Reviewed by Anne-Marie Reynolds for Readers' Favorite

Boston Psychiatric by J. Brian Turk follows Dr. Raj Malika, a disgraced former pharmaceutical CEO who's traded prison for six months of parole, most of it spent doing unpaid community service at a struggling free clinic in Boston. Raj expects to coast through his sentence and rebuild his reputation, but the clinic has other ideas. Between the eccentric patients, a burnt-out director barely holding things together, and Jen Carlisle, a sharp, no-nonsense volunteer who sees straight through his polish, Raj is out of his depth almost immediately. When a state inspector arrives with a strict deadline to fix the clinic's problems or shut it down for good, Raj and the staff have to get creative fast, even if it means trusting patients with more responsibility than anyone thinks is wise. With his parole and the clinic's survival both riding on the outcome, Raj has to figure out whether he's capable of being more than the disgraced doctor everyone assumes he is.

Boston Psychiatric by J. Brian Turk moves faster than you'd expect from a book set inside a struggling psych clinic, and a lot of that comes down to how well Raj's fall from grace is played for both comedy and genuine consequence. Watching him go from a man obsessed with optics to someone who actually shows up for his patients gives the book real momentum, and the deadline hanging over the clinic keeps the pressure building throughout. J. Brian Turk fills the place with characters who come across as real people, and the humor never comes at the expense of taking the patients seriously. Jen matches Raj's arc well, all sharp edges early on before her own guardedness starts to crack. The clinic's constant disrepair ends up giving the setting as much personality as any of the people in it. It's a warm, funny book with more depth than the premise suggests, and I'd recommend it to readers who like their comedy laced with real stakes.