Best Practice: Life on the Front Desk

Welcome to Best Practice. Please take a seat. Someone will be irritated shortly.

Jade Whitaker runs the front desk of a northern English GP surgery where patience is in short supply and everyone believes their problem should come first. Sharp tongued, deeply sarcastic, and professionally unflappable, she manages entitlement, anxiety, and quiet desperation from the moment the phones start ringing.

Jade knows exactly how to hold the line. What she doesn’t know is how to lower her guard.

Outside the surgery, her life is spare. A flat on the edge of town. A cat who tolerates her. A friendship that carries more weight than she admits. When an unexpected relationship begins to unravel the armour she’s relied on for years, Jade is forced to confront the cost of staying sharp all the time.

Funny, unsentimental, and quietly devastating, The Best Practice is a story about emotional labour, invisible work, and the women who absorb everything so others don’t have to.

For readers who like their humour dry, their characters flawed, and their stories honest.