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.
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