Rating: 3 Stars
Description: Veterinary Pathologist Dr. Cyrus Mills has come home to a little town in Vermont to run his deceased father's veterinary practice. He find himself with competition on both personal and professional levels with the office manager at the big veterinary clinic Healthy Paws determined to bring him down and his date with waitress Amy interrupted with a phone call that she refuses to tell him about. Cyrus also finds himself struggling with dealing with patients - not as slides to be looked at under the microscope - but as living breathing creatures in front of him.
Genre: Fiction
My Impression:
Pros: I enjoyed all the dealings with animals. Cyrus is incrediably smart and has a lot of experience figuring out difficult diagnoses. I loved that he seemed to genuinely care about the animal and was driven to figure out was wrong. The comparison to James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small is hard to miss though Trout's version is a bit lighter and has a more modern spin. I was afraid the competition between Cyrus and Healthy Paws would turn into an archnemesis thing which always drives me crazy (no one's that evil) but I actually really liked the way it was handled. I found the resolution satisfying.
Cons: I didn't like the romantic development between Cyrus and Amy. That took up a lot of the first 10% and almost led me skip over this one. There are mentions of Cyrus's estrangement from his father but no real details. This wasn't a big deal and didn't impact my comprehension of the story but I was a little surprised there wouldn't be more explanation of that until I saw that there is a book before this one. If I had realized this was a sequel that would've been a complete non-issue. While reading this book I did get a bit restless but I think most of my reading is quest based - mystery solved, romantic HEA, 1 year doing whatever, etc - and this book is not a point A to point B it just is. Once I got used to that I enjoyed it but it took me a bit. If you read regular fiction I don't think it would bother you.
Overall Impression: I enjoyed this book - more than I thought I would at the beginning. The main characters are likable and for the most part things got tied up believably. While this isn't an author I'd necessarily search out at this time if I came across one of his books I'd read it expecting to enjoy it.
Would I Read More of this Series/Author?: Yes
Would I Recommend this Book?: Yes but only to animal lovers!
It's good to know this isn't more of a quest based book, so I appreciate the heads up. It can be a big disappointment if I go in expecting one thing and getting another. This does sound like something I would like though. Perhaps though I'll start with the first book.
ReplyDeleteIt's a fun read though definitely on the light side. I seem to be reading a lot of books with vets as main characters lately. Don't really know why that is!
Delete