Book Review of
While The City Sleeps

Lynn's Review

While the City Sleeps by Elizabeth Camden was published in 2024, it is Christian historical fiction.

While the City Sleeps is set in 1913, the Gilded Age, New York. Katherine is a dentist working in a clinic, and Johnathan is a New York police officer with a past he is trying to hide from. 

After unknowingly seeing a patient with a criminal history, Katherine is put in danger, and Johnathan tries to protect her while solving the crime. 

This book is a clean romance book. I liked the setting and the time period. The characters had a depth to them that you often do not find in Christian romance. I also liked that one of the main characters was a dentist. There are not a lot of historical fiction books with a dentist, especially a female one, in them.

However, a couple of things bothered me about the book. I don’t think the author knew dentistry or its history well. Several people in my husband’s family work in the dental field, so the errors caught my attention. In the book, a patient is getting implants for dentures. Dental implants were not successfully used until the 1960s. 

The author also, has the ADA, which is the American Dental Association, sue a dentist. The ADA does not set laws or sue people. It is a national organization. Each state sets the guidelines for medical licenses and practice. The ADA may have advised on something, but they don’t sue doctors or anyone in the dental field. 

I know that sometimes authors change dates or small facts to fit their book. That happens in historical fiction all the time. The fact that these were two fairly big errors is what bothered me. And I find that errors like this happen in Christian fiction much more often than regular fiction. My guess is that Christian publishers don’t have the budgets to spend on editing and fact-checking that bigger publishers do.