Judith’s review of Breathe Again by Bonnie R. Paulson

Maggie Lachlan is struggling to get over the death of her husband. After being overcome by emotion during a shift in the E.R., she’s suspended indefinitely. Making things worse, she needs a place to stay after the quick sale of the house she shared with her late husband.

Fortunately, her friend Ryan Stewart offers her a room while she gets her life in order, much to the chagrin of his brother and housemate, Brodan Steele. Brodan doesn’t want to like Maggie, not when he knows Ryan has feelings for her too. But it’s hard to deny the attraction he feels for her when she’s sleeping under the same roof.

Being so close to Brodan awakens something in Maggie, something she never felt during her marriage. But as long as she’s haunted by the past, she can’t open herself up to the future.

Suicide is an ever-present wound in the body of any society and the author has chosen to build her story around a hurting and wounded woman whose husband had shot himself 10 months earlier. She was angry, frustrated because of so many unanswered questions, still deeply puzzled and troubled about the dead and dry nature of her two year marriage to a veteran of the Middle East conflicts, but who was a man she had loved since early high school days. And like so many whose loved ones take their own life, there was a part of Maggie that blamed herself–she could have been more understanding, more loving, tried harder, etc. Certainly her husband’s family had blamed her for Dean’s death and had essentially withdrawn themselves from any kind of on-going emotional support for her. Now she is just simply trying to survive, to escape from the inevitable nightmares after finding her husband with his brains splattered all over the room, and deal with a grief that just simply never seemed to turn her loose. Exhaustion and poor eating had left her body ravaged and her emotions just barely below the surface. Her relationships at her job where she was a radiology technician had effectively gone “south” and her responses to patients and co-workers alike had become harsh and unfriendly. Ultimately, she was put on a forced leave of absence and she went home to figure out where her life was headed.

One of the patients she met during an emotional melt-down was Ryan, a young man who had been hospitalized because of cystic fibrosis. He was, nevertheless, up beat, pleasant, welcoming, and seemed to reach out to Maggie in a way she could accept and a friendship was born. However, Ryan’s half-brother, Brodan, was another matter entirely. Having devoted his life to caring for Ryan, he wasn’t too happy about welcoming Maggie into his brother’s inner circle, nor was he at all happy about his attraction to her, one that had the potential of upsetting his life and his brother as well. Yet even after being discharged from the hospital, Ryan insisted on reaching out to Maggie and consistently dragged her into their lives and their home.

This novel reminds me of a really bleak and cloud-covered day but one where there are shafts of sunlight shining through breaks in the clouds. Just a ray of sunshine now and then. That is what was happening in Maggie’s life with Ryan and Brodan. This novel is not easy to read. It is full of hope, questions, a deep sense of failure on Maggie’s part–failure to really understand Dean’s needs and provide them, failure to heal him with her love, failure to understand why he would kill himself with no word or explanation. Yet amidst all this bleak and dark reality, shafts of hope shone through as Ryan’s friendship enabled Maggie to begin talking about Dean, their marriage, the changes she saw in him after each of his overseas tours of duty, the deadness she perceived in him even after they married, and her persistent belief–based on she really didn’t know what–that Dean really didn’t love her. As if Maggie’s life wasn’t bleak enough, Brodan’s consistent resistance to the attraction between them nurtured her anger. When it seemed like she finally had found someone who wanted her for herself, who responded to her as a woman, she was pushed away because Brodan couldn’t see himself having any kind of personal life while he remained focused on Ryan’s needs. Ryan had been his entire life since they were boys. So even when she was tantalized by the possibility of warmth and acceptance, once again Maggie came up empty.

I found this novel to be compelling in its honesty and couldn’t seem to tear myself away from it. It almost read like a Greek Tragedy–started out hurting and just got worse. But there were always those illusive rays of hope, and I was drawn deeper and deeper into Maggie’s story as Ryan’s friendship and even Brodan’s reluctant acceptance of at least her presence in their lives began to help her gain a new perspective in life. There is grieving and worry, death and loss, hurt and disappointment, challenge and hope–all are here in this story. But all are so expertly woven into the experience of these characters, individually and c ollectively, that the reader keeps hoping for resolution, not only to Maggie’s pain and grief, but hopefully for a future for her and Brodan. How it all works out is quite surprising and I wasn’t really expecting what happened. But I have to say that as unusual as the ending was, it fit the story and in the final analysis, that is the best kind of ending. This is a novel serious readers don’t want to miss and one that will be quite different than your usual boy-meets-girl kind of romance. My sense is that this is so much what real life is–messy and hopeful–and thus it will be one that will teach us all just a little bit more about what it means to be human and in relationships with others.

I give this novel a 4.5 out of 5

You can read more from Judith at Dr J’s Book Place.

This book is available from Carina Press. You can buy it here or here in e-format.