WL's Mainstream Gay Book Reviews - 68. Bitter Heat by Leta Blake Book 3 of Heat of Love (Gay Romance/Science Fiction/Dystopian/Omegaverse)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52314536-bitter-heat

After book 2’s amazing representation and triumphant hurrah for its main characters accepting their sexualities, I had to continue onto book 3. I finished this book right around the time the US Supreme Court’s ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade’s right to abortion was leaked, so I scrapped my plans to publish a review. I didn’t want people to think I write my reviews for cheap applause or political brownie points, so I held off posting my first review. I had to write this over again twice before coming to this version. Leta Blake wrote this novel before the ruling came out in 2019, it dealt with the issues raised in book 1 concerning her Omegaverse future society’s ban on abortion. It can be seen as a prescient social commentary warning about how the destruction of reproductive rights can have ugly impacts on society, even if she’s using male omegas to represent real-world females. This book was not written for a cis-gender gay male like me, unlike her previous books which were a great exploration of gay character stand-ins. Female audiences will understand what I mean if they have read it and if you have not, just understand this story is geared toward the female readership. I will do my best to review the book, nonetheless.

Length: 396 pages and 11 hours 52 minutes long on audible. It will take at least a week at a normal pace to read. The story is engaging, but various points discuss the birthing process, the choice for abortion, and things very sensitive to female pregnancy experience in the guise of a male omega. For a gay man, it might not be an easy read, but a female reader may find it far more approachable.

Plot: Kerry Monkburn is the pregnant, abused, and traumatized omega spouse of Wilbet Munhundy, who has been convicted and imprisoned for several brutal assaults. Due to the society that favored contracts for Alpha partners, Kerry is trapped in a marriage to this monster. Worse still, his marriage contract forces him to continually meet up with his violent spouse in prison, until he could bear a child. Wilbet’s wealthy and powerful parents support the move, which was essentially a brutal sexual assault on Kerry for them to have a grandchild. While pregnant, Kerry uses the excuse of returning to his omega parents’ home in a remote rural mountain town to seek salvation from his current mess. At the same time Janus Heelies, the playboy Alpha and cousin to Xan from the previous book, arrives in the same mountain town for his nursing residency. After surviving the viral plague that nearly killed him and gaining a sense of peace with his past from Caleb, Xan’s asexual Omega partner, he wanted to learn about medicine and change his way. Janus rents a room in the boardinghouse that Kerry’s Omega father operates in the rural town, so he encounters Kerry. Through a series of events, including an attempted illegal herbal abortion attempt by Kerry, these two characters are brought closer together. Janus slowly realizes that he is falling in love with Kerry, but Kerry cannot accept nor trust Janus’ intentions. When the wealthy Munhundy family arrives in the rural mountain town, they threaten to take Kerry away, along with his baby, and force him by law to be the proper Omega that they had “bought” for their son. What can Janus and Kerry do against such odds?

Review: This story is good from a certain perspective and the characters were interesting, but it falls into the trap that a lot of Omegaverse stories fall into, the male omega is just a tragic real-world heterosexual female. Leta had done so well with her series so far with representing divergent sexuality and gender identities that I had forgotten that the trope in these kinds of stories. From the forced impregnation, the violent spouse, the good doctor next door, evil parents-in-law, and the slow healing of the heart, this story could so have easily been written with a modern-day man and woman versus an Alpha man and Omega man.

Yet, unlike her contemporaries, I think I know why Leta did this and drew so deeply on tropes from the female romance genre. She was making a very big social commentary against the anti-reproductive rights and anti-women’s civil rights by extension. Even back in 2019, abortion rights were being narrowed in the US, despite not being completely banned as they are now in some states. She argued using the Omega angle as a point to showcase the injustices of society with wealth and abusive use of laws to force rape victims into giving birth. I get that point and I think she made some very valid arguments. However, she also invalidated some of her arguments, when she had Kerry give birth to Tristan, Kerry’s Alpha son, who turned out to be a sweet and innocent child. Another problem with this genre, you can’t have controversial endings, i.e. successful abortions or death. As an attempt at social commentary, I think Leta just couldn’t explore the area that needed to be explored in this book to make her social commentary complete, instead having to settle for a contrived ending.

Janus was a very good character and I thoroughly enjoyed his fish-out-of-water storyline as a nurse in a rural area. He’s trying to do what is right, but he learns that there’s a lot of moral ambiguity in the world, especially when it came to Omega health. He tries not to judge the rural town’s people or their ways, which appear backward at first, but in the end, he learns it is their method of showing communal spirit. His journey was probably the best subplot in this novel.

I disliked Kerry as a character and if Kerry were a female in any other romance story, I’d be angry about how she was abused and used. However, as an Omega male, Kerry strikes a mixed tone. He lacks decisiveness and lack courage at times. He knows what’s being done to him is wrong, but he can’t escape his gilded cage created by social expectations. The ending for him in the story may seem like happily ever after, but I actually would take it as a different meaning. His bird’s death as a literal sacrifice for Tristan just highlighted his surrender to societal pressure to accept his place as a dutiful Omega partner. I don’t like that concept and maybe this is a gay man’s perspective, but I feel Omegas, as a representative of women in this fictional society, should not be made to accept their submission due to the love of a child.

Ultimately, I feel like the story just wasn’t made for a gay male reader. It asks tough questions with subtleties that I believe female readers will understand far more than I. Questions about childbirth, choice, and freedom being abandoned for a child have been noted issues in feminist studies, which I have only had scholarly exposure to.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5, I don’t hate this novel, but I just can’t love it. I dislike one of the main characters and the plot made an attempt at social commentary but failed to execute its promise.