Review: Out of Breath by Rebecca Donovan

Title: Out of Breath by
Author: Rebecca Donovan
Series: Breathing, #3
Format: Paperback, owned
My rating: 1.5 / 5

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Emma leaves Weslyn and everyone in it behind to attend Stanford University, just as she always intended. A shell of her former self, she is not the same girl. She is broken, and the only way that she’ll be whole again is through forgiveness. Emma must find a way to forgive herself and recognize her own worth before she can receive the love she deserves. This final installment will have readers holding their breath until the very last page.

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My Thoughts

Holding my breath until the last page? Pfft! I was praying for it to be over already.

What the heck went wrong! I enjoyed the first two books in the Breathing trilogy, so I was expecting a solid conclusion along similar lines to Reason to Breathe and Barely Breathing. The last book in any series is bound to be bitter-sweet, but even taking this into consideration, I am completely lost. It feels like a different author wrote this book; the style is that drastically different. Also, the characters don’t resemble themselves at all.

This book has all the hallmarks of the New Adult genre. I don’t understand how a Young Adult series should conclude in the New Adult genre – maybe the point is flying over my head right now while I’m typing this, but … why?! Keep trilogies and series’ in the same genre they started in people!

It took me over a hundred pages to realise what was bothering me most: It reminded me of New Moon. There have been many – way too many – books that remind me of the Twilight Saga as a whole, but never has one reminded me of New Moon specifically before. Emma behaves very similar to how Bella reacted after Edward left. Complete with cliff-diving! It’s all just too much. I know it’s not an exact copy, but she displays all the hall marks of Bella-Swan-Syndrome. Emma brought all the events that happened in this book on herself. She made the decisions, she left, and it’s up to her to fix it.

Another thing that frustrated me was the time line. You begin to settle down with the story and things start to flow nicely, then “poof!” We are whisked a week, a month or two months into the future with the passing of a sentence. I had to stop reading when this happened, it irritated me that much.

I will add my complaints to join the masses with issues involving the POV switching, using italics to distinguish which characters thoughts we are looking in on. In plain terms, I found it ridiculous. I confess that I barely managed to finish the book. What a disaster.