Review: Breathe Into Me by Amanda Stone

4 star review

Amanda Stone’s debut novel was fresh, and sweet and yet at the same time suspenseful. Kelsey Rien is starting college, rooming with her best friend Jessi and starting her life over. She is moving away from her past, away from the albatross around her neck otherwise known as her history. She can be a different person, someone that neighbors don’t pity and can study and take classes and maybe even have some fun occasionally.

“I wasn’t like your average eighteen year old. I had seen things that had changed me, broke me. It would take a special kind of man to love a person as broken as me.”

Kane Riley is a gorgeous, gray eyed, tattooed, lip pierced, motorcycle riding god of a man, who literally keeps bumping into Kelsey’s life. From their first encounter, Kelsey finds herself thinking about him and for the first time in her life, desiring more than friendship with a guy.  Kane’s reputation precedes him; he’s known for his wham bam no thank you ma’am history of hell no to commitment but plenty of gratuitous sex. As the two trade confidences with each other they break through the ice that encases their hearts. Kelsey has lived with the guilt of her mom’s death for the last six years and hates her father. Kane lost both his parents; spiraled downward, hit rock bottom, climbed back up and has tried his best to change his life for the better. His grandparents are his rock and he draws strength in their wisdom. While he has done his best to clean up his act, those around him haven’t realized or don’t want to see that his present life of working hard and tempering his demons have made him worthy of Kelsey’s affections. His best friend Landon, knows the real Kane and confides in Jessie (these two hooked up within five minutes of meeting each other) that Kane’s treatment of Kelsey is unlike any he’s shown in the past.  There is a sweetness infused with good old fashioned lust in their relationship. Kane gives Kelsey lots of “firsts” and I’m not sure who enjoyed those more-Kelsey or me?

“I thought I would be scared since I had never been this far before, but I wasn’t. Need and desire had possessed my body and all I could think about was more. I wanted so much more.”

Throw in some angst with a "wants more than to be a booty call skank" and an over attentive study partner and Breathe Into Me has just the right amount of drama. Although I suspected something was building towards the end, there were a series of bumps in the road, one being a mountain, that gave me that weird feeling in my stomach that I love when I come to “that part of the book,” the part that makes me clench my hands a little tighter to my E-reader and makes the words fly by-yeah that feeling. Well Ms. Stone nailed more than one of those moments. This is a great read for a debut novel and one I thoroughly enjoyed.