Bellevue

Bellevue by Robin Cook
12/3/24; 352 pages
G.P. Putnam's Sons

Bellevue by Robin Cook is a highly recommended supernatural medical/ghost thriller.

Michael “Mitt” Fuller, 23, is a first year medical student who is staring his surgical residency program at Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital. This has him following in the footsteps of multiple generations of his family who all worked as doctors at the three-hundred-year-old hospital. The pressure is on Mitt and much to his dismay his assigned patients are inexplicably dying. He also learns that his ancestors’ careers were actually controversial. Further complicating Mitt's stressed out and emotional state is that he has a secret sixth sense and has been seeing visions of a young girl in a blood stained dress.

There are plenty of detailed medical scenes which Cook's fans will expect. Switching up the story this time is the supernatural addition of ghosts that seem to be targeting Mitt when he is in the centuries old facility. While Mitt is questioning what is going on, the answer will be very clear to the readers. Mitt is a likeable character and you will sympathize with him as he questions himself and tries to make sense of what he is seeing.

Once the novel goes full into the supernatural aspects of the story, it lost my interest. I was seriously hoping for a tangible explanation to the events happening to the patients and Mitt. The ending was a shocker. The mash-up between medical thriller and ghost horror novel is not entirely successful, but the narrative will hold your complete attention. Thanks to G.P. Putnam's Sons for providing me with an advance reader's copy via Net Galley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.