Rowena’s review of Ten Tiny Breaths (Ten Tiny Breaths #1) by K.A. Tucker.

Kacey Cleary’s whole life imploded four years ago in a drunk-driving accident. Now she’s working hard to bury the pieces left behind—all but one. Her little sister, Livie. Kacey can swallow the constant disapproval from her born-again aunt Darla over her self-destructive lifestyle; she can stop herself from going kick-boxer crazy on Uncle Raymond when he loses the girls’ college funds at a blackjack table. She just needs to keep it together until Livie is no longer a minor, and then they can get the hell out of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

But when Uncle Raymond slides into bed next to Livie one night, Kacey decides it’s time to run. Armed with two bus tickets and dreams of living near the coast, Kacey and Livie start their new lives in a Miami apartment complex, complete with a grumpy landlord, a pervert upstairs, and a neighbor with a stage name perfectly matched to her chosen “profession.” But Kacey’s not worried. She can handle all of them. What she can’t handle is Trent Emerson in apartment 1D.

Kacey doesn’t want to feel. She doesn’t. It’s safer that way. For everyone. But sexy Trent finds a way into her numb heart, reigniting her ability to love again. She starts to believe that maybe she can leave the past where it belongs and start over. Maybe she’s not beyond repair.

But Kacey isn’t the only one who’s broken. Seemingly perfect Trent has an unforgiveable past of his own; one that, when discovered, will shatter Kacey’s newly constructed life and send her back into suffocating darkness

This book kind of reminded me of If I Stay by Gayle Forman, only it’s about what happened to the heroine after the car accident.  After she’s all healed up and back in the real world.  In this book, Kacey is the main character.  She was in a tragic car accident that took her parents, boyfriend and best friend from her.  She was the sole survivor in her car and she is filled with a lot of anger, especially since there was alcohol involved with the driver of the other car.

All Kacey has left in the world is her sister and when things take a dark turn at their Aunt and Uncle’s house, Kacey takes Livie and move far away from their pervy Uncle.  In an attempt to build a life for her and Livie in Miami, she takes a job as a bartender at a strip club to make ends meet and slowly but surely, her and Livie start making themselves a family unit with their neighbors.

When Kacey meets Trent, she’s pretty attracted to him but shines him off because she’s not interested in starting up a relationship and since that’s what he seems to want, she passes.  She’s all kinds of messed up and she’s not about to subject anyone to her moods and her, well, personality.  I don’t blame her because let me tell you, she worked each and every single nerve that I had in my body throughout the entire book.  It was very hard to like her which surprised me because I thought that I would be able to sympathize with her.  She’d been through so much in her life and she survived something pretty horrific but the Kacey that comes out of that car accident is mean and I just could not like her.

Then there’s Trent.  The so-called knight in shining armor and while he did come through for Kacey a whole lot, I knew who he was right from the very beginning.  It was completely obvious and when his secret comes out, I about threw my hands up in exasperation because seriously?  He was basically a stalker and even though Kacey came to fall in love with him, still…umm, no.

I will say that the author did a good job of making me want to continue to read this book but in the end, I still didn’t like either Kacey or Trent and that’s surprising since I usually like everyone.  So yeah, this book didn’t take me to my happy place but I gotta give the author points for keeping it so I couldn’t put this book down.

Grade: 2.5 out of 5

This book is available from Atria Books. You can purchase it here or here in e-format.