Skip to main content

Click "Archive" or "Labels" in the sidebar to browse reviews, or use the search bar to look for a specific title.


Review: Breathe, Annie, Breathe

Breathe, Annie, Breathe Breathe, Annie, Breathe by Miranda Kenneally
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

4.5 stars.

I enjoyed this book quite a lot. I read it at the perfect time. It's about Annie, who's training to run a marathon. Wow what a coincidence, I so happen to also be a runner, and track season just started last week. She has a boy in her life that clearly wants to get with her--and she may or may not accidentally lead him on some all of the time--but doesn't want to actually start a relationship with him. Wow, holy shit, literally me right now. I was also just generally in the mood for a steamy YA romance.

SAFE TO SAY, I found this book pretty #relatable. I feel like whenever this is the case, one really just can't help but connect to the story and characters more than someone else who can't relate. This is precisely what makes this book hard to review. I loved this book so much just because I had the perfect conditions in order for that to happen. This very well may not happen for everybody else who reads this. Obviously. So let's maybe keep this in mind while reading this review.

This is the first book I've read in this series, or even by this author. Clearly since I got this for free, and it's the fourth book, I didn't want to have to buy three other books before reading this. So I just read it. Cuz I'm wild(e) like that. You could even call me... Oscar. I'll get out. Just kidding you're stuck with me until the end of the review!!!! What were we talking about again? Oh yeah. Well it wasn't actually that wild because each book is actually a standalone. They're just all in the same town so there's some character cameos from past books.

This book had a first for me. Since I haven't read anything else by Ms. Kenneally I don't know if this is how her books usually are, but this is the first book I've ever read that had so much sex in it. Literal sex, implied sex, almost sex, dry sex, talk of sex, thoughts of sex. Holy moly. I've got to say I was surprised this book is only 14+. I didn't find this amazing or terrible, just interesting. Also: it was all super casual. There was zero taboo about it by any of the characters, even moms. It was just, "Hey we banged!" "Yo sweet! You go girl!" Yeah. Kinda weird not gonna lie, but just because I'd never read anything like that before.

SPEAKING OF SEX... How was the romance!? You know what, not bad. Wow would you look at this, this romance was actually another first. In the beginning it seemed like it would be just like every other YA book. The love interest is introduced and you know, you just INSTANTLY KNOW, that they're going to be coupled with the main character by the end of the book. It's just so obvious, and it's usually one of the, if not THE first male character introduced and it just always starts romances on a negative foot, for me at least.

That happened with this book as well. But something happens pretty quickly that derails it and slows it down and it was GREAT. It became just them as friends with maximum sexual tension. Though I was never actually rooting for them to get together or anything, it was nice to read. And yeah, obviously I found it super relatable. I was always interested to see how Annie would handle the situation we've both found ourselves in.

Speaking of the writing in general, I don't think there was anything really special about it. The first "F" bomb gets dropped in the first chapter so you know early on what you're getting into. It's written in present-tense though which is my favourite. The whole thing isn't like super classy literature or anything, which is why I hesitate to rate it so high. It gets its high rating from my enjoyment alone.

I liked Annie and Matt's relationship a lot. Matt is Annie's trainer and I loved their dynamic. Literally ZERO sexual tension, even when he was stretching her. He was just a great trainer, and I loved their friendship. I quite enjoyed reading about Annie's training. It kinda put a bit of fire behind me to go hard in my own workouts, and to remember my own goals and why I run. This aspect also happens to be the one that makes me weary to read the other books in this series.

I love sports. When I say I love sports, I mean I LOVE SPORTS. I love watching sports, I love playing sports, and I love and respect the hell out of people who play sports. This all applies to pretty much every sport. Pretty much. As in there are exceptions. Kenneally somehow managed to write books about every single one of those exceptions. American football, baseball, and horseback riding. American football being the worst. I still respect people who play these, I just generally don't give a flying fuck about these sports. I'm really not interested in reading a book about them, at all. This is what puts me off about reading the rest of the series. Give me soccer, give me tennis, or volleyball, or how about hockey? (Those are my favourites to watch.) I'd even take basketball, or how about literally any winter sport? Sigh. Running was good though. At least she got that right.

(view spoiler)

*Edit*: I wrote up a list of My Top Sports Anime over on my review for The Running Dream, so go check that out if you're looking for some good sports-related shows to watch!

[Disclaimer: I won a free Advance Reader's Copy of this book through the Goodreads giveaway program, and all views expressed in this review are solely my own.]


Click to read my other Hundred Oaks Reviews:
Breathe, Annie, Breathe*
Defending Taylor
Coming Up for Air

*Current review


View all my reviews
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Review: 寄宿学校のジュリエット（３）

寄宿学校のジュリエット（３） by 金田陽介 My rating: 5 of 5 stars Brb, crying. Not actually, though. Like, I didn’t shed any actual tears or even get close to it, it’s just that this series… is so good . The romance between Romeo and Juliet is still weirdly innocent, but the actual story is so engrossing and entertaining. It also seems like almost literally every single character is complex and interesting and multi-layered. (Only the background characters like Maru’s lackeys are undeveloped, but honestly they really don’t need any development anyway.) The relationships between characters keep getting more and more complex, and the situations that the characters have to deal with are also super juicy. This is such an addicting series. My initial problem with Romeo and Juliet’s relationship was that it seemed pretty unhealthy and one-sided to me. Later, I found it very weird how sexually immature they both are, and how un-intimate their relationship is. What is interest...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Bitter Witness: Otto Dix and the Great War

Bitter Witness: Otto Dix and the Great War by Linda F. McGreevy My rating: 0 of 5 stars This is a very unique and interesting academic text. There are no other examinations of the German artist Otto Dix, his war experience, and his war-related art that are quite as in-depth as this one, while also covering a wide range of different aspects and angles of not only the artist's story, but also the Great War's. I used this as a source for a University research essay I wrote on the effects of Dix's war experience on the creation and effects of his painting Skat Players (1920). I was very late in starting my research so I unfortunately had to stick to only reading the information I could use for my own examination, rather than being able to devour this book in its entirety. However, the library requires this book be returned at the end of January of next year, so I have some time now to actually finish this book since the semester has finished...
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: Spells & Sleeping Bags

Spells & Sleeping Bags by Sarah Mlynowski My rating: 3 of 5 stars This book was infuriating. Miri was super annoying during book 2, but she started this book off with some funny burns toward Rachel which made me think maybe she would be better in this book. Ha. No. She wasn’t. Miri. Oh Miri Miri Miri. So dumb. And it was annoying how it seemed like she didn’t even learn anything from the last book. She’s still all about saving the world and whatnot and being a dumbass. And she talked about poofing up money to help her help people, which is extremely illogical because she knows that poofing up money means she’s stealing money from somewhere else. Way to “help” out the world you fucking idiot. For the majority of this book I reckon she was under some kind of “emotion amplifying” spell but honestly that’s no excuse since she’s still her dumbass self. (view spoiler) [Her figuring out that Fake Rachel wasn’t real Rachel was nice and all but felt a bit...
Post a Comment
Read more