female lead and this did not disappoint!
January 11, 2021
The main character in this story is Dr Georgia Laurence, who works as a heart surgeon in a large hospital. Her past is making her feel responsible for one of her latest patients, a hard working single mother Ms Jenkins, when they open her up and find the surgery they planned to help save her life, wasn't possible, as her heart connections were more like Swiss chess! They have to close her up, but Dr L gets called away to the phone because of an emergency, and allows her chief resident Dr Joe Carter, close her up, only for her stats to suddenly plummet. He says he only nicked her heart with an object, and she can’t see anything, so continues closing her. She now has to fight for her to jump to the top of the transplant list, to save her young daughter from losing her only parent, a single mother who worked really hard to ensure her daughter Shawna was well brought up and looked after. Now her daughter Shawna may lose everything and be lost in the foster system. Something Dr L. knows well from her own childhood, as does her foster sister Emma Jones. They both ended up with a set of great foster parents Vicki and Tom, who they still stay connected with, but gave them hell as teenagers, thinking they knew best!
Due to how she lost her own mother and ended up in care herself, Dr L. has concentrated on women’s heart health, as they are often the ones that keep a family together and ignore their own health, until it fails. Finding out after tests, that Ms Jenkins had a rare blood type and that the only chance of a donor would be for someone from a small part of Africa to suddenly die in the near future and be close enough to be a donor for her. News of a clinical trial that is still being tested only on animals, in the same hospital, is brought to Dr L. by her chief resident Joe, as she looks for ideas to keep her patient alive until a donor can be found. Dr Matt Mancini comes from a well off family and has a famous father who had patented a revolutionary method for doing hip replacements and made millions. His youngest son Phil had followed his father into orthopaedics and was Dr L.’s first love, until she realised what he was really like. She expects Matt to be pretty much the same and is surprised to be instantly attracted to his eyes and smile. He has foregone his father and brother’s path to concentrate in research in a lab, to develop and grow myocardial stem cells from skin tissue and then use those to heal cardiac heart tissue in patients. Eventually that is, at present his patient is a pig called Mildred!
She obviously would love to get his research pushed forward and get her patient in as their first human test patient in a clinical trial. But both of their morals are far too high to go against the proper channels, however desperate either may be. Matt is also attracted to Georgia, but can’t ruin the chance for his research to be thrown out, by going past all the proper safeguards and steps involved in a clinical trial. He could lose everything, but more importantly, millions of lives will be lost if his research is thrown out. Millions of potential lives against one current life, however pressing the need may be. Unknown to either of them, one of the vials of stem cells goes missing from his lab, and after having shown Georgia around and her interest in his research for her patient, she is his first suspect! His career and chance to save lives will be ruined if news of the missing vial gets out, as the clinical trial would have to be cancelled. That is not the only problem the two have. Dr L. has a problem with an older nurse and wants her gone ad suddenly one of her patients dies and she is suspected of causing it. Only an autopsy will clear up how the patient died and she is forbidden from doing any other surgeries until she is cleared or not, as the patient’s family has called in the lawyers against her. It doesn’t matter that is was maybe Joe’s mistake, her name is on the paperwork as the lead surgeon!
More problems occur as Matt seems to be targeted and a threat is even made about Georgia due to her relationship with him, not that anything had been happening before then. Georgia also has to worry about her sister as such, Emma, who seems to be off her meds and infatuated with her chief resident Joe and wants Georgia to push for him getting the next post available in her department, to keep him in Emma’s life. Georgia calls in the help of her foster parents and when Emma is taken back to their home to be looked after, someone else gets very angry at her for her controlling actions and wants her to be punished. The thief hasn’t stopped at simple theft, their actions have been escalating and Dr L.’s patients as well as Matt’s research have been targeted and threatened. They need to work together to keep themselves safe, but also work out what is more important, her single mother patient and daughter, his research and the chance of a clinical trial that could save millions, or their lives and those of the people they love.
This is quite a short book, but it covers a lot and gets very intense as the plot expands. Lots of suspense as the incidents continue to snowball and the possible list of suspects gets a bit twisted. You learn more about what made both Georgia and Matt as driven as they are and some of the issues they faced in the past. You won’t want to put this down until you finish it and it isn’t too long to finish in one sitting. It starts with lots of medical interactions and then leaves you with the memories of a life in foster care and how it could affect a child’s life and future. It is so much deeper than you at first may think and fits a lot into its little package! I look forward to reading a lot more from this author. I received an ARC copy of this book from BookSprout and I have freely given my own opinion of the book above.
Due to how she lost her own mother and ended up in care herself, Dr L. has concentrated on women’s heart health, as they are often the ones that keep a family together and ignore their own health, until it fails. Finding out after tests, that Ms Jenkins had a rare blood type and that the only chance of a donor would be for someone from a small part of Africa to suddenly die in the near future and be close enough to be a donor for her. News of a clinical trial that is still being tested only on animals, in the same hospital, is brought to Dr L. by her chief resident Joe, as she looks for ideas to keep her patient alive until a donor can be found. Dr Matt Mancini comes from a well off family and has a famous father who had patented a revolutionary method for doing hip replacements and made millions. His youngest son Phil had followed his father into orthopaedics and was Dr L.’s first love, until she realised what he was really like. She expects Matt to be pretty much the same and is surprised to be instantly attracted to his eyes and smile. He has foregone his father and brother’s path to concentrate in research in a lab, to develop and grow myocardial stem cells from skin tissue and then use those to heal cardiac heart tissue in patients. Eventually that is, at present his patient is a pig called Mildred!
She obviously would love to get his research pushed forward and get her patient in as their first human test patient in a clinical trial. But both of their morals are far too high to go against the proper channels, however desperate either may be. Matt is also attracted to Georgia, but can’t ruin the chance for his research to be thrown out, by going past all the proper safeguards and steps involved in a clinical trial. He could lose everything, but more importantly, millions of lives will be lost if his research is thrown out. Millions of potential lives against one current life, however pressing the need may be. Unknown to either of them, one of the vials of stem cells goes missing from his lab, and after having shown Georgia around and her interest in his research for her patient, she is his first suspect! His career and chance to save lives will be ruined if news of the missing vial gets out, as the clinical trial would have to be cancelled. That is not the only problem the two have. Dr L. has a problem with an older nurse and wants her gone ad suddenly one of her patients dies and she is suspected of causing it. Only an autopsy will clear up how the patient died and she is forbidden from doing any other surgeries until she is cleared or not, as the patient’s family has called in the lawyers against her. It doesn’t matter that is was maybe Joe’s mistake, her name is on the paperwork as the lead surgeon!
More problems occur as Matt seems to be targeted and a threat is even made about Georgia due to her relationship with him, not that anything had been happening before then. Georgia also has to worry about her sister as such, Emma, who seems to be off her meds and infatuated with her chief resident Joe and wants Georgia to push for him getting the next post available in her department, to keep him in Emma’s life. Georgia calls in the help of her foster parents and when Emma is taken back to their home to be looked after, someone else gets very angry at her for her controlling actions and wants her to be punished. The thief hasn’t stopped at simple theft, their actions have been escalating and Dr L.’s patients as well as Matt’s research have been targeted and threatened. They need to work together to keep themselves safe, but also work out what is more important, her single mother patient and daughter, his research and the chance of a clinical trial that could save millions, or their lives and those of the people they love.
This is quite a short book, but it covers a lot and gets very intense as the plot expands. Lots of suspense as the incidents continue to snowball and the possible list of suspects gets a bit twisted. You learn more about what made both Georgia and Matt as driven as they are and some of the issues they faced in the past. You won’t want to put this down until you finish it and it isn’t too long to finish in one sitting. It starts with lots of medical interactions and then leaves you with the memories of a life in foster care and how it could affect a child’s life and future. It is so much deeper than you at first may think and fits a lot into its little package! I look forward to reading a lot more from this author. I received an ARC copy of this book from BookSprout and I have freely given my own opinion of the book above.
January 8, 2021
This is my first time reading something by Ms. Plunkett. I'm glad I picked this book up. The book's summary was intriguing and peaked my interest. This was a very well-written story and I think the author did a very nice job of bringing the characters and story to life with wonderful descriptions. It was definitely engaging and quite the page-turner. The storyline flowed nicely and the plot twists kept me guessing. I really enjoyed this book and will most certainly be looking for more of Ms. Plunkett's books to read!
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.
March 7, 2021
Pure escape
This book is pure escapism. A heartfelt story about how healthcare professionals take on more than just medicine. Reading this book over a weekend was the perfect distraction to the stress of our current reality.
I highly recommend it for anyone who loves a good thriller with love intertwined.
This book is pure escapism. A heartfelt story about how healthcare professionals take on more than just medicine. Reading this book over a weekend was the perfect distraction to the stress of our current reality.
I highly recommend it for anyone who loves a good thriller with love intertwined.
April 22, 2022
I am partial, of course. But I had the best time writing these characters and putting them through their paces with this suspenseful plot. They will have brief appearances in my follow-up stand-alone novel also set in Our Lady of Grace titled Side Effects... coming soon!
October 16, 2020
I read this book in 2 days, could not put it down! Great characters, great story and you will not want to put it down!
December 5, 2020
Really strong book that I read in 2 sittings. Suspenseful and super engaging!
May 6, 2021
Really great book! It was a quick and easy read for me, and I didn't want to put it down the entire time. Though I was able to figure out early on who the suspect was, it was still very enjoyable!
January 2, 2021
This book started off a bit slow, but once it took off for me I was hooked. Interesting concept, intriguing mystery, & lots of personal and professional drama make this book a hit!
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews