The Heat, Alice Ward

Sometimes the person you think is the enemy is actually your greatest ally and the enemy you find together has the power to ruin your future—with deadly intent.  Atlee is a crusader for the earth as an environmental lawyer.  She cares a little too much and lets her emotions get the best of her which makes her quite impulsive.  Finding herself in Malaysia with Earth's nemesis, a sexy-as-sin Wyatt Watts, she gets more than just a viral video for her environmental blog.  Wyatt didn't count on Atlee's brand of antagonism.  Or the men bent on using them for their own nefarious purposes.  They'll have to stop bickering if they have any hope of making it out alive.

Well...I certainly wasn't expecting the extreme trauma that either of these people went through.  It was intense, dramatic, harrowing, frustrating, and shocking.  I actually think it was a little too much.  It might have been fine if they hadn't spent a huge chunk of the book being generally not-awesome as both individuals and together.  If there were more of a basic relationship not based on their worst traits as individuals I could have tolerated all the crazy that they ended up in.  Instead, I kind of didn't even like the MC's through about 85% of the book.  While the ending was sweet and a great resolution for both of them, it was more like, "Well, good for them.  Glad they're happy now," rather than any kind of elation or relief that they made it through the other side of their horrific experience with love and a happy future ahead of them.

So here's what I thought of Atlee and Wyatt.  It's not all positive, so here goes...  Wyatt is appalling, rude, disgusting, and reprehensible.  He has a great intention to fix the wrongs his company has done in the name of profit and I do believe his heart is in the right place concerning that.  He's moved by the atrocities he sees when he visits the plantation and the way he feels about Atlee's tears is pretty sweet but those moments are so few and far between as well as being eclipsed by his generally lousy behavior that I'm just not a fan.  He doesn't even seem to change all that much because we don't really get to see his evolution.  His "come to Jesus" moment is really more of a realization of what he wants with Atlee rather than a fundamental change in his behavior.  Atlee is impulsive, self-righteous, uneducated for all the hate she spews, and definitely emotional.  At every turn she's hugely reactionary and frustrating.  She also doesn't seem to change much by the end either despite falling in love with Wyatt.

I think even more than the individual character flaws which sometimes (though rarely) came off as humorous, it was the lack of settling.  There wasn't enough to feel like they've truly come to terms with what happened individually and collectively.  No mentions of counseling were made either.  They went through something ridiculously awful and what they had to do to survive what did and could have happened to them needed more page time, even one page would be better than the nothing we get.  The resolution was short, kind of a let-down, and despite the cute proposal set-up, it felt scattered because of the POV we witnessed it through.  So overall, there were some major issues that I had with the story and characters.  The author, however, is still amazing because she did write compelling situations and the whole thing was written well, it was just the elements that didn't appeal to me rather than her talent that put me off the story.

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