Emily's Book Reviews

What in the hell is this book?

Full disclosure: This might be my least favorite Freida book. It’s weird – SO weird. I can normally run through one of her books in a day or two, but this one took me at least a week. I kept having to put it down and say, “What in the world did I just read?”

Let’s begin with the plot summary. Spoilers ahead.

Trigger Warnings: Suicide, Sexual Abuse, Student/Teacher Relationships, Drugging.

Freida likes to switch between perspectives in her books, which I am normally okay with. You know a big plot twist is coming when you see a shift in narration. This book, however, is told through 8 different perspectives. We get a brief prologue from Charlotte (who is the main character in the second book in Freida’s bibliography, Brain Damage) and a short epilogue from Emma. Let’s go through the remaining six, starting with Heather.

Heather’s Section

Each character’s section begins with the same moment on their first day of med school. The Dean of Students tells everyone to look at their neighbors and says, “In four years, both of these people will be physicians.” Let me just say…not sure I’d want any of these guys being in charge of my medical care, but I digress.

Heather sucks at anatomy. She’s worried about failing. To make matters worse, she and her longtime boyfriend break up. Heather is, for lack of a better word, annoying. She was my least favorite character to read about. Throughout her chapters, all she does is complain and whine, whether it’s about her ex-boyfriend or how she can’t seem to understand any of her anatomy work no matter how much she studies. She quickly becomes friends with Abe, an apparently gigantic human being with bright red hair (we’ll get to his story later, and its OUT THERE). She also has premonitions about Abe standing over her with a butcher knife, but this is neither explained or really brought up again.

She finds out that the school is nicknamed “Suicide Med” due to a few students taking their own lives over the past couple of years. These deaths mysteriously coincide with the arrival of a new professor, Dr. Conlon. While it’s clear Freida wants you to think Conlon is directly responsible for these murders, it doesn’t make sense that he would be. Conlon has to walk with a cane and he makes it very plain that he is not physically capable of hurting someone.

With Abe’s help, Heather is able to start passing anatomy. She then realizes that she likes Abe, and its obvious to everyone but Heather that Abe is in love with her. Abe, it turns out, is the perfect boyfriend. He’s always sending flowers and bringing snacks. But as their relationship progresses, Heather just cannot understand why he doesn’t want to take the relationship to the next level. She tries to surprise him while he’s showering, but Abe gets REALLY upset. And its hinted that he has some kind of physical abnormality that he’s ashamed of. Heather goes to Dr. Patrice, the school’s counselor, to try and get some clarity. And it’s clear that, somehow, Patrice knows what Abe’s hiding, but she can’t reveal it.

Heather’s section ends on chapter 16 with Abe apologizing, but we don’t know if he admits his issue to her. But Heather gets another of her vibes that she should be as far away from him as possible.

Mason’s Section

Mason has got his act together. He’s kind of the stereotype rich kid. His parents are a bit disconnected from him, especially his father, who expects Mason to be perfection. Mason says that he got 10 points short of a perfect score on his SATs, and his father was super disappointed.

So Mason is roommates with our friend Abe, which is almost a comical pairing once we get to Abe’s story. Mason is the student to beat. He’s a genius at anatomy and spends most of his time in the library, studying. This is where he meets Ginny. They quickly develop a friends with benefits” situation, but that’s all it can ever be. They come from very different backgrounds.

Ginny and Mason continue this weird study/banging relationship. She starts bringing him coffee when they study. During one of their study sessions, Ginny mentions that she’s curious how their anatomy cadaver, whom they named Frank, died. What seems to be a random conversation becomes an obsession for Mason. Frank appears perfectly healthy, while all the other cadavers have some obvious physical malady. Mason’s obsession only grows when he asks Dr. Conlon about how Frank died. Its confidential information, but in Mason’s mind, Dr. Conlon is hiding something.

Even though they’re just FWB, Mason invites Ginny to his family’s house for dinner. His mom wont’ stop calling her “Virginia.” While Ginny gets a tour from Mason’s mom, Mason goes into his father’s office. As Mason inspects his father’s desk, a “voice” tells him to “Open the drawer,” where he finds a gun. The voice speaks up yet again to tell him to “take the gun.” Mason’s a little freaked out, but he complies and takes it. Dinner is a disaster, Ginny is uncomfortable, and it’s all a mess.

Mason continues to obsess about the cadaver and his suspicion of Dr. Conlon grows. He continues to hear the voice and starts losing track of time, basically blanking out for large chunks of his days. He’s convinced that Frank was murdered by Dr. Conlon. He’s so convinced, he takes the gun he stole from his father’s desk to Dr. Conlon’s office to confront him. After a verbal confrontation, Mason shoots Dr. Conlon while the voice validates his actions. Mason’s section ends with Mason realizing there are two girls working in the anatomy lab, and he has to get rid of the witnesses.

Abe’s Section

HERE WE GO FOLKS.

This section threw me for a LOOP. This is the section where I had to put my book down and take a break because wtf.

Abe sees Heather and immediately falls in love with her. He says that she’s “the girl I’m going to marry.” The first chunk of his section is pretty much, “Heather is amazing,” and “I could never get a girl like Heather,” even though Abe seems like the nicest human being on the planet (even if he makes a move on Heather approximately 2.5 seconds after she and her boyfriend breakup). But its very clear Abe has a secret, one that he’s immensely ashamed of.

We then jump to Abe at the office of a plastic surgeon. The plastic surgeon is a bit of a tool at first, but quickly becomes serious when Abe shows him why he’s made an appointment. Freida dances around the issue. Abe says, “I take a deep breath. I turn so that my backside is facing the doctor and open up the back of my gown. I wait for his response, which is, unfortunately, exactly what I expected.” After a page of the doctor being shook, the doctor says, “Have you ever considered going to an ophthalmologist?”

YES, YOU READ THAT RIGHT. AN EYE DOCTOR. ABE HAS AN EYEBALL GROWING OUT OF HIS ASS. The thing blinks and looks around, and even though Abe says he can’t control it, the eye apparently responds to emotional stimuli. It cries when it sees a sad picture. We discover that Abe had a twin in the womb, and, long story short, he absorbed the twin, and all that remains of his brother is an eyeball. On his ass.

Turns out Patrice, the school counselor, has been counseling Abe on the situation. He shows her his butt eyeball. He talks about his childhood with his butt eyeball, and how his parents wouldn’t let him have it removed. And it turns out, neither will the fancy plastic surgeon. Apparently, he’s morally against it because the eyeball has feelings, and they worry what will happen to Abe once the twin is fully removed. However, Abe will stop at nothing in the pursuit of getting laid, so he goes to sketchy plastic surgeon who’s like, “Nice butt eyeball, I only take cash.” And then he removes the butt eyeball.

And then it only gets crazier. Turns out that the butt eyeball – and the brain tissue attached to it – was the only thing stopping Abe from going Ted Bundy on the world. He beats the daylights out of some dude on the street for basically no reason. But apparently its no big deal, because he’s finally able to have *relations* with Heather. However, the post-bangin’ bliss doesn’t last long, because moments after they finish, he’s having terrible thoughts about how injuring her. He then basically almost assaults Patrice, but apparently a tiny bit of the twin remains and he’s able to walk away. But he and Heather are back together by the end, so, worth it, I guess?

Rachel’s Section

Rachel is Heather’s roommate. Rachel also finds Heather extremely annoying. All we know about Rachel from the other character’s perspectives is that she’s kind of bitchy. She always has to be contrarian (for example, she gets really upset about her anatomy group naming the cadaver Frank). And Rachel has a secret.

Rachel has a history of seducing teachers, having relations with them, and then blackmails them for good grades. The first time it happened, she didn’t start it – she was clearly taken advantage of by her teacher. But she begins to realize this could be a lucrative process, and does it a few more times. She finds a teacher with low will power that is sleazy enough to want to sleep with a student. And now she’s fixating on Dr. Conlon, the professor that Mason kills.

Her chapter is the easiest to keep brief. A professor warned Dr. Conlon beforehand about Rachel, but that didn’t stop him from allowing the relationship to progress to physical. And even though student/teacher relationships are a big no-no, they fall in love. And Dr. Conlon doesn’t give Rachel easy grades – he tutors her. Throughout their relationship, we discover the reason Dr. Conlon was so upset when Mason started asking questions about Frank – apparently this happened before and it was a HIPAA nightmare.

But then someone finds out about their relationship and starts to blackmail her. The blackmailer tells Rachel she must deliver the answers to the upcoming exam to a locker or they will tell about her relationship with Dr. Conlon. Rachel complies, prints out the answers, and accidentally leaves a page on the printer. Dr. Conlon sees it and immediately assumes that was Rachel’s endgame.

After some shunning, Rachel comes to Dr. Conlon’s office late one night to beg his forgiveness and explain what happened – and he forgives her. But then Mason shows up. Rachel hides under the desk and witnesses Mason murder Dr. Conlon. Once Mason leaves, she runs out and looks for help and runs into none other than Ginny.

Ginny’s Section

So even though we know she and Mason have a relationship, Ginny says within the first two pages of her section, “Right away, I hate Mason.” Ginny wants to be number one, but Mason is in her way. She knows he works hard for his good grades, but she’s jealous of his charisma. And when she discovers he’s the one always scoring just a little higher than her on their exams, she knows she has to do something about it.

Ginny goes to visit her family. It’s obvious she’s not close to them, especially after the death of her father. While she’s home, she finds a bottle of her dad’s old medication called “Sinemet,” which can cause hallucinations and paranoia. Ginny puts the pills in her pocket. At her next study session with Mason, she spikes his coffee with one of the pills.

A lot of her section is this weird dynamic of Ginny being like, “yeah, Mason is actually a decent guy,” whilst she continues to spike his drink with the pills. Her conflicting feelings for Mason only grow when she realizes Dr. Conlon favors Mason when he can’t even get her name right. So what does she do? She starts putting TWO pills in Mason’s drinks.

And even though she’s the one responsible for Mason’s downfall, she has the nerve to act surprised when Mason’s grades start falling.

After Rachel accidentally calls Dr. Conlon by his first name, Matt, Ginny realizes that Rachel is having an affair with her professor. And so not only is Ginny responsible for Mason losing his mind, but she’s also the one who started blackmailing Rachel. And then, when Mason comes to her for help, she GASLIGHTS him, saying he’s just being a “typical med student hypochondriac.”

But Ginny got what she wanted – Dr. Conlon calls her the best student in the class and then offers her the teaching assistant job that she asked about earlier . Unfortunately, Ginny won’t be getting that teaching assistant job, because Dr. Conlon is now dead, and the section ends with her admitting, “no one can ever know what I’ve done.”

Dr. Conlon’s Section

We learn that Dr. Conlon’s injuries happened when his roommate snapped under the pressure of med school. He shot Conlon, who never fully recovered from his injuries. With his dreams of being a surgeon totally dashed, he decides to go into teaching anatomy instead.

We also learn about the warning Conlon received from one of Rachel’s previous professors, and how he had every intention of denying Rachel until he peeked down her shirt. Then it was game over and, the next thing you know, he’s in love with his student.

Patrice, the school counselor, finds out about his affair with Rachel and while she’s lecturing him about how bad of an idea it is, Patrice admits that she slept with a student as well. And not just any student – one of the ones who helped earn the college the nickname “suicide med.” Turns out, her student killed his girlfriend and then killed himself.

His section ends quickly and violently. Mason comes in, and Conlon decides he will keep Rachel safe, even if it is the last thing he does.

Abe – Part 2

Abe discovers that he’s not the only one dealing with conflicting personalities, and realizes that Mason has completely lost it. He decides to go check Dr. Conlon’s office but, before he can get there, he finds Mason, holding a gun to Charlotte McKenna’s head.

Abe manages to get Mason to put the gun down, but because of his Ted Bundy side, he decides to stab Mason with a scalpel anyway. Charlotte covers for him because he saved her life, but she knows he didn’t need to stab Mason.

Emma – The Epilogue

Emma is working as a med student under Ginny, who is a full doctor by this point. Ginny is, apparently, a nightmare to work for. In this epilogue, we learn that Abe is now a popular surgeon (due to his penchant for cutting things up). He uses surgery as a way to release his violent tendencies, and is apparently still one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. And he did end up marrying Heather, who is a pediatrician.

Emma befriends the custodian at the hospital, Trey, a guy who served some prison time. A guy who served some prison time with none other than Mason. Mason must have wised up to what Ginny did, because Trey seems to know just how to get revenge for his prison best friend.

As Emma goes to give Ginny her coffee, she noticed some white flakes swirling around. She doesn’t think much of it…”After all, who would want to drug Dr. Zaleski?”

My Review

I promise my other plot summaries won’t be this intense, but there are so many stories here and so many ridiculous details that I wanted to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

Freida, honey. What was this book?

I will say it entertained me. I mean, the ass eyeball was so far out of left field. When Abe got upset about Heather wanting nakey time, I really thought it was that he was embarrassed about his size or something.

I think my biggest problem was I didn’t really like any of the characters. Heather did nothing but complain, Mason was the stereotype of a rich kid with daddy issues, and Ginny was, frankly, evil. I liked Abe a lot at first – he just seemed like a gentle giant. But once he got the ass eye removed and started to fantasize about hurting Heather and then almost SA’d Patrice, I struggled with him. I did feel bad for Rachel at times – she did manipulate others, but she wouldn’t have gotten away with the manipulation if the teachers she manipulated remembered they were the ones with the power. They could have walked away, but instead they took advantage of a troubled girl who just decided to manipulate the system right back. Dr. Conlon had a sad back story, but he still should have maintained a professional boundary with Rachel. I do think they were really in love, and, at least with this relationship, they were both of age.

This book reminded me of one of those movies like He’s Just Not That Into You or Valentine’s Day where there are a billion characters that have stories that intertwine, just vastly less enjoyable. You can tell this is one of Freida’s first novels, and I understand the learning curve that comes with that. But it wasn’t even the writing that bothered me – it was the plot.

I’ve read some weird books. I almost considered stopping this one, but I was determined to finish all of Freida’s books. Normally the twists through be for a loop in Freida novels, but the only one that really got me was the eyeball thing. Heather’s story was basically just Abe’s story. I learned nothing from Heather’s story, and was honestly confused as to what the plot was going to be after reading her part, because it didn’t seem to relate to the prologue much.

I’d give it two out of five stars. After reading the third point of view, I was so tempted to just start skimming each chapter because I was reading the same stuff over and over again. There’s some Freida novels I’ll go back to. This isn’t one of them.

And I’ll forever be paranoid about an eyeball growing out of my butt.