Breathe, Annie, Breathe - Miranda Kenneally

Breathe, Annie, Breathe by Miranda Kenneally
Series: Hundred Oaks #5
Published by Sourcebooks Fire on July 15, 2014
Pages: 319
Genres: Contemporary, Sports, New Adult

Format: eBook
Source: Purchased

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From the bestselling author of Catching Jordan comes a brand new contemporary YA you won't forget.

The finish line is only the beginning...

Annie hates running. No matter how far she jogs, she can't escape the guilt that if she hadn't broken up with Kyle, he might still be alive. So to honor his memory, she starts preparing for the marathon he intended to race.

But the training is even more grueling than Annie could have imagined. Despite her coaching, she's at war with her body, her mind-and her heart. With every mile that athletic Jeremiah cheers her on, she grows more conflicted. She wants to run into his arms...and sprint in the opposite direction. For Annie, opening up to love again may be even more of a challenge than crossing the finish line. "Breathe, Annie, Breathe is an emotional, heartfelt, and beautiful story about finding yourself after loss and learning to love. It gave me so many feels. Her best book yet." - Jennifer L. Armentrout, New York Times bestselling author of Wait for You

I had already heard of the Hundred Oaks series a long time ago, but I was always scared to read because sports isn't really my thing (at all) and o the idea of reading a book were sports are a major part of the story? Yeah, it didn't sounded like something I would enjoy. But time passed, people keeped recommended this series and now that I'm much more into contemporary I decided to try and start with Breathe, Annie, Breathe (I know, it's the 5th of the series but they all can be read as stand alone).

Me and Annie started on the wrong foot, 30% in on the book and I was flying through this book but couldn't really get a read of her character and feelings, also the romance started with some instalust - which I think is fine and natural but it wasn't my ideal scenario when one of the parts of the romance is grieving, I thought "no, this is too soon, maybe I'll be the black sheep and Kenneally' books won't work for me". I was wrong, very very wrong.

Annie grew on me as a character, she is extremely determined and has so much to overcome on this book, until this 30% we basically got a view of her problems: the lack of friends, her difficult relationship with her mother and her fight against her desires and her guilt from moving on with her boyfriend. It was great to see her growing as an individual person and finding out who she was without being a girlfriend, this was why the instalust gave a bad feeling at first - Annie first needed to find herself before going to another relationship.

Of course Jeremiah is the perfect guy, he has some issues of his own to figure out and Annie does help him, but he also gave Annie her time and his friendship which was something necessary for her growth. Their romance was beyond, just beyond. They had an incredible chemistry right from the beginning, their first scene already made me laugh out loud and see their develop a friendship was heaven, it made me ship them more and more throughout the book so when they finally got together was very, very shippy.

Me on the scene at the hospital 

We had a lot of family presence, we got to know (or re-know for those who read the other books maybe? Idk) Jeremiah's family and I have to say that the scene with his PopPop was one of my favorites, was definitely the one that I laughed out loud most - their banter was gold! I would have liked more the presence of Annie's Mother, their issues kind of resolve themselves but I needed more honest conversations between them. Annie's friends too could have used more development - I just felt extremely uncomfortable on their first interaction (one of the girls basically corners Annie into going shopping with them), I was glad afterwards that it happened of course because it opened the doors for Annie get to find fun and have more friends on her life, but still it was awkward at first.

And about my fear that the sports part would bored me or that I would dislike this aspects? LOL I ended up with an urge to go running. Disclaimer: I never runned one day of my life, seriously, never, okay maybe sometimes to catch the bus but that was it, and I have been sedentary for like years and years, I would probably die on the first 5 minutes but I kind of really want to try now because it was so amazing to read about Annie's little victories at each run and how much it helped her to deal with her grief.

In case you didn't noticed yet I loved this book and can't wait to read more of Kenneally's other Hundred Oaks books. Absolutely recommend to lovers of contemporary romance, that like their books fluffy but not all fluffy, or people who like too read books about tough issues but doesn't like the general sadness of those books. And of course runners (or aspirings runners).