Suicide Med by Freida McFadden

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💀 Suicide Med ⭐ 2.5/5 — What the Heck Did I Just Read?

by Freida McFadden

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⚠️ Trigger Warnings

Suicide • murder • violence • sexual assault (mentioned) • mental illness • addiction • child death • medical gore

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🚨 Spoiler Warning

This review contains full spoilers and mild exasperation. You’ve been warned. 😅

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💬 My Thoughts

Okay. So, you all know I’m a huge Freida McFadden fan. The woman has mastered the art of twisty, bingeable thrillers that make you gasp at the end and text your friends, “You HAVE to read this.”

But Suicide Med?
Yeah… no.

What the hell did I just read?

There’s a solid premise here: a high-pressure medical school, a creepy campus nickname (“Suicide Med”), cutthroat students, and a dark streak of mysterious deaths. That should’ve been gold.
But instead, this book feels like five separate stories all wrestling for the spotlight.

Every time I thought I was following the main plot, another side story barged in like, “Surprise! It’s my turn now!”

It’s told from what feels like five different points of view — and not in a cool, dynamic way. More like… “Wait, whose trauma am I in now?” I love multi-POV thrillers when they serve the story, but here it just made everything feel scattered and bloated.

The concept of a medical school thriller is amazing — dark academia meets Grey’s Anatomy meets horror movie — but this one just couldn’t decide what it wanted to be.

Still, I did appreciate the chaos. And to be fair, Freida wrote this one long before she became the twist queen we all know and love today.

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🩺 Overview

Published early in Freida McFadden’s career, Suicide Med explores life (and death) at Southside Medical School, a place so competitive it’s earned its nickname for a reason. Every year, at least one student dies — sometimes by suicide, sometimes… not.

When first-year student Heather McKinley arrives, she’s warned by her cynical new roommate Rachel that the school is cursed. Heather soon falls in with a tight-knit group of classmates — including the sweet Abe, the arrogant genius Mason, the intense perfectionist Ginny, and the manipulative Rachel herself — and, predictably, everything starts to unravel.

What follows is a dizzying mix of academic sabotage, affairs, secrets, guilt, and murder — all told from multiple perspectives. (Too many, honestly.)

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💉 Plot Summary (Full Spoilers Ahead!)

Heather’s trying to survive anatomy class when she meets Abe, a gentle giant who quickly becomes her closest friend — and later, boyfriend. Meanwhile, Mason and Ginny, the top two students, are locked in a competition that’s equal parts academic and sexual tension. Rachel, struggling to pass, seduces her anatomy professor, Dr. Conlon, who has his own tragic backstory: he was once shot by a suicidal roommate during his own med school days.

As the stress builds, everyone’s secrets start exploding:

• Ginny secretly drugs Mason with her late father’s Parkinson’s meds to tank his performance.

• Abe hides a disturbing medical deformity — a parasitic twin on his back (yes, really).

• Rachel gets blackmailed into stealing the anatomy final after her affair is discovered.

By the time the big Saturday night arrives, things go completely off the rails. Mason, now delusional, storms into Dr. Conlon’s office with a gun. Rachel’s hiding under the desk after trying to explain the blackmail. Mason shoots and kills Dr. Conlon, then runs off to the cadaver lab, where he takes a student hostage. Abe shows up and kills Mason to stop him.

Fast-forward:

• Abe and Heather eventually marry and become doctors.

• Ginny turns bitter and cold.

• Rachel disappears.

• Mason’s dead.

• The legend of “Suicide Med” lives on.

And because Freida can’t resist a last jab of suspense — the book ends with a new student discovering that someone is out for revenge, hinting the curse isn’t over.

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💭 My Take

There’s something here. The setup is cool, and the idea of a medical school where people keep dying should’ve been thrilling. But the execution? Chaotic.

It’s like every character got their own soap opera arc, and none of them connected cleanly. It’s part medical drama, part murder mystery, part psychological horror, part… whatever that parasitic twin subplot was. 🫣

I love Freida — she’s one of my auto-buy authors — but this one reads like an early draft of someone figuring out her voice. It’s messy, uneven, and at times unintentionally funny.

Still, if you’re a diehard Freida completist (like me), it’s worth a read just to see where she started.

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📖 Final Rating: ⭐ 2.5 out of 5

✅ Great premise
❌ Too many POVs
❌ Too much chaos
✅ Weirdly entertaining in a “train wreck I can’t look away from” kind of way

This is early Freida, before she became the mastermind behind The Housemaid and The Coworker. Think of it as her experimental phase — lots of ambition, not enough editing.

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🛍️ Where to Buy

👉 Suicide Med is out of print but can be found on eBay.

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🔎 Similar Reads & Recommendations

If you liked this concept (but want it tighter and twistier):

• 🧠 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

• 🩸 The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides

• 💀 The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

• 🏥 The Housemaid by Freida McFadden (for peak Freida brilliance)

• 🔬 The Secret History by Donna Tartt (for dark academia done right)