Rowena’s review of Whisper to Me (Between Breaths #3) by Christina Lee.
A hot and consuming New Adult romance about a wayward musician and the one girl who keeps him grounded…
At college, Rachel has a reputation for being a sarcastic flirt with a thing for star athletes. No one at school knows that she’d had her heart ripped to shreds by her high school sweetheart, who’d driven them both off the side of the road on a borrowed motorcycle, and then abandoned her. No one knows the real Rachel Mattson—except one person…
Ever since he helped nurse his sister’s feisty best friend back to health, pierced bass player Kai Nakos has been head over heels in love. But the supposed bad boy can’t risk letting Rachel know the truth—especially now that the two of them are back in their hometown for the summer, together for the first time since the months following that fateful night. Never mind that Rachel’s ex is back, groveling for her forgiveness.
Shaken by her ex’s return, Rachel finds herself turning to the one guy she knows she can trust. Kai is willing to hide his feelings for her, just to have Rachel touch him again. After all, this is only a temporary fling. Until it becomes something more. But maybe it had been more all along.
Whisper to Me is Book #3 in the Between Breaths series by Christina Lee, a series that I’ve come to love the hell out of.
We met the heroine from this book in the first book in this series, All of You. She’s one of Avery and Ella’s friends and is a total flirt with a thing for athletes. She makes no apologies for who she is but I’ve wondered, reading the other books if there was anything more behind the obvious facade. You could tell that though she liked being a party girl, there was much more to Rachel than even Avery and Ella knew.
When we first see Rachel in this book, already you can see the differences in what she presents to the world and what’s really going on. She’s getting ready to head home to help her Mom with her Mom’s shop and she’s kind of wary of going back home because of …something. When she gets home, she moves in with her childhood best friends, Dakota and Kai and things to start to slowly shift for her like they always do when she’s home. When shes home, she’s not just Rachel but she’s Accident Rachel and escaping to college was her chance to change that. To get away from the looks of pity. So being home for the summer and trying to get back into the swing of things is a lot harder than Rachel thought.
Especially because Kai is back and in her space both head space and physical space and seeing him again brings everything back to her.
I don’t even know where to begin with this review because there was a whole lot about this book that I liked. I liked that instead of the girl pining away for the boy, things were switched up and it was Kai that has had a thing for Rachel for years. I liked that though Kai had some pretty strong feelings for Rachel, he didn’t let her get away with shit. If she was being dumb, he told her. If she needed a friend, than he was there for her as a friend. I loved that he made himself available to her in whatever way she needed because he was in love with her. I loved the friendship between Rachel, Piper and Ella. I loved that there was never any judgment for the way that Rachel chose to live her life. They were there for her with whatever she needed and they didn’t turn away when they felt betrayed. They understood and that’s a lot harder than you’d think. I liked that Rachel made the decision to make changes in her life to move on from just everything and that she wasn’t forced into it because of circumstances.
There were times when I wanted to smack both Rachel and Kai for waiting so long to tell each other things but for the most part, I really liked the two of them together. I liked that Kai knew Rachel before she went to college and became the party girl. I liked that Rachel trusted Kai with everything in her heart, even when she was pushing him away at the same time. But the person that got on my nerves was Dakota. Her hurt feelings and her whole secret relationship with Shane, the fact that she needed time to get over the “betrayal” of Rachel having the audacity to keep things from her made me roll my eyes down the street but other than that, this was a pretty fab read and I’m oh so thirsty for more.
Christina Lee is fast becoming my go-to author for New Adult romances. I fall into each of her stories so easily and she does a great job of hooking me from the beginning. There’s none of that beginning hump of info dump to slop through, it’s just awesomeness from the beginning and I appreciate that. This is another fantastic addition to an already pretty fabulous series and if you haven’t read this series, why the heck not? You should definitely fix that. This one is great!
Grade: 4.5 out of 5
This book is available from Intermix. You can purchase it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
Leave a Reply