The White Coat Diaries
By: Madi Sinha
Published Year: 2020
Publisher: Berkley
Pages: 304
Summary (Provided by Goodreads): Grey’s Anatomy meets Scrubs in this brilliant debut novel about a young doctor’s struggle to survive residency, love, and life.
Having spent the last twenty-something years with her nose in a textbook, brilliant and driven Norah Kapadia has just landed the medical residency of her dreams. But after a disastrous first day, she's ready to quit. Disgruntled patients, sleep deprivation, and her duty to be the "perfect Indian daughter" have her questioning her future as a doctor.
Enter chief resident Ethan Cantor. He's everything Norah aspires to be: respected by the attendings, calm during emergencies, and charismatic with the patients. As he morphs from Norah’s mentor to something more, it seems her luck is finally changing.
When a fatal medical mistake is made, pulling Norah into a cover-up, she must decide how far she’s willing to go to protect the secret. What if “doing no harm” means risking her career and the future for which she’s worked so hard?
First Impressions
I was originally sent this book to read for review in 2020. I thought the book sounded interesting and the cover caught my eye. The tagline that it was for lovers of Scrubs and Gray’s Anatomy also caught me. I loved Scrubs and enjoyed Gray’s for a long time. Plus a romance about an intern with her superior? I was in!
What I thought
One thing led to the next and I wasn’t able to read this book when it first came out. It still always intrigued me, but I just kept putting it off. When I came across it in the library, I figured now was as good a time as any to finally get this one off of my list.
Norah is a first year medical Intern. She has always felt medicine was her calling. This book follows her through her first year as she balances learning medicine and romance with a resident.
Ugh. I should’ve just continued to ignore this book. Norah is one of the most dislikable characters I’ve read in a very long time. She starts off naïve and ends up being completely insufferable. I don’t have any patience for characters who try to excuse “new experiences” and “innocence” as reasons to why they’re terrible friends, daughters, and overall people. She completely tanks a 15 year long friendship over making out with some guy. And all of her excuses are “this is new to me.”
Her brother and sister-in-law are also horrific people. She should cut off all contact with them and never speak to them again. At one point, she’s on call and dealing with multiple emergencies and her brother is calling her because her mother’s blood pressure is high and she refuses to go to the ER. And Norah keeps answering the phone!! And nothing happens!!
The only exciting part of this book happens at about 75% and even then it’s completely predictable. I got so annoyed with all of the characters (supposed love interest included), that I started to skim the last 25%. All I wanted to know was whether or not Norah was going to get in trouble, rightfully so, for the death of a patient.
Also, this book was in the romance section? Why? There is only a vague hint of romance in this story but she doesn’t end up with anyone and she doesn’t even really have a relationship with anyone throughout the totality of this book.
Skip this one. I understand why it’s noted as a nod to Scrubs and Gray’s but it’s such a poorly written tribute. The characters are insufferable, the storyline predictable, and the writing mediocre. I wish I had continued to let this one sit on my TBR shelf instead of spending the time reading it.