Out of Breath (Breathing, #3)

by Rebecca Donovan

I don't know how to feel about this series. Reason to Breathe was a good debut novel, but it missed the mark. Barely Breathing was amazing and made me extremely emotional. Out of Breath was my least favourite book in the Breathing Series.

In Barely Breathing, I was able to fully connect with Emma and that made me love Barely Breathing to bits and pieces. In Out of Breath, Emma is a shell of her former self and is drowning in her own sorrow. Because of this she loses her sunshine and starts doing things that the old Emma wouldn't do. I understood that Emma was broken and the extent of her pain needed to be shown, but it was difficult for me to like her as a character.

Many of the old secondary characters come back into the picture, but many new characters are introduced. I felt as though too many new characters were introduced into the story and as much as I loved them, I felt as though they weren't developed enough. Sara is still the best friend that every girl dream of, Emma's roommates are hilarious and Evan's friends brought some much needed humour to the story. A new character, Cole, gets introduced in the story as Emma's love interest. I felt as though he was a good guy, but he WASN'T EVAN and his relationship with Emma was more of a sexual relationship than a loving one.

Evan is also MIA for half of the story. Even although I understood that there was consequences from the previous book that needed to continue in this one, I just wanted there to be more Evan. When he does appear, he gets his own POV, which I should have been happy about, except that I wasn't. His POV was in italics, which made my brain hurt. It also confused me. Evan and Emma have their alternating POV's in the same chapter, but their voices sounded similar. I would be reading the chapter from Evan's POV and then it would jump to Emma's POV. I had to keep on checking if the writing was in that brain-torturing italics or not to see whose POV the story was in at that particular time.

I did however, enjoy the manner in which this story was handled. Rebecca Donovan doesn't shy away from abuse, a serious issue that affects someone's life and the aftermath of it. The realism of Emma's brokenness, even although I hated her character, and her healing process was what made the book extremely enjoyable and the last page of Emma's story, believable.