Kimmery Martin’s excellent debut novel serves up an irresistible mix of romance, ER drama, friendship and betrayal. Martin, a physician herself, writes in a clear and lively way, flashing between the friends and between present day and their exhausting but exhilarating medical school years. In her hands, dramatic hospital scenes and routine kitchen conversations are equally compelling.
At first, it seems that this will be a predictable, gratingly cute tale of heartache and betrayal ... But as the story moves briskly forward, Emma’s chapters begin to offer something more involving. Her torturous guilt — she is terrified not only that her secret will be discovered, but that her best friend will finally see her for who she truly is — starts to cast a shadow over the novel’s sunny disposition ... Martin leverages her own background as a doctor to great effect throughout, writing vividly of accidentally sliced intestines and torrents of blood gushing from abdominal incisions. Martin is equally insightful about many aspects of long-term female friendship ... If Martin pulls her punches at the end and closes on a cheerful note more reminiscent of Zadie’s cloying early observations, that doesn’t detract from the haunting exploration of the effects of lifelong shame.
Martin writes impressively about the inside of the human body, but even more incisively about the landscape of the metaphysical heart ... While readers may think they know the deep, dark secret from the get-go, in the end Martin pulls out bigger guns than expected, leaving forgiveness far from a foregone conclusion. Bittersweet and graceful, The Queen of Hearts marks Martin as a fresh voice filled with promise.
Martin’s debut novel, about pediatric cardiologist Zadie Anson and trauma surgeon Emma Colley, is a medical drama executed with just the right balance of intensity, plot twists, tragedy, and humor ... Though the story is definitely a page-turner, Martin’s humorous scenes of parenting failures, evocative settings, and realistic re-creation of the urgency of medical situations make this a remarkably absorbing read as well.
Emotional and difficult to put down, Martin’s excellent story of friendship is shrewdly plotted and contains a cast of flawed, rich, believable characters. The realistic and vivid medical angle (Martin is an ER doctor) adds to the novel’s appeal.
A former emergency room physician, Martin distills medical jargon into digestible metaphors and sets scenes as carefully as her characters scrub for surgery. The dialogue is on the casual side because Martin uses all-caps and some phonetic writing ('Whereygoing?'), but if it sometimes falters, the plot and characters make up for it. When the secret (or secrets) is disclosed toward the end, an unexpected but logical twist adds another layer of grief to the revelation. A book about female friendships that unapologetically wears its heart on its sleeve.
