REVIEW: Reunited with her Hot Shot Surgeon by Amy Ruttan

Reunited with her Hot Shot Surgeon by Amy Ruttan: As the title suggests, Dr Pearl Henderson, having fled San Fransisco five years earlier after not dealing with a painful miscarriage, re-unites with Dr Calum Monroe, expert in his field, and notably, winner of a prestigious Science award (mentioned 22 times). Despite feeling mildly anxious about returning to her residency hospital and returning to Calum after the melodramatic exit five years earlier (mentioned at least 222 times), Pearl tries to take the professional stance and seek help with one of her patients George, who has leg cancer.

Initially, the awkwardness, and the fact that neither of them have changed a bit in the last 5 years is overshadowed by both doctors trying to do their medical best. However, it becomes abundantly clear, most likely from the title and the painful repetition, that Calum and Pearl are going to reunite and put the past behind them. With a few minor action kernels along the way that failed to register on the tension-o-meter, and around 200 pages too many, quite rhetorically, will Pearl and Calum find their perfect happily ever after?

The novel begins unnecessarily 5 years earlier and then projects into the here and now with Pearl’s return. The consistent and constant emotional vacillation of both characters became maddening within the first chapter and then progressed with little shifts to an annoying hum throughout.

The literary difference between showing and telling, thinking and doing was made stark by the ongoing laborious hamlet-like procrastination that was unnecessary given everything was established in the first 5 minutes. Apart form the agonising ongoings about emotions, the lost love, the lost baby, the lost five years, the book lacked fundamental description – about everything other than Pearl and Calum’s dreary inner thoughts regarding each other, or their terrible childhoods.

Cut cleanly from every terrible cliché ever thought, Pearl reuniting with Calum increasingly became a poor man’s Days of Our Lives meets C grade House – shack? Quite mercifully however, this is an easy-to-read medical romance, that didn’t stray off the garden path, with its simple dialogue and an easier to digest plot line. Without doubt, medical romance lovers will devour Reunited with Her Hot Shot Surgeon quickly, most likely in the obvious hunt for what they always knew was coming.

Book Info:

Publication: 21st July 2020 | Harlequin Medical |

Pearl Henderson and Calum Munro were best friends, too focused on becoming orthopedic surgeons for a relationship—until one night led to an unexpected pregnancy. But when they tragically lost their unborn baby, Pearl ran, the guilt too hard to bear. Returning to San Francisco for a high-profile case proves time’s a powerful healer. But it’s also intensified her attraction to the man she had never wanted to leave…