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Thursday, October 3, 2013

Review: Hinter's Heat

Winters Heat (Titan #1)

by Cristin Harber 

Blurb:

 A WOMAN ON A MISSION
After putting her life on the line to protect classified intelligence, military psychologist Mia Kensington is on a cross-country road trip from hell with an intrusive save-the-day hero. Uninterested in his white knight act, she’d rather take her chances without the ruggedly handsome, cold-blooded operative who boasts an alpha complex and too many guns.
AND THE MAN SENT TO STOP HER
Colby Winters, an elite member of The Titan Group, has a single objective on his black ops mission: recover a document important to national security. It was supposed to be an easy in-and-out operation. But now, by any means necessary becomes a survival mantra when he faces off with a stunning woman he can’t leave behind.
MUST PARTNER TO SURVIVE
When Titan’s safe houses are compromised, Colby stashes Mia at his home, exposing his secret—he’s the adoptive father of an orphaned baby girl. Too soon, danger arrives and Mia lands in the hands of a sadistic cartel king with a taste for torture. As hours bleed into fear-drenched days, Colby races across the globe and through a firestorm of bullets to save the woman he can’t live without.

Review:

 I honestly want to be able to say that I loved this story, but I can only say that I was a bit underwhelmed with it overall.  There was so much potential in this storyline and I just love a good PMC (Private Military Company)  story, because honestly is there anything hotter than a sexy merc and his men kicking ass? Though there was some good points the overall feel of the book was a bit blah and I just never felt connected to any of the characters.  I will say I enjoyed the witty diatribes between the characters and there were a few good action sequences. I am willing to keep an open mind and continue with the series, but if I don’t feel more of a connection with the next set of lovers I may have to bail. 
The story begins with Titan operative Colby Winters on a mission to retrieve a package his client has hidden in a random airport.  His mission is complicated by not one, but two different adversaries that are also after the package, one of which retrieves it first.  When he first sees Mia Kensington with the package he wants to believe she is a trained operative, but quickly discovers she’s more of a damsel in distress.  Through a series of unfortunate kidnappings, rescues, attacks, and explosions, Colby and Mia become intimate quickly while on the run from a killer who has sent goons to retrieve the package and Mia along with it.  When they arrive back at Titan HQ, Colby puts Mia in his house to keep her safe while he reports in, but through another amount of bad luck she is again put into danger and the whole Titan team has to rescue her. Sadly once they are physically out of danger, Colby begins to rethink his choices and puts his future with Mia in jeopardy.  There was just a bit too much going on and the transitions from action to intimacy and back to normalcy were a bit awkward.  I enjoyed a few of the scenes with Colby kicking ass and of course the love scenes were well-written, but overall I was never really pulled into the story.
Colby is an okay guy, extremely bossy and alpha to the extreme, but he has a softer side on occasion.  He has an interesting family life that one would think makes him seem more human, but he just seems like a tough-guy who’s playing at being a family guy, there was too much discomfort in his familial and intimate interactions.  I will say he was passionate in all things he did, but I wanted so badly so many times to smack him upside the head that I could never really find myself liking him. Mia was to me an even more unlikable character.  She was extremely flighty, thoughtless, and weak minded.  She dives right into a sexual relationship with a guy that she’s known all of twenty-four hours and has been fighting to escape the majority of that time? Yeah a bit hard for me to believe.  When they did finally start to build a more emotional connection, she immediately starts pulling back, unwilling to let him past her walls and starts questioning her choices. And then when there is danger all around she decides to question the more experienced fighters and try to throw herself into danger, which puts her too close to the TSTL category of heroine for me.
I have read a lot of stories similar to this one, with danger and battles lurking in the love stories, but this one was not one of my favorites.  My biggest issue was how Colby kept putting Mia into danger and then having to rescue her while she in turn got pissy and made stupid decisions that put them both in danger.  At one point I just had to put the book down because Colby was making too many mistakes.  Being from a military family and a student of tactics I can say that Colby and his team made so many mistakes that I don’t really know how they didn’t all end up dead.  Though the plot had a great back-story and could have gone far there was too much ineptness for me on the parts of all the characters.
Overall I was a tad confounded with this first novel in the Titan series. While I enjoyed the overall direction the plot took, the finer details were disappointing for me and I wish there had been more romance and less fighting.  Colby and Mia formed a strange connection that never seemed deep enough to me until in the end they admit their undying love.  The bad guys were many and varied and watching Colby battle them to protect Mia had its interesting and funny moments. This series looks to be very promising, but I’m reserving judgement on the rest of the stories until I can read them, though I will say I did like many of Colby’s teammates. I wish I had enjoyed this story more, but I just never got pulled in and didn't really form a connection to any of the characters like I normally would.  I hope to enjoy Garrison’s Creed more and look forward to reading it. 

Rating: 3 stars

Rose Rating:   

*eARC provided by publisher (via netgalley) for the purpose of an honest and unbiased review.  No compensation was provided. 



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