In the Heat of the Night Book

2-1/2 stars.

I am straddling the fence on whether to give this book two stars or three stars. For those of you who followed my status updates with this book, I had serious doubts about if there was going to be a groveling scene and whether it was going to be mind-blowing enough to rocket this book out of a 1 or 2 star rating.

Well, there was a groveling scene... at like the 98% finished mark. It was pretty decent, but not mind-blowingly good. Honestly, I felt like the author waited too long to have Gabriel grovel and then by him saying he'd grovel more in the future, that felt like a cop-out.

Dude did some SERIOUSLY bad sh*t in this book... He SPIED on the heroine 24/7 with closed circuit cameras when she didn't even know he EXISTED. I'm sorry, but a "hero" doesn't do that for 60%+ of a book (even Edward didn't use cameras, well, that we know of anyway...).

The romance was blah. Ok, Gabriel basically "falls in love" with Hannah upon seeing a (bad) picture of her. Really? I am not a big believer in the "love at first sight" bit... sure, I've heard it actually can happen in real life, but I have a hard time with it. Especially when Gabriel does it WITH A PICTURE(WTF?!). Feeling as he does doesn't stop him from being a world-class perv, though.

Hannah really doesn't know who Gabriel is for about 80-85% of this book. He lies to her repeatedly, manipulates her in to staying with him (again, lying to her about who he is), and sleeps with her (mostly off the page which was lame) again WHILE SHE DOESN'T REALLY KNOW WHO HE IS. Does this say "hero" to you?

Why did this book get 2-1/2 stars when it was this bad? Because I liked some of the secondary characters such as Daniel (Gabriel's awesome sidekick) and Hannah's patient, Mrs. M. I also liked Hannah quite a bit even though she let Gabriel off the hook way too easily (not a spoiler since this is a romance so duh, they end up together).

Mostly, this book sucked because Gabriel was a sucky, perv, controlling liar.