REVIEW: Repatriate (book) by Jaime Maddox

Repatriate is a mystery/thriller with lesbian romance elements. I bought my copy new.

This review includes spoilers.

Review:

At the beginning of this, Ally Hamilton is an ER physician assistant who is confronted by her ER director about her opioid use. She voluntarily gives up her license and goes into rehab. Six months later, she's out of rehab and starting her new job at Hart Home Health & Hospice as a home health aide. While visiting one of her patients, Brodrik Rogan, the "Cadillac King," she admires the artwork around his house and realizes that he has copies of every piece of art stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum over 30 years ago. But what if they aren't copies? 

I went into this expecting a more prominent romance, but Ally didn't even see Dr. Maria Alfano (who she'd briefly clicked with at the ER, off-page, before she went into rehab) until about halfway through the book. Ally was still struggling with feeling like she didn't entirely deserve someone like Maria in her life, but Maria, whose sister also spent time in rehab, was understanding, and their interactions were generally fluffy and nice. Definitely not the focus of the book, though.

The storyline with the painting was more prominent but, unfortunately, not particularly interesting. In general, the book was slow to get moving, and when I learned how Ally planned to approach the problem of one of her patients potentially knowingly possessing stolen paintings, I kind of regretted starting reading in the first place.

Spoiler warning: As much as Ally and the author tried to convince me that Ally was making the best and bravest decision, I couldn't help but be horrified when Ally decided she was going to steal all the stolen works from out of her patient's house and then somehow return them to the museum. It was an enormously risky and just monumentally bad plan for someone who had recently gotten out of rehab and was hoping to get her physician assistant license back. And it didn't even make for a very interesting heist! She set up some fakes, swapped them out when she had a chance, and hoped really hard that no one noticed or entered the room at just the wrong moment.

When this wasn't kind of boring, it was a nerve-wracking read for all the wrong reasons.