Is it the year? The authors? Me? Or some depressing combination of all three? I don’t know, but my April reading was as hit or miss as the Seattle weather.
Prescription for Pain: How a Once-Promising Doctor Became the "Pill Mill Killer" by Philip Eil
Publication date: April 9, 2024
Genres: Book Clubs, Non-fiction, Crime, History 
Bookshop
Just when you think you’ve read every horror story about the opioid epidemic there’s more. Prescription for Pain is an investigative look into the life of Paul Volkman, a doctor turned pharmacist who at the peak of his career in 2004 was purchasing more oxycodone for his small clinic in Southern Ohio than any other doctor in America. Read that again, it’s not a typo. Patients addicts walked into his clinic and walked out with prescriptions for upwards of 600 pills and were told they could return in a week to get refills. And the jaw-dropping facts just keep coming in this astonishing book.
The author does a credible job of compiling Volkman‘s personal and professional life, but goes too far in trying to execute a psychological assessment of the man. Namely, because mental health experts won’t diagnose someone they haven’t met. Instead, he relies on the copious amounts of correspondence he had with Volkman and firsthand accounts from Volkman’s daughter. All valid, but not of any real interest. I didn’t care that he was sociopath, he was licensed as a doctor, and got to run a clinic that illegally prescribed drugs to drug addicts, leaving more than 10 of his patients dead.
Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra: a terrifying thriller, review to follow
Mrs. Quinn’s Rise to Fame by Olivia Ford: My review
One Wrong Word by Hank Phillippi Ryan
Publication date: February 6, 2024
Genres: Fiction, Suspense 
Bookshop
When One Wrong Word opens a high-powered crisis management expert finds her own career teetering on the edge of ruin she’s desperate for a client to save her reputation. She finds one, but the price to pay may be higher than she anticipated. I loved Philippi’s last novel, The House Guest, but this one pushes the false leads/unreliable narrator/red herrings technique beyond believability. The novel got stretched out of shape and left me disinterested by its end.
Real Americans by Rachel Khong: Sophomore novel from author of Goodbye, Vitamin. Review to follow
The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza: great female-centric novel set in Italy. My review
How was your April reading?
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*I received a free copies of these books from Steerforth Press and Forge in exchange for an honest review.*
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