Sunday 25 December 2022

Sidney Sheldon's "Nothing Lasts Forever"

"Nothing Lasts Forever" is a novel with three women as central characters who fight to survive in the male dominant medical profession. The three doctors undergo rigorous on-call schedule at the hospital with no work-life balance. They encounter male dominance, sexual harassment, life threatening blackmails when they stand up against the male doctors and hospital management. With each of them having a backstory and a past that might catch up with them anytime, the novel has enough scope for drama and suspense.


The novel starts off with a gripping courtroom drama in its prologue. The lives of the three women had taken a wild turn with one of them accused of murder, one of them dead and one of them held responsible for the possibility of the hospital shutting down. This intriguing suspense in the prologue gives the novel a perfect start. 

But, once the novel shifts away from the courtroom to the hospital, it dips in pace. There are too many minor characters that pass-by and serve no purpose to the storyline. The novel takes too long to be back to where it started and it fails to sustain the intensity all along. Despite a decent detective-style investigative portion at the end, the novel fails to connect primarily due to too many subplots.

What could have been an engaging courtroom drama is let down by the predictable and wavering nature of the storyline. Considering the novel was written in 1994, it could have been accepted by the audience then. Sidney Sheldon's lacklustre outing which might test your patience.

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