Without Her Consent: a heart-stopping psychological thriller
Without Her Consent: a heart-stopping psychological thriller book cover

Without Her Consent: a heart-stopping psychological thriller

Paperback – August 18, 2020

Price
$15.99
Format
Paperback
Pages
312
Publisher
Bloodhound Books
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-1913419752
Dimensions
5.25 x 0.78 x 8 inches
Weight
12.6 ounces

Description

About the Author McGarvey was a theatre major in college and pursued an acting career for a few years. Eventually, she moved into advertising sales in the magazine publishing business where she sold print and digital advertising and managed sales teams for companies like Conde Nast and WebMD. Ten years ago, she left media to become an executive recruiter for large and small internet companies. No matter how she earned a living, she always wrote…for her, for her friends and family. Two years ago, she left recruiting to pursue a full-time career as a writer. She’s written three novels thus far and working simultaneously on the fourth and fifth. She’s obsessed with writing, sometimes waking in the middle of the night to put pen to paper when she gets an idea. Since she usually write mystery/thrillers, her process is to know the beginning and the end before she starts and then fill in the middle as she go. If she does her prep right and develops her characters fully, the characters kind of write themselves.

Features & Highlights

  • She's been in a coma for years. How can she be pregnant?
  • When a coma patient starts to have contractions and gives birth to a baby boy, the child’s arrival triggers an investigation into serious sexual assault.
  • Detectives McQuillan and Blalock are handed the case, while the internal hospital team collects data to help with the investigation.
  • When Dr. Angela Crawford, who helped deliver the baby, learns that the child will be put in foster care, she and her husband agree to take the little boy in.
  • Meanwhile, a young nurse, Jenny O’Hearn, helps compile data on the rapist and discovers several strange things. When Jenny is attacked, it forces the detectives to look at the case from a different perspective.
  • Could a staff doctor, male nurse or the chaplain be the rapist?
  • Sometimes the truth isn’t always obvious.
  • Discover this shocking and completely gripping psychological thriller today.
  • Mcgarvey Black is also the author of
  • I Never Lef
  • t and the of the massive bestselling psychological thriller,
  • The First Husband
  • . If you are a fan of authors  K.L. Slater, Lisa Jewell and Sue Watson, you'll love
  • Without Her Consent
  • .

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
30%
(914)
★★★★
25%
(761)
★★★
15%
(457)
★★
7%
(213)
23%
(700)

Most Helpful Reviews

✓ Verified Purchase

An absorbing medical thriller

Without Her Consent is an absorbing medical thriller about a young woman who delivers a baby despite being in a coma for twelve years, inspired by a real case. It features Detective McQuillan from Black’s first novel, I Never Left/I Am Quinn, but is a completely separate story and you could read these in either order, although this one does occur some time after.
I received a free review copy directly from the author through her Facebook group.

Dr Angela Crawford is working late one night in her role as manager of a long term care facility when she is called to an emergency - Eliza, one of the coma patients, has gone into labour - when nobody knew she was even pregnant! Arriving just in time to deliver the baby, she then has to deal with the inevitable scandal - how could they have allowed a defenceless girl to be raped, and why did no one notice the pregnancy? Under pressure from the board, with the news story going round the world, and stressed by her crumbling marriage, Angela needs help to find the perpetrator, and the police hope that DNA will provide the answer - but nothing can prepare them for the truth...

This was a short and highly readable novel that I finished within a day. The characters are well drawn, from the junk food-loving McQuillan to the comically awful journalist intent on using Eliza’s story to boost his career. The medical aspects were plausible even if the premise seems initially unbelievable - under-resourced private facilities probably don’t have the staffing levels to monitor every room, and if the nursing care of completely dependent patients is left to under-trained aides then I can believe they might do the minimum and miss a baby bump. I did guess the identity of the perpetrator earlier than I should’ve - slightly too much is given away at a key point in the plot - although the misdirection is generally well done.

This would be a great read for a Book Club - there are even suggested questions for discussion at the end. 4.5 rounded up for the perfect ending and the bonus New Zealand reference that made me laugh. My thanks to McGarvey Black and Bloodhound Books for the ARC which allowed me to give an honest review.
5 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Repetitive and Unbelievable

**Spoilers**
A bit repetitive. Unbelievable. I'm no expert on IVF but I do believe its done with the use of ultrasound. Not to mention those embryos have to be transferred very carefully. I don't believe that you can just implant embryo's into someone without some special equipment. IDC that she was an OBGYN. This just didn't ring true. I also don't believe that no one on staff would have noticed that this young patients periods had stopped..? Also as a nurse myself I know that patients with significant brain injury are often on very harsh medications (Seizure Meds and Potentially Cardiac meds). Now obviously it's not to say that someone who is on these meds couldn't have a healthy baby, It's just that this was never mentioned as a concern. Also as a nurse the changes to her diet and meds would have been known if they were in her chart. They wouldn't have been "hidden" away in a box for someone to locate 7-8 months later...Obviously whoever the medical experts were who helped with the book didn't know about chart audits. Too me the story would have been more believable if she had artificially inseminated the patient with her husbands sperm .But I guess they didn't think about that. Also it didn't ring true that a comatose patient would be left to lay for hours on end. Patients in hospitals that are immobile need to be turned a repositioned every 2 hours at minimum. Not to mention med passes and meals. I have never been on a hospital unit long term or even acute that you would only interact with your patient once every 4 hours or so or that there would be no nurses on the unit at all. And the labor plan. What a joke. Pitocin or not it could still take HOURS/Days for her to deliver. So that's was really dumb. Plus what if there were complications??? So Bogus. But I guess that's why this is fiction.
3 people found this helpful
✓ Verified Purchase

Great read!

Could not put it down,especially the last few chapters!
✓ Verified Purchase

GREATBOOK

I really enjoyed this book, a very fast & interesting read.. definatley a thriller !