Description:
Bestselling author Katie McGarry’s trademark wrong-side-of-the-tracks romance is given a new twist in the gritty YA contemporary novel, Only a Breath Apart.
They say your destiny is carved in stone. But some destinies are meant to be broken.
The only curse Jesse Lachlin believes in is his grandmother’s will: in order to inherit his family farm he must win the approval of his childhood best friend, the girl he froze out his freshman year.
A fortuneteller tells Scarlett she’s psychic, but what is real is Scarlett’s father’s controlling attitude and the dark secrets at home. She may be able to escape, but only if she can rely on the one boy who broke her heart.
Each midnight meeting pushes Jesse and Scarlett to confront their secrets and their feelings, but as love blooms, the curse rears its ugly head…
Rating: 4.5 Stars
“Only a Breathe Apart” was a masterpiece. It contained tearjerkers, laughs, and so much more. There are no words to describe it. But I’m sure as heck going to try.
There should be a trigger warning, though. Domestic Abuse is a situation in this book.
Besides that I loved it. This book was so profound and deep that I got a little scared I would hear the earth breathe beneath me the next time I left my house. The settings were picturesque. The characters grew and expanded. The ties were all tied up. Everything was great.
Jesse is what I hope my future husband is like. Stubborn as all get out with a heart of absolute gold. He was a bit of an ass in the beginning but he explains it. He doesn’t explain it away. That never happens. There is not one instance in this book where people that are in their right mind and not brainwashed ever excuse being a jerk or an abuser. But the great thing about this is that Katie McGarry doesn’t just give us this situation from one viewpoint. She gives it to us in multiple ways. Jesse is “poor”. He has land but no money to develop the land, and without that money he’s stuck. He could sell the land, but that would defeat the purpose. And Scarlett is rich and her father is influential in their small town, so she’s stuck as well.
The thing about Jesse and Scarlett is that they used to be best friends. One was nowhere without the other. As times changed and they grew up, they left that friendship behind. Not by choice nor by an intelligent choice. But they help themselves get out of the terrible situations that they find themselves in.
The character growth alone is enough to make someone want to read it. Scarlett goes from having friends she keeps at a distance and being more locked up than Fort Knox to having several friends who knew almost everything about her and being as free as the sky. Jesse goes from not letting anyone else in because they treated him badly in the past, to trying. Just trying, which is enough. And Katie McGarry definitely delivers on the in-depth views of the abuse. She goes through the whole mental state. Not of the abuser but of the abusee. And It was kind of eye-opening. One thinks that they know about things like that but honestly I had no idea.
All in all, A MAJOR read for 2019 and something that should be on everyone’s TBR.