QIR LLC, $0.99, ISBN 979-8215473191
Contemporary Romance, 2022
Catherine Tramell’s Doctor Heat is patterned after those dreadful new adult tales that only work when the reader assumes that the hero and the heroine can do anything and everything and it’s okay because they are the hero and the heroine.
The doctor of the title, Alex Monroe, hates his wife, who has a failing heart, for wanting to have a baby and then going ahead and have one that Alex is certain isn’t his. She cheated previously, apparently. So now their daughter will have no mother when the faithless ho dies, and Alex will now go ooh ya women are all bitches so now he can act like an asshole to everyone without anyone calling him on his crap.
Oh, and he’s in love with a woman, Haven Ricci, who is in a coma. She needs a heart to survive, so now he is planning to make sure that when his faithless ho-bag wife dies, her heart will go to Haven. Her parents object, so now they are parents of a ho and should also just die because they dare to stand in the way of true love.
I mean, Haven’s in a coma and it’s not like she has telepathy, but I’m sure Alex has inspected every inch of her pliable body and found her most agreeable. Women in coma can’t be hos!
I let go of a loud groan and release myself into ecstasy. I close my eyes and chase my breath. With her beautiful face in my mind. With the satisfying warmth of her hand. She’s so beautiful I want to make a fairytale come true.
A fairytale.
It is more than that. I don’t only feel something about the patient’s beauty. She also teases the sexual demon hiding in me.
Haven Ricci.
For a second, I assume he’s violating the coma saint’s body.
Luckily, he’s just expelling his passion in the toilet. Ugh, now I have developed a phobia of shaking the hand of a doctor.
Eventually, Haven wakes up, but oh no, she has PTSD from blaming herself for a death of some brat in an accident that coma’ed her, but never fear, Alex knows that the best cure for PTSD is a gallon of fresh protein every day, obtained straight from the source.
Besides, Alex tells Haven that the heart in her body is “his”—wait, didn’t it come from a ho?—so she’s now his too.
Haven was supposed to give me my second chance at happiness. I am not letting go of that chance. I will have it even if I have to force it. She may hate it, but I will make her love it.
“You’re mine and will always be until your father returns my share,” I stubbornly stand on my stupid claim.
Haven’s pale face turns red as she walks and throws punches at my chest. “My heart is mine and mine alone, asshole. And even if I choose to give it to somebody, he will never be you!”
The demon I hide possesses me. As Haven’s cherub-like lips keep telling me her anger, all I can think about is taking them with my lips. When she speaks her last word, the demon triumphs in urging me to take what is mine. Her heart. Her everything
These two really need therapy. They get melodramatic and angry in one scene and lustily boinking in the next, there’s no way this is normal or healthy. The easiest explanation is that these characters are poorly written, but I’d give the author the benefit of the doubt and maybe she’s just trying to show me that mentally unhinged people deserve love too.
Sure, they can have all the love they want, but dang it, it’s painful to subject myself to these two unpleasant examples of leaking douchecanoes. They deserve love with a side of Negan’s VIP treatment.
