Necessary Medicine

A great debut novel! Necessary Medicine is the first published novel by M.K. York and I liked it a lot. This book isn't your typical M/M romance story; it follows the path of medical student/intern/resident Neil Carmona. I'm not really sure how many years this book spans but it's quite a few. It's described as a "slow-burn romance" and that it is. The first kiss between the two MCs (main characters) doesn't happen until Chapter 16 (out of 26 chapters). The story contains a lot of medical terms and jargon; I was very glad I read this on my tablet so that I could easily look up terms I wasn't familiar with. (Unfortunately, I was very familiar with one and knew instantly what this meant: "He’d had a kind of nasty lap chole that morning that they’d had to convert to open, so he was already tired and on edge." It refers to laparoscopic gallbladder surgery that had to be switched to the old-fashioned open type of operation. I can tell you from personal experience this is NOT fun!) While at times it was a bit distracting to not understand all of the medical terms, this didn't really take away from that fact that Necessary Medicine was a great story about one man's journey to becoming a doctor with side stories about his relationships with fellow medical students/interns/residents and doctors. I loved the character of his mentor, Dr. Wendling, who eventually becomes his friend, Pete. Dr. Elias (Eli) Newcombe is someone that Neil meets while still a medical student. Neil first sees him in a coffee shop and is taken by how handsome he is and they exchange glances. Later that day, Neil discovers that the man he saw is Dr. Newcombe, the guest lecturer for his class, and he can't keep his eyes off of him. The book progresses through time fairly quickly in the beginning – by Chapter 4 Neil is a second-year resident – but slows down after that giving us much more detail about Neil's life as a surgical resident. My heart ached for the trials and tribulations that Neil and his fellow residents had to endure during their training. The way Ms. York describes the absolute exhaustion made me wonder how these young doctors could possibly provide good medical care. If this is an accurate depiction of the life of a medical resident it's a bit scary to know that the person treating patients might be so incredibly sleep deprived. This review is getting to be way too long so to wrap things up – if you're looking for a book with lots of sexy time this probably isn't the one for you. However, if you'd like to read a story about what seems to me to be a very realistic depiction of the life of a new doctor, how he handles the lack of personal time and eventually gets his HEA with the man he loves, then you should snap this one up. Two more things: I would definitely read more books by M.K. York and the book has a wonderful epilogue. ***Reviewed for Xtreme-Delusions dot com***