Breakaway

by Cate Cameron

[KitsuneBae]

This review first appeared on Wayward Kitsune.

I received this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

After weeks of toiling, it’s always nice to unwind and curl up with a short and straightforward book. Much better if the said book doesn’t need a lot of mental gymnastics. Thankfully, Breakaway managed to be the perfect book to curl up with. It was a pleasant surprise considering that the book’s premise screams loudly of cliché. Well, it is. We’ve got a female heroine who’s struggling to make her mark in the world after realizing that she had spent a large part of her life being the shadow of her famous boyfriend. And a male protag who already had the world at his feet but due to an injury, he’s back to finding his new purpose in life. And you know what happens next.

There was the usual angst, the I’ve-got-issues-let’s-breakup scenario, the soul searching moments…yada, yada, yada…But hey, the wonderful execution compensated for all of that. Breakaway is also fast-paced and the drama was kept to a minimum.

There are, however, some things that I need to nitpick. For example, I would have loved to explore Cate’s world of Hockey because this book just gave us glimpses of what hockey is from her perspective. I suddenly missed Miranda Kenneally’s way of writing sporty books. Second, I was left hanging with the way Cameron handled Dawn’s relationship with her parents. That scene where Dawn and her mother had a confrontation in the kitchen felt so awkward… like it just came out from nowhere and the book ended without giving it some sort of closure. And lastly, Corrigan Falls seems a very lovely place, it’s sad that Cate’s writing wasn’t able to entice me, even in my imagination, to visit the place.

All in all, Breakaway’s a pretty good book and I’m looking forward to reading the other books in the series.