The Doctor by Lisa Stone

 

The Doctor by Lisa Stone

Tiny Overview

Emily is a stay at home wife who worries about the next door neighbours. Something isn't quite right, and she is always getting their weird packages. She tried to befriend the wife from next door, and everything goes very wrong.

Themes:

• Crime 
• Domestic thriller
• Mystery
• Psychological thriller
• Suspense
• Thriller

Context

After 28 novels as Cathy Glass, in 2017 she adopted a new pseudonym, Stone, to write a whole new line of thriller books. In an interview with The Bookworms Fantasy, that she researches thoroughly to be able to avoid inaccuracies, and this leads her to struggle to sleep at night, as all her crime thrillers are based in fact.

My Waffling

I think I have been very generous with my rating of this book. It did not take me long to read it at all - and I did not feel very into it.

The plot felt as if it moved very slowly. Emily went missing at around 60%-ish of the way into the book. I was very confused on how it would take a remaining 40% to try and find her. But still, it dragged on. Nothing interesting really happened. I have tagged this as a mystery, as I get my tags from GoodReads, but I really don't think it is. You know everything that is going on, nothing is to be desired, and the characters are more than flat. I am not expecting paragraphs written about each character, as the book is only ~300 pages. It did feel like a waste of time.

It also felt like Stone wrote this book just so she could swear? It seemed out of place and weird - it did not fit the tone. Every time we read from Amit's POV he was calling someone a bitch.

The medical condition was never named, and how am I supposed to gloss over the incest? "I had to marry my Uncle's daughter to repay my parents debt". Do you mean your cousin? If you are related, then your daughter is probably disabled due to incest. I do not believe that Alisha bought his abuse. I understand that victims get worn down after years, but how did this not cross her mind? I am sure that in a throwaway comment it was mentioned that Alisha was a nurse, which means she understands at least basic genetics. Which means she knows that she alone can't carry this mysterious faulty gene which leads to disabled children - both of them have to. And in the end, it was revealed that both of them don't! Only Amit did!

This "twist" felt very predictable and did not feel very carefully crafted. It felt as if she needed another something so she just whacked it in. To be fair, I do think I am recalling the epilogue, but I don't think that is a good enough excuse. I think this was an alright idea but bad execution.

To top it off, it felt a bit racist at times. Amit having to marry his cousin because 'that's just his culture' and saying that in the village in his non disclosed home town that they consider disabled people 'the work of the devil'. Also his weird third person rant about how it would be easier to murder Alisha if they still lived back home?

While reading other people's reviews on this book, they mentioned how the wife is referred to as Anita in the blurb, not Alisha. I think this was to make it a bit less obvious that they are both not white people - even if skin tones were not mentioned in the book. It was heavily implied. I also agree with Nikki Houghton on GoodReads. How did this get published? Did we read the same book?

I was really excited to read this book, after seeing so much praise for it when I have been reading other reviews of Stone's books. I will have to say this was the weakest of the ones that I have read of hers so far. I think I have outgrown reading Lisa Stone's books, as I am always wanting more and the twists don't get me anymore.

While writing this I have decided to change my rating.

2/5