A powerful debut novel, praised by The New York Times, Bustle, and Hypable, that pulses with humor and empathy as it explores the heart’s capacity for forgiveness….Zadie Anson and Emma Colley have been best friends since their early twenties, when they first began navigating serious romantic relationships amid the intensity of medical school. Now they’re happily married wives and mothers with … they’re happily married wives and mothers with successful careers–Zadie as a pediatric cardiologist and Emma as a trauma surgeon. Their lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, are chaotic but fulfilling, until the return of a former colleague unearths a secret one of them has been harboring for years.
As chief resident, Nick Xenokostas was the center of Zadie’s life–both professionally and personally–throughout a tragic chain of events during her third year of medical school that she has long since put behind her. Nick’s unexpected reappearance at a time of new professional crisis shocks both women into a deeper look at the difficult choices they made at the beginning of their careers. As it becomes evident that Emma must have known more than she revealed about circumstances that nearly derailed both their lives, Zadie starts to question everything she thought she knew about her closest friend.
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Sharp, funny, and poignant by turns, Martin’s debut is a medical drama with — dare I say it? — real heart. I appreciated that the primary relationship in the book is the friendship between Zadie and Emma, not any of their romantic relationships. It’s a rare thing for a book to foreground friendship, particularly when romance is also on the table, and I think Martin makes a wise choice with her POV characters. Martin also has an excellent ear for dialogue. Her characters speak in ways that feel very real — so much so that some of the hospital incidents are surely taken straight from real life, or taken with very little modification, based on Martin’s own experiences as a doctor.
In The Queen of Hearts, debut author Kimmery Martin brings humor and insight into this exploration of friendships and secrets set in the fascinating world of practicing doctors. She effortlessly weaves the past and the present to bring you all sides of this nuanced story. Part mystery and part exploration of the human heart, Martin has a cure for what ails both her characters and their relatable problems. Sure to be a hit with fans of JoJo Moyes and Liane Moriarty.
Tragedy and secrets refuse to stay buried in this fast-paced and clever exploration of the storied connection between Emma and Zadie. As wives, mothers, and physicians, they are just as susceptible to life and its multicolored traumas as any of the souls they care for.
Real talk: I’d been working my way to this book in my queue for months, and when its turn finally came, there was simultaneously a medical emergency in my family that gave me pause. Maybe it was too close to home, so to speak, to literally be reading this book in a hospital room, at the bedside of a loved one. Still, I’d been so looking forward to the read, I took a deep breath and dove in.
I need not have worried. Through and through, Kimmery Martin’s take is deeply human. As the story unfolded, I was reminded of how engrossing the characters and even fleeting subplots in the best kind of medical drama can be (and how I *never* missed an episode in the early days of “ER”), and marveled that somehow I couldn’t recall having ever read one. I’m glad I held out for THE QUEEN OF HEARTS, which beyond the plot of tested friendship, love, and betrayal, is full of wit, subtext, and (of course) heart. Martin’s writing is smart, compassionate, and just plain entertaining. I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next! (With gratitude to the publisher for sending an ARC my way.)
Dollycas’s Thoughts
Kimmery Martin takes us into the lives of best friends Zadie Anson and Emma Colley. She alternates between their points of view and the present and the past. Emma, a trauma surgeon, and Zadie, a pediatric cardiologist, have faced grueling schedules to get to where they are in their lives, married with families and successful careers. Then Nick Xenokostas, Dr. X, transfers to North Carolina and turns their lives upside down. That third year of medical school comes back to haunt them and when secrets are revealed it could rip these two best friends apart.
I dove right into this story thinking it would be a combination of Grey’s Anatomy and other medical television dramas, but it was so much more. You know immediately the author is a physician by all the details she brings to this story. From medical terms to the struggle medical school, residency and beyond can be. I drank it all in and was riveted by Zadie and Emma’s stories. These characters were very realistic in both the bond they have and the lives they have created for themselves.
The underlying drama and tension runs throughout the story with little humorous breaks usually by Zadie’s 3-year-old Delaney. Her “Hi, beloved dear!” always broke through and made me smile. I was following along closely knowing something major had taken place in these women’s lives. Something they had tried to forget about. But when the event was revealed I became totally overwhelmed. Not exactly the same as an event that rocked my life but close enough that I had to stop reading for some time before I could pick it back up again. I still had to skip or just skim a few pages but I had to see how the story ended. I am so glad I did because there was yet another shocking twist that I didn’t see coming.
I was moved by this novel. I can’t believe it is the author’s debut. She is an excellent writer, she carries off the switching points of view and times, along with all the medical jargon so well. Her descriptive style puts readers right into each moment. Except for the one point I mentioned above I totally enjoyed the story, and that is on me. If you haven’t dealt with a similar traumatic event, you will absolutely love this story.
I am excited by this author and can’t wait to see what she writes next.
Kimmery Martin’s debut novel, THE QUEEN OF HEARTS, is engrossing, from the medical setting to the cast of characters There are some marvelous one-liners and three-year-old Delaney steals the show with her dialogue and actions. The story is told in two points of view and two timelines (the present and their third year of medical school) when one of them has an affair with a sexy chief resident. First we meet Zadie, a part-time pediatric cardiologist and full-time mother with a loving, but largely absent spouse. Her chapter is followed up by Emma, Zadie’s best friend from childhood and whose friendship endures through medical school and beyond.
As a physician, I enjoyed the true-to-life medical aspects and the human drama as well as the various subplots. My only complaint is that the two women, though the were childhood friends and physicians, had very different backgrounds. I realize that Emma worked hard to overcome her childhood poverty and Appalachian accent, but still I’d have liked a bit more difference in their voices.
“We make these implicit bargains with fate all the time, lulling ourselves into a false comfort thinking we can ward off the worst just by acknowledging that it exists.”
Kimmery Martin brings out such beautiful emotion and a reality call of what friendship and forgiveness, love and betrayal is all about in her debut novel, The Queen of Hearts.
“One moment someone you know was whole, and the next he could be stilled and buried.”
The details from the breathing tubes to downtown Charlotte was so unbelievably written that you might as well have been there in person through every page of this book.
Zadie and Emma, best friends since their medical school days have become each others pillars during a time that they both had gone through some heartbreak and tragedy. Zadie is a ray of sunshine who everyone wants to know better and Emma is the tall blonde who, at times, seems slightly intimidating but is an enigma herself.
Dr. X is the persona of McSteamy and who could resist him? Yet he finds fascination in one particular med student. Graham is the ultimate sweet and silent boyfriend who even has a golden retriever and initially both these men are big parts of their lives during their early years and somehow things just don’t end well.
In the end the book wasn’t anything like I expected, it was so much better! The way these women run their lives first as med students then as mothers and wives and how everything unfolds in the end was enough to keep me hooked!
This book deserves 5 heart-stopping stars!
If you have an interest in the drama of medicine you should read this book. Kimberly Martin is a real life emergency department physician and a blessing. Her work is a refreshing change compared to some of the tripe being passed off as medical fiction these days. Martin can walk the walk and talk the talk. She has crafted a wonderful story built around friendships tested in the crucible of medicine. Zadie and Emma have known each other since college and have a bond that was forged in their third year of medical school. They’ve held secrets for a decade and a half and a series of events cracks open the truth which must be revealed. An old friend, Nick, reappears turning their worlds inside out. Zadie struggles to raise four children, all under the age of ten, while managing a pediatric cardiology practice while Emma saves lives as a trauma surgeon. Both are holding it together until Nick reemerges opening old wounds. His reappearance cracks the veneer of their lives and sends them tumbling into potential catastrophe. Beautifully told and with authentic medical details, this is an awesome read. It gets my strongest recommendation.
Emergency physician Kimmery Martin’s debut novel describes the entwined and sometimes dishonest lives of two friends who bond in medical school and continue into practice, where horrid revelations threaten to destroy their friendship. Not a “Grey’s Anatomy” knock-off, but a believable story with genuine characters embroiled in realistic conflict, romance, betrayal, and resolution–set in well-crafted clinical scenarios, challenges, successes, and failures. Her accurately portrayed, believable characters (from the narcissistic surgeon to the eccentric ER doc) portray the reality that flawed humans practice medicine, and don’t always do it right. Clever use of alternating first-person POVs overcomes the potential limitations of writing in that voice from a single character’s perspective.
Great read! Loved the storyline and the strong female protagonists.
Great book with an inside peek at the world of doctors.
This book was fantastic. It was heart-wrenching, funny, and sad. It was my first of Ms. Martin’s but certainly not my last
I love Grey’s Anatomy and this story reminded me of it. Great characters and story. Lots going on. Very original.
The depiction of life as a Med student, coupled with remarkably real characters and a surprising sequence of plot twists made this an extremely compelling story.
In the “The Queen of Hearts” Ms Martin tells a story of the friendship between Zadie and Emma, two accomplished doctors and the “lie” that one of them is keeping from the other. It is written with a great mixture of humor, compassion, mystery and very clearly with knowledge in the practice of medicine (I believe I remember seeing something about the author having a background in medicine). That being the case I expected the story to be “how shall I say” a bit antiseptic, but I was happy to find that the story was absent of the sterility/coldness I expected from a story about doctors.
The story was equally (to my pleasant surprise) interesting regardless of where the characters were or what was happening.
“The Queen of Hearts” weaves between the work place and life outside of work with more ease than it happens in real life, making for very enjoyable reading (much like watching an episode of the TV series “ER”). The friendship between Emma and Zadie is real, with all the complications as well as the joy of a true friendship.
An excellent read and a strong recommendation to anyone who hasn’t read it.
The Queen of Hearts is at once smart and vulnerable, insightful and tragic. Martin exposes unexpected realities of life as a physician, all while exploring the delicate balance of human nature and friendship.
The overall plot was good, but there was a lot of superfluous medical information thrown in, as if the author wanted to be sure you know how knowledgeable she is; I found that irritating and distracting.
I’m a sucker for medical dramas. It was a little slow getting to the medical scenes but it finally made it and had a nice mixture with real lives outside the OR.
I really enjoyed this novel! I have always been a huge fan of medical dramas being that I love the health field but could never actually work in it myself. It does start off a little slower than most novels I enjoy but I stuck with it and ended up getting lost in the character’s drama, and their lives.
I think it is always important for women to empower other women, and the way Kimmery Martin describes the busy lives of her two main characters, Zadie and Emma, being wives and mothers, but also both having thriving careers as surgeons, brought a certain uplifting quality women of any age, but especially career driven mothers can enjoy and relate to. She also pulled out the secrets and drama at a pace that kept me intrigued and turning the page just to find out more!
First, the writing is amazing. Second, the story is enjoyable and engrossing. I cant wait to see what Martin comes out with next.