The author of five New York Times bestselling books and a Goodreads Best Nonfiction Book of the Year, Alexandra Robbins is an award-winning journalist and speaker who writes nonfiction books in the style of fast-paced beach reads. Reviewers have called her smart, entertaining prose "poolside nonfiction."

Lara, a nurse who has undergone an addiction to the very painkillers that she administers to her patients. Stephen and Marian are a typical long time married couple, leading an ordinary life, but their relationship has grown stagnant and stressful. Their daughter Nell works as a nurse at the hospital nearby, and though they aren’t super on top of each other, she remains fairly close to her mother, despite moving out a few years ago to live with her best friend and have some of the adventures her mother never had.Relating to any of the characters was pretty much impossible. It felt like watching a slow thriller on the screen. That should’ve been a plus, but since it was too slow, the effect got diluted. The book throws light on an underground movement related to so-called ‘incels’—involuntary celibates—who believe that women have started getting too big for their boots and that they need to be taught a lesson to keep them in their original place, subservient to men. All the content related to this idea was horrendous to read. I can’t think of any other thriller that made me squirm in such discomfort because while the story is fictitious, the factual base of these “incels” is revealed in the prologue and in the author’s note at the end. At the same time, a known devil is better than an unknown one, so I appreciate the light the story threw on this unheard-of movement. You have access to thousands of journals in nursing and midwifery. It’s easy to access articles through the NHS Knowledge and Library Hub and databases for advanced searching. You can also install LibKey Nomad on your device for easy access to journal literature when you search the web and platforms like Google Scholar.

The blurb seems to be taking the story in a very different direction from what it is. Nell is not the primary character for most of the story, which comes to us mainly from the pov of Marian and “Him”. Although the ending fell a bit flat for me, I still enjoyed the lead up and journey along. Although some of it may be tough subject matter for some, especially the "dark web" angle, the author dealt with it sensitively. A companion read to Vera Brittain, this is an account of a hospital set up and run entirely by women. Moore documents the tenacity of the two suffragette doctors who established the hospital, and the female team who staffed it. Previously unskilled women, some of them inexperienced even in domestic work, toiled relentlessly to nurse wounded men, and victims of the Spanish flu. Yet after the war these women were relegated to poorly paid areas of medicine, and decades later nurses were still treated as recalcitrant parlour maids by their matrons and those who fixed their pay. Whether it's the nurse who takes your blood pressure in your primary care physician's office or the nurse who cares for you when you are rushed into a hospital emergency room, you'll never look at a registered nurse in quite the same way after you read this eye-opening book by Alexandra Robbins. This is an important and should be read by everyone, even if your not in the healthcare profession.Nell has had an ordinary life until the day she was taken. Has she just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, or is there a darker reason for why she has been kidnapped?