Coma by Robin Cook

Title: Coma
Author: Robin Cook
Genre: Medical, Thriller, Horror, Mystery
My Review Rating: ★★★
Goodreads Description:
They called it “minor surgery,” but Nancy Greenly, Sean Berman and a dozen others–all admitted to Boston Memorial Hospital for routine procedures–were victims of the same inexplicable, hideous tragedy on the operating table. They never woke up.

Susan Wheeler is a third-year medical student working as a trainee at Boston Memorial Hospital. Two patients during her residency mysteriously go into comas immediately after their operations due to complications from anesthesia. Susan begins to investigate the causes behind both of these alarming comas and discovers the oxygen line in Operating Room 8 has been tampered with to induce carbon monoxide poisoning.

Then Susan discovers the evil nature of the Jefferson Institute, an intensive care facility where patients are suspended from the ceiling and kept alive until they can be harvested for healthy organs. Is she a participant in–or a victim of–a large-scale black market dealing in human organs?

Coma by Robin Cook is one of the book recommendations I got from workmates. And honestly I feel very well loved by my work friends because 1) they support my mini library that they leave their books there as well for anyone to read, 2) they give me books!, 3) they give good recommendations. And what’s more sweet is that they consider what a reader could actually like.

Finding an interesting book can be a challenging process and it is a loooong process. I hate when I get into a reading slump just because I stumbled upon a book that’s not my vibe, so it ruins my whole “I want to read” mood. So sometimes, I don’t really listen to people when they say ah this is good, you’ll like it. I don’t even know what exactly I like.

Coma by Robin Cook is a thrilling medical suspense novel that is supposed to “keep readers on the edge of their seats until its shocking conclusion”. The book follows a medical student named Susan who realizes and discovers some unusual pattern and frequency of deaths in the hospital she works as an intern at. being the “main character”, she of course delves deeper into the mysterious occurrences and learns these creepy hospital secrets you’d never imagine.

Cook’s writing has a loooot of medical, scientific terms I will never understand despite working in a pharmaceutical company. It talks about methods, practices, terms that I never encountered until now. And knowing that Cook was actually a physician, it makes it more scary how accurate these all could be. Malpractices, I think already exists (I mean, come on) but other stuff in the book I can only imagine.

Coma is definitely a thought-provoking read that will leave readers questioning the healthcare industry and its ethical standards.

“Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.”

Robin Cook, Coma

Took me loooooong though to finish because of the scenes and terms I don’t actually understand. But really, you don’t have to overthink it, because the creep it right there already in front of your face. You just need to see.

If you are practicing medicine, or into medical thriller books, this is a must read. It will never bore you. But for me though, I had better experience from other thriller books, I was able to connect with a fantasy world better than this one. Maybe on my re-read, I’ll get a better grasp and appreciation but for now, three stars is good.

here are other reads if you liked Coma:

Psychological Thriller
Medical Thriller
Same Author

The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

Alicia Berenson’s life is seemingly perfect. A famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, she lives in a grand house with big windows overlooking a park in one of London’s most desirable areas. One evening her husband Gabriel returns home late from a fashion shoot, and Alicia shoots him five times in the face, and then never speaks another word.

Alicia’s refusal to talk, or give any kind of explanation, turns a domestic tragedy into something far grander, a mystery that captures the public imagination and casts Alicia into notoriety. The price of her art skyrockets, and she, the silent patient, is hidden away from the tabloids and spotlight at the Grove, a secure forensic unit in North London.

Theo Faber is a criminal psychotherapist who has waited a long time for the opportunity to work with Alicia. His determination to get her to talk and unravel the mystery of why she shot her husband takes him down a twisting path into his own motivations—a search for the truth that threatens to consume him….
Read more from Goodreads >>

Ward D by Freida McFadden

Medical student Amy Brenner is spending the night on a locked psychiatric ward.

Amy has been dreading her evening working on Ward D, the hospital’s inpatient mental health unit. There are very specific reasons why she never wanted to do this required overnight rotation. Reasons nobody can ever find out.

And as the hours tick by, Amy grows increasingly convinced something terrible is happening within these tightly secured walls. When patients and staff start to vanish without a trace, it becomes clear that everyone on the unit is in grave danger.

Amy’s worst nightmare was spending the night on Ward D.

And now she might never escape. Read more from Goodreads >>

Pandemic (Jack Stapleton and Laurie Montgomery #11) by Robin Cook

When an unidentified, seemingly healthy young woman collapses suddenly on the New York City subway and dies upon reaching the hospital, her case is an eerie reminder for veteran medical examiner Jack Stapleton of the 1918 flu pandemic. Fearful of a repeat on the one hundredth anniversary of the nightmarish contagion, Jack autopsies the woman within hours of her demise and discovers some striking anomalies: first, that she has had a heart transplant, and second, that, against all odds, her DNA matches that of the transplanted heart.

Although the facts don’t add up to influenza, Jack must race against the clock to identify the woman and determine what kind of virus could wreak such havoc–a task made more urgent when two other victims succumb to a similar rapid death. But nothing makes sense until his investigation leads him into the fascinating realm of CRISPR/CAS9, a gene-editing biotechnology that’s captured the imagination of the medical community. . . and the attention of its most unethical members. Drawn into the dark underbelly of the organ transplant market, Jack will come face-to-face with a megalomaniacal businessman willing to risk human lives in order to conquer a lucrative new frontier in medicine–and if Jack’s not careful, the next life lost might be his own. Read more from Goodreads >>