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Book Review of The Fifth Vial

The Fifth Vial
Sleepy26177 avatar reviewed on + 218 more book reviews
Helpful Score: 2


Medical student Natalie Reyes has fallen in disgrace with her supervisors and got suspended from school for 4 months. Her mentor and friend, a famous transplant specialist sends her to Rio/Brazil to speak at a transplant meeting. She never arrives there but is kidnapped, drugged and shot. Days later she awakes with her left lung lost in the shooting. Everything points to her needing a transplant soon.

At the time P. I. Ben Callahan is hired to investigate the identity of an unknown man who was run over by a truck but has visible marks of a recent bone marrow transplant. The Organ Guard Institution assumes him to be a victim of organ trafficking especially because they know about a similar case of a surviving woman who was kidnapped recently.

Valuable Dr. Joe Anson desperately needs a lung transplant. To not loose his valuable research he is tricked into agreeing to a transplant but later has to learn, that he was terribly tricked into an early transplant that has been waiting for him for a long, long time.

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The Fifth Vial is one of the best thrillers I've read this year. With an already satisfied appetite with the organ trafficking topic, this novel didn't hurt a bit. Quite the opposite, I couldn't put it down.
The book has three main characters with Natalie and Ben independently bringing the plot together from their perspective. They both, Ben more than Natalie act stupid at times, bringing their lives into even more danger but readers that are not bothered by some questionable turns in the storyline will enjoy this medical thriller from the first page to the last. They even might oversee the more or less last chapter (which is a bit cheesy) that concluded the relationship between Natalie and the person who received her lung.

Good read !