Every Breath (EVERY, #1)

by Ellie Marney

[Stephanie]

Well apparently I am the black sheep when it comes to this book. I bought it after seeing all the positive reviews. It didn't really sound like my kind of book, but I was intrigued by the Sherlock part of it, and my library didn't have it, so I decided to buy it and give it a try. Most of the time I'm pleasantly surprised when I try something out of my comfort zone, but Every Breath was not the case.

I was very confused when I first started reading because the story starts off with Watts patching up Mycroft because he got into a fight at school (well, that's what I assumed because it's not very clear, even going back and reading it, I'm still not sure). It didn't make much sense, to be honest, and it took me a while to even figure out what was going on, because if this did happen at school, why isn't he at the nurses office? Why is Watts the one cleaning him up? Why isn't Watts in class? I'm so confused, what does this even have to do with the story? Where's the murdered guy?!

Even before that opening scene, there's a prologue that has Watts talking about her as a kid, then Mycroft as a kid, then them meeting because of 'fate', but yet we are never told how they met and how they became so close after only 4 months of Watts living in the city. The whole prologue and first chapter could be cut out, and it wouldn't effect the story at all. I don't understand why this book wasn't opened with them finding the dead body. That would have instantly made me interested in the story.

But I wasn't interested in the story. I was mostly bored. The only time I was actually invested in the story was when Watts and Mycroft found the murdered homeless guy and when it was finally revealed who the murderer was. Every thing else was boring to me. Even when they were going around investigating, I just didn't care, and I don't really know why.

Maybe it was the writing, I felt like there was a lot of description that I didn't care about. I really don't need to know what color the walls are painted or what plants are in the room. This book is very Australian, which was to be expected because the author is Australian and it's set in Australia, but I think I kind of had a disconnect because of it.

There is a little more meat to the story. Mycroft has quite the background and is known as the trouble maker. He makes a lot stupid decisions because of issues in his past. I actually really liked Mycroft, even though he was the stereotypical 'bad boy' who smoked all the time and did stupid stuff. I still liked him, mostly because of his humor. Watts also has her issues, but mostly because she's not adjusting to the city life and all the tension that moving to the city has caused within her family.

So there was a lot more happening than just Watts and Mycroft running around the city trying to solve this murder. Yet, I still didn't like it, and didn't really care. I will say I did enjoy the romance, although I felt like that kind of went from 0 to 100 quickly in the last 100 pages or so. I wasn't reading the book furiously and hoping Watts and Mycroft would just kiss already. There wasn't much build up to it.

I feel like I'm being hard on the book, but all I can really say is I enjoyed the murder mystery and Mycroft. Mycroft is pretty much the reason I gave the book 2 stars instead of 1. Watts may have been the narrator of the story, but Mycroft was the star of this book.

I wouldn't go out and recommend this book to a friend, but it seems like a lot of other people would. I would say if you enjoy murder mysteries with a bad boy who has some issues to work through, then maybe give this a try.