Review: The Doctor’s Secret – Heidi Cullinan

The Doctor's Secret Book Cover The Doctor's Secret
Copper Point Medical Book 1
Heidi Cullinan
M/M Medical Multiracial Romance
Dreamspinner Press
April 23, 2019
368

The brilliant but brooding new doctor encounters Copper Point's sunny nurse-next-door... and nothing can stand in the way of this romance.

Dr. Hong-Wei Wu has come to Copper Point, Wisconsin, after the pressures of a high-powered residency burned him out of his career before he started. Ashamed of letting his family down after all they’ve done for him, he plans to live a quiet life as a simple surgeon in this tiny northern town. His plans, however, don’t include his outgoing, kind, and attractive surgical nurse, Simon Lane.

Simon wasn’t ready for the new surgeon to be a handsome charmer who keeps asking him for help getting settled and who woos him with amazing Taiwanese dishes. There’s no question—Dr. Wu is flirting with him, and Simon is flirting back. The problem is, St. Ann’s has a strict no-dating policy between staff, which means their romance is off the table… unless they bend the rules.

But a romance that keeps them—literally—in the closet can’t lead to happy ever after. Simon doesn’t want to stay a secret, and Hong-Wei doesn’t want to keep himself removed from life, not anymore. To secure their happiness, they’ll have to change the administration’s mind. But what other secrets will they uncover along the way, about Copper Point… and about each other?

Reviewed by: Linda Tonis

Member of the Paranormal Romance Review Team

At the age of ten Hong-Wei Wu came to America with his family, a new country, a new language and a constant fight against bigots and bullies. Now Hong-Wei is a surgeon who has run away from one of the top hospitals in Houston to come to a small hospital, St. Ann’s Medical Center in a small city in Wisconsin.

Hong-Wei was not happy practicing medicine in a big hospital and wanted something else but he left feeling like a failure in the eyes of his parents who worked so hard to give him the best education and everything he needed to be more than just a general surgeon. Now he is in a new place hoping to find what he has been looking for. When he is picked up by Simon Lane his surgical nurse things start to look brighter.

From the very start Hong-Wei who uses the name Jack to simplify the pronunciation of his name and Simon both gay men seemed attracted to each other but there was no likelihood of anything happening between them since the hospital had a very strict no dating rule between staff members and had on occasion even fired some of the staff because they broke that rule. Hong-Wei is a surgeon wanted and needed at St. Ann’s but the same couldn’t be said for Simon who was just a nurse.

Hong-Wei at first unsure of whether he made the right choice in picking this small hospital begins to want a relationship with Simon, which is forbidden and who has become friends with his roommates and childhood friends who are both doctors at the hospital and are willing to do whatever they can to help Simon and Hong-Wei continue to see each other but how long before their secret becomes common knowledge. Simon has never wanted to leave Copper Point but would he reconsider if it became necessary and if he wanted to be with Hong-Wei out in the open.

This was a beautiful love story, a story of two men from two different backgrounds fighting to be together and hoping to come out on top. It was amazing to learn how a doctor can try to figure out a way to save a patient in a hospital with little equipment and the necessary medication and it was wonderful to learn why Hong-Wei ran away from working at a big prestigious hospital and what he was actually trained in as a surgeon. I especially loved the owners of the Chinese restaurant that Hong-Wei visited and the fact that they had a special menu for him of some of his authentic favorite foods, in time Hong-Wei was instrumental in putting the restaurant on the map, so to speak.

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