We’re thrilled to be joined by the four authors of our new Medical series, A Sydney Central Reunion. This quartet follows four resilient and talented women who became friends at Medical school and their journeys of friendship, love and intense careers.

1. Harper and the Single Dad
2. Ivy’s Fling with the Surgeon
3. Ali and the Rebel Doc
4. Phoebe’s Baby Bombshell

Now onto authors, Amy Andrews, Louisa George, Emily Forbes and JC Harroway to introduce their heroines…

*

Harper Jones is one tough cookie. With a messy, emotionally challenging childhood in the foster system, she was determined to change her stars, determined to make something of herself. And I love that about her. I love that she took something that might have broken someone else and used it to amp up her drive and her focus. And even though she unexpectedly gets dragged into a friendship group with Ivy, Phoebe and Ali as they suffer through the highs and lows of medical school together, she never really drops that ball.

Not even her relationship with Ali’s super sexy fireman brother, Yarran, takes centre stage in her life.

Because the truth is – she can never let herself get close with anyone. Not really. Because Harper knows that everything good always turns bad and that people always leave and if she doesn’t let then in, then she can’t be hurt again.

So walking away from them all in pursuit of her career and heading to London at the first opportunity only makes perfect sense. She’s on a trajectory, after all, and that’s her pathway.

C’est la vie!

It’s the same pathway that leads her back ten years later. To Australia. To her dream job and the pinnacle of her career – head of ER at the prestigious Sydney Central Hospital. To the friends (and lover) she left behind.

So much has changed in that time and yet nothing has. The city looks so different and yet it feels like she never left. Her friends are all now kick-ass specialists in their own fields yet they welcome her the way they always did. And Yarran is now a widowed single dad to a little boy yet their chemistry is as hot as ever. Their connection is still fizzing. The feelings are still there.

Except this time they’re louder. This time they’re refusing to be ignored.  Absence, it seems, really had made the heart grow fonder and maybe, just maybe, it’s okay to stop concentrating on what she wants and focus on what she needs?

If she can be brave enough to try.

Amy Andrews

*

When I was invited to take part in the Sydney Central Reunion quartet I was thrilled. What better way to explore a series with a central theme of friendship than with author friends? Writing four connected books is always a challenge but Amy, Jo and Emily made it lots of fun!

As someone who has a difficult relationship with her family, my heroine Ivy is grateful for the love and support she gets from the three women she met at medical school. They’ve been there for each other for years (with some hiccups along the way) but when Ivy embarks on a fake relationship with the hospital heart throb she’s surprised at how much her friends want to protect her- she knows she’s not going to get emotionally involved…right?

I loved writing Ivy’s story; exploring family dynamics, friendships and falling in love in fabulous Sydney. It was also rewarding to write about an older heroine who is successful and confident in her job and is dedicated and driven but somehow love and a fulfilling relationship have eluded her.

With his history of breaking hearts hero Lucas is not exactly the perfect match for Ivy at first and that’s just fine with her! It is a fake relationship after all – but as she digs deeper into his past she can see he’s hiding a lot of hurt. And that’s where another theme comes into play: forgiveness. Lucas also has difficult family dynamics but he’s holding on to a lot of misplaced guilt.

It was fun to see these two working and growing together and fighting their undeniable attraction!

I also got to ‘virtually’ visit some lovely beaches and national park settings beyond the city as well as researching kite surfing. Now I want to see all these places in real life (although I won’t be trying kite surfing!! I’m far too chicken for that!). Sydney is definitely on my must-visit list!

Louisa George

*

Welcome to Sydney Central Hospital where four strong, smart, sassy women run the show.

Ali Edwards, head of obstetrics and gynaecology at Sydney Central, is challenging traditional stereotypes. From a large Indigenous Australian family she is a talented doctor, sister, daughter, aunt, divorcee and best friend to Harper, Phoebe and Ivy.

Ali is surrounded by babies – other people’s babies – and that’s just the way she likes it. She has an idea of what her life should be like and resists external pressure to conform. She is open and honest about her decision not to have children of her own but she knows her choice contributed to the end of her marriage.

Across the course of the four stories the women, friends since medical school, work together as heads of their departments while treating a high-profile patient and this brings anaesthetist, Jake Ryan, into Ali’s domain. Jake is charismatic, charming and challenging. Ali is used to challenging convention but she doesn’t necessarily challenge herself. She is, by nature, cautious and controlled.

Her faith in people has been tested by her ex-husband and by one of her best friends, Harper, and unlike Jake she doesn’t take risks. But Jake challenges her physically and emotionally and she finds him hard to resist. But can she trust him?

Despite some qualms she is tempted to take what she wants, being with Jake, and having some fun. She doesn’t want commitment; she just wants company. If she’s honest, she misses sex. That doesn’t make her a bad human, it just makes her human.

I do think that the expectation that women can ‘have it all’ – a happy marriage, kids and a high-powered career – not only puts immense pressure on women but is often unrealistic unless they have LOTS of help. I love the fact that Ali and her three BFFs are all strong, successful women running their respective hospital departments and I really enjoyed the opportunity to give Ali a slightly unconventional HEA.

Emily Forbes

*

I loved writing about Doctor Phoebe Mason, my character from the Sydney Central Reunion quartet. Thanks to her upbringing by her single parent midwife mother after her father’s abandonment, Phoebe is a driven and career focused neonatal surgeon and head of her department at Sydney Central Hospital. Sure, she’s just turned forty and she’s surrounded by loved-up friends and colleagues Harper, Ali and Ivy, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything lacking in Phoebe’s life!

When she meets sexy surgical colleague, Zachary Archer, at a medical conference in Brisbane, what begins as a one-night fling between two like-minded, commitment-shy professionals becomes an unexpected whirlwind of a journey when Phoebe discovers that she’s pregnant! But she’s determined that geriatric motherhood won’t change her one bit, especially where globe-trotting Zach is concerned. When the father of her baby agrees to collaborate on the challenging surgical case of newborn Poppy Wilson that has featured in the media, Phoebe takes the opportunity to tell him of the consequences of their one passionate night.

Except working side by side at Sydney Central Hospital while they navigate becoming parents for the first time, something neither of them ever imagined, they are once more bombarded by their intense sexual chemistry and assailed by memories of how good they’d been together. As they learn to trust each other in the operation room, they can’t help but blur the professional-personal line and surrender to physical temptation, just one more time. Neither of them wants a relationship, and they know from their work what is at stake if they mess up what could be a mature and amicable co-parenting relationship. All they have to do is stick to the plan, and keep feelings out of it… What could possibly go wrong?

I hope you enjoy finding out if Phoebe gets everything she wants in this conclusion of the Sydney Central Reunion quartet

JC harroway

*

Start the series with Harper and the Single Dad by Amy Andrews here.

By Lauren Gardiner