Ten Tiny Breaths (The Ten Tiny Breaths, #1)

by K.A. Tucker

[Linda]

*WARNING* There was some ugly crying going on towards the end of Ten Tiny Breaths. Beautiful story, but my goodness, a lot of very difficult stuff to read about!

This and other reviews can also be found on my blog (un)Conventional Bookviews where all my reviews are originally posted.

Yeah, even the readers need to think about breathing while reading Ten Tiny Breaths, that’s for sure. Between forgetting to breathe in places because I just wanted Kacey to be OK, and not being able to breathe because I was ugly-crying so hard it was impossible I figure the title is one of the more apt titles I’ve seen in a long time!

Ten Tiny Breaths start with Kayce and Olivia fleeing their aunt and uncle’s house with only one suitcase each, after their uncle had come into Olivia’s room during the night, acting inappropriately. Kacye swore she would take care of her sister, making sure she could finish high-school and live her dream by going to Princeton just like their parents had done. When they arrive in Miami in front of their new home, it isn’t as nice and shiny as it had seemed on the web-site, but it looks quite good anyway. On the first day, Kayce meets Trent in the laundry room, and for the first time in years, all the walls she’s built around herself seem to be thinner as she notices how good-looking he is, and that she might actually still have feelings.

As Ten Tiny Breaths continue, the readers follow Kayce mostly, but the other characters are important as well, both Olivia and Trent, as well as their other next-door-neighbours; Storm and her five-year-old daughter Mia. Storm even helps Kayce get a better-paying job than serving coffee at Starbucks, and serving drinks in a strip-club isn’t as bad as Kayce first thought. The tip is awesome, and both the boss and the bouncers are taking good care of everybody who works there, without ever being inappropriate.

Kayce is a character that is so broken it is amazing she can function at all, but she does, and little by little, she finally starts working through her grief of losing four people she cared about at the same time. Having new people to care about both scares her and makes her feel a little better, the fear of losing them always at the forefront of her mind. Although Kayce is broken, she does her best to take good care of Olivia, who is the good girl , always helpful and loving, caring and polite. It seems as if the two sisters are polar opposites, but they are more alike than they realize, they just deal with their issues differently.

All through Ten Tiny Breaths, Kayce thinks about a phrase her mother used to tell her when she was upset, sad or stressed Breathe, just breathe. Ten tiny breaths. Seize them. Feel them. Love them. Kayce doesn’t understand what her mother meant by that, but she tries it every time she feels overwhelmed – which is quite often.