The Last Breath

by Kimberley Belle

[Leah]

When I saw The Last Breath on Netgalley, I was quite intrigued. It offered a glimpse into a new writer, and it promised a fantastic read, with a gorgeous sepia-tinged cover, so I decided to download it, and see what I thought. I was quite excited to get stuck in, I love novels where a main character comes back home after a long time away. There’s just something about them, although in this case it was vastly different, since Gia was coming home known in her local hometown as the daughter of a murderer, which would make anyone flee, let’s be honest. So I was interested to see how Gia handled it, and while it was an interesting concept, and a solidly written novel, I felt a bit bored if I’m being honest.

The Last Breath is your typical suspense novel by numbers, with a bit of romance thrown in. Gia comes home after sixteen years away to tend to her dying father, but the town is in uproar because he allegedly killed his wife Ella-Mae and has spent the last sixteen years in jail, only being released because he’s dying. His other two kids, Bo and Lexi won’t come anywhere near their father, despite Gia’s best intentions, and it’s just a very sad, awful tale. Throw in a nebby reporter, who plants a seed of doubt in Gia’s mind as to whether or not her father did indeed do the crime, and you’ve got an interesting enough storyline. It just didn’t really go anywhere. Gia wasn’t exactly unearthing life-shattering evidence against her father to prove his innocence, it was hunches and Chinese whispers, and the words of a drunk man. It was hearsay, most of all.

What I did like about the novel were the Ella-Mae sections. We see how her life changed after Dean, the town’s new vice-principal moved in, how they had a connection, how their relationship developed etc, and it added a certain bonus aspect to the novel. Those were the parts I looked forward to most, because those were the parts where we learned more about Ella-Mae, and Ray, and Dean; we heard it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. And so, I wished they were longer, and there were more of them. And most of all, I wished there was one final scene at the end of the book, telling us the truth once and for all, because there’s a lot of to-ing and fro-ing in The Last Breath. A lot of he-said, she-said, and I’m still not entirely convinced of everything we were told. I think one last bite from Ella-Mae would have sealed it completely, and I felt Belle missed out on an opportunity there – it could have put an entirely different spin on the novel.

The Last Breath was a solid enough read, don’t get me wrong, but it lacked edge, especially since the novel I finished before this one was bat-crap crazy, with all sorts of weird stuff going on. It just sort of felt like a letdown, although I liked Gia and I really, really liked her and Jake’s romance. It was sweet, it was easy, it was everything a romance should be, and it wasn’t the main focus of the novel, although it was a big, and very enjoyable, part. It was a solid novel, I can’t fault Belle, it just wasn’t my cup of tea. Turns out I need a teensy bit more action in my novels these days, a bit more to keep me hooked, and turning the pages. But, it has some stellar reviews on GoodReads already, and it is a very intriguing mystery as to who did actually kill poor Ella-Mae!