This RITA® Reader Challenge 2016 review was written by Turophile. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Romance Novella category.

Here is Turophile's review:

I applaud the effort but “Desert Heat” didn’t work that well for me.

Novellas can be a difficult format to write. Longer than a short story, not quite a novel. With a short story, you can do a tightly focused tale focused on a single incident or subject. A novel gives you a chance to explore a story – dig into the characters or plot, even add sub-characters and sub-plots. With a novella, it’s hard to strike the right balance with the page length and too often plot line and/or character development can feel truncated. That challenge points to my biggest disappointment with this story. The resolution of key plot lines felt rushed and lacking.

I really wish this had been a full length romance because the plot and characters were intriguing. The start reminded me of Bel Canto, a novel by Anne Patchett in which terrorists storm a performance by an opera singer. Similarly, in “Desert Heat,” the story begins when terrorist storm a performance by the heroine, Riley. Unlike Bel Canto, however, the attack and hostage scene are quickly resolved. Too quickly for my taste.

There was a lot of depth that could have been explored in the captivity situation, but it was short circuited. Our hero, Pete, had met Riley years before at a wedding, but she’d ignored him then. Riley’s also dealing with her own issues, including an overbearing stage mother. Rather than exploring these issues and their underlying attraction to each other, the hostage situation resolved quickly and we bounce off to a number of scenes that felt artificially constructed.

I’m not a huge fan of military romances, and at first found it challenging to engage because the first few pages of the story were full of jargon that did not add much to the story. Once the story moved beyond that, that aspect didn’t bother me. What did bother me is the overly alpha superhero posturing. The need to protect someone because they’re a female doesn’t resonate with me. “The truth was the primitive instinct to protect the female of the species went bone-deep in him.” Bleh.

Finally, the novella is part of a series, which means characters from previous books must be mentioned. Those mentions could have been a lot more seamless. There were several pages toward the end that read like they were inserted solely to tie to the other stories, rather than to advance story development.

I didn’t hate the book. I enjoyed the author’s writing style and may try another one of her books. Fan of military romances, especially with the protective male lead characters, while probably like this one. For me though, it was a “C” read.