Review: Ten Tiny Breaths

Title: Ten Tiny Breaths

Author: K. A. Tucker

Date of Publication: December 9, 2012

Formats Available: Paperback, E-book

Buy This Book: Amazon

Synopsis: Kacey Cleary’s whole life imploded four years ago in a drunk-driving accident. Now she’s working hard to bury the pieces left behind—all but one. Her little sister, Livie. Kacey can swallow the constant disapproval from her born-again aunt Darla over her self-destructive lifestyle; she can stop herself from going kick-boxer crazy on Uncle Raymond when he loses the girls’ college funds at a blackjack table. She just needs to keep it together until Livie is no longer a minor, and then they can get the hell out of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

But when Uncle Raymond slides into bed next to Livie one night, Kacey decides it’s time to run. Armed with two bus tickets and dreams of living near the coast, Kacey and Livie start their new lives in a Miami apartment complex, complete with a grumpy landlord, a pervert upstairs, and a neighbor with a stage name perfectly matched to her chosen “profession.” But Kacey’s not worried. She can handle all of them. What she can’t handle is Trent Emerson in apartment 1D.

Kacey doesn’t want to feel. She doesn’t. It’s safer that way. For everyone. But sexy Trent finds a way into her numb heart, reigniting her ability to love again. She starts to believe that maybe she can leave the past where it belongs and start over. Maybe she’s not beyond repair.

But Kacey isn't the only one who’s broken. Seemingly perfect Trent has an unforgivable past of his own; one that, when discovered, will shatter Kacey’s newly constructed life and send her back into suffocating darkness.

My Review:

That's it, I have officially jumped on the New Adult bandwagon and I am now a woman obsessed. I'd always told myself that I wasn't really one for realistic fiction, other than the occasional story that I just couldn't pass up, but I'm beginning to think that those days are over. Ten Tiny Breaths absolutely blew me away while Trent stole my heart and Kasey's story made me cry. I devoured every word of this novel and finished the last page desperate for more.

After the accident that killed her family Kasey is a broken girl. She turns to drugs, violence, and sex to cope with the death of her family and she refuses to let anyone else in, despite the insistence of her sister Livie. Kasey was such a strongly developed character that it was impossible not to relate to her and what she was going through. Every time she had to tell herself to take ten tiny breaths I found myself taking them right along with her. Although I'd never been through something as horrific as Kasey it was still easy to relate to her insistence on keeping everyone out, everyone has a part of themselves they want to keep hidden and Tucker did a wonderful job making that part of Kasey relatable to everyone no matter what their background or story.

When Kasey meets Trent she's instantly attracted to him and though I'm not much one for quick romances Tucker pulled it off beautifully. Every time it started to feel like things were moving too fast something would happen to slow everything back down and make their relationship more believable. Trent was exactly what every girl loves, a good boy who acts like a bad one. Complete with tattoos and a motorcycle he was part stereotypical New Adult love interest but at the same time something just a little bit more. His relationship with Kasey made me laugh, cry, groan in frustration and everything else in between. My one and only complaint with the novel would be that sometimes Trent felt a little two-dimensional but those moments were so few and far between that it didn't make a major impact on the story or cause me to like him any less.

Even though I loved Trent the one thing I loved even more was that even though Kasey got involved with Trent she didn't abandon her friends. So often in romance novels the main character meets a boy and suddenly she has no other friends. With Kasey's past and her desire to keep everyone else out I really enjoyed watching her develop a friendship with Storm, even though she initially had misgivings about her, and watching pieces of the "new Kasey" disappear as she started to let people in. The friendship between Kasey and Storm was a major part of the novel and I was so happy that Storm didn't fade into the back ground as Kasey started to deepen her relationship with Trent.

Ten Tiny Breaths is a fantastic novel not just about romance but about the power of healing and forgiveness. With and ending that absolutely shocked me (I think I actually gasped out loud and had to pick my jaw up off the floor) and a romance that warmed my heart I would highly recommend this novel to fans of New Adult and realistic fiction!

5/5

*I received a copy of this novel from the author/publisher/publicist via Netgalley in exchange for a free and honest review and received no monetary compensation for this review.