Breathe (Sea Breeze #1) by Abbi Glines

book cover of Breathe by Abbi Glines

Title: Breathe (Sea Breeze #1)
Author: Abbi Glines
Release date: May 17, 2011
Publisher: Wild Child Publishing
Pages: 166
Source: Bought
Reading level: New Adult

Breathe (Sea Breeze, #1)

Sadie White’s summer job isn’t going to be on the beach life-guarding or working at rental booths like most kids her age. With her single mother’s increasing pregnancy and refusal to work, Sadie has to take over her mother’s job as a domestic servant for one of the wealthy summer families on a nearby island.

When the family arrives at their summer getaway, Sadie is surprised to learn that the owner of the house is Jax Stone, one of the hottest teen rockers in the world. If Sadie hadn’t spent her life raising her mother and taking care of the house she might have been normal enough to be excited about working for a rock star.

Even though Sadie isn’t impressed by Jax’s fame, he is drawn to her. Everything about Sadie fascinates Jax but he fights his attraction. Relationships never work in his world and as badly as he wants Sadie, he believes she deserves more. By the end of the summer, Jax discovers he can’t breathe without Sadie.

Abbi Glines is one self-published author I knew I had to check out. Everyone raves about her books, Simon Pulse picked up some of them, and they’re contemporary. I figured I’d join the majority and she’d have another fan. Sadly that was so not the case.

Breathe is one of the most terribly written books I have ever read. The writing was horrendous. Everything was “he said, she said, he did, she did” and pretty much no description. It was similar to stuff I read in middle school when I was critiquing other classmates work. Also, who doesn’t use contractions? I got so annoyed with this book because there were almost no contractions! People don’t say “do not, can not, will not” they say “don’t, can’t, won’t.” I spent the whole time reading fixing words in my head because I couldn’t read it as they were written.

Then there’s the dialogue. Holy crap. Breathe has some of the cheesiest dialogue I have ever read and this is coming from a hardcore romance fan. I had to stop myself from laughing out loud at how Sadie and Jax talked to each other. No teenage guy talks to a girl like that! And I didn’t even find it romantic, I found it hilarious.

As for the characters themselves, they were all too perfect. Jax, Sadie, Marcus, Ms. Mary, Mr. Greg, Preston, none of them had any flaws! Sadie was made out to be this innocent, naïve, girl and I guess it was true but it seemed a little fake to me. She also went around acting like she wasn’t pretty and all the guys were all over her. It seemed like she was begging for compliments every time she would tell Jax or Marcus that she wasn’t really that pretty. Jax was this big rock star but he didn’t have a famous bone in his body. He was just a normal guy trying to get by. Yeah right. He was way too perfect to ever exist in real life.

The story was kind of nonexistent. It was all just about Jax and Sadie’s romance and then there was some turmoil thrown in at the end for good measure. Can’t have things be too easy you know. Everything about this book was just really dull and that goes for the story as well.

Overall, I don’t recommend Breathe at all. I had to force myself to get through it and after reading it I feel like I wasted a few hours of my time. I may try another of Abbi Glines’ books before I give up but I will definitely be going in with low expectations.

Looking for more reviews of Breathe?
Sliced Open Reviews’ review
Infected Loser’s review

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17 comments

  1. This is my least favorite Abbi Glines book and I’m kind of sorry you had to start with this one. I can definitely see why you weren’t a huge fan of this book, but the next one in the series Because of Low is really good! Well I enjoyed it, but I remember you didn’t like Beautiful Disaster and while they’re not similar in anyway they’re kind of in the same genre so I don’t know…

    Great review!

  2. Aw this is a huge bummer! 🙁 I actually read Just For Now (a later book in the series) and I didn’t like it either. But I thought some of the side characters were interesting so I was planning on reading other books in the series.. but now I’m not so sure!

    Thanks for the review.

  3. I’m impressed that you finished this book. I put it down after a couple of chapters because I couldn’t handle the cheesiness. I’d heard this one was her weakest, and that she’s improved with each book. I may skip to her latest next and see… but there are so many other books I need to read first so… yeah.

  4. Sometimes not everything is going to appeal to you. I have this problem a lot and sometimes wrestle with why I didn’t like this book. This was a solid review. I just heard good things about Abbi Glines, but maybe her writing is not for everyone.

    Grace

  5. Aw man, I have this one on my kindle. Tried reading The Vincent boys after seeing so many rave reviews and it just wasn’t my cup of tea at all 🙁
    Great review even though you weren’t impressed!

  6. I feel like I rarely see you give low ratings and reviews to books. This book looks so cute but I guess you can’t always judge a book by it’s cover!

  7. *twitch* I’m less likely to try Glines now. I got The Vincent Boys when it was free for Kindle, but I’ll adjust my expectations accordingly. My advice – Tammara Webber’s EASY (if you’ve already read it, wasn’t it just FABULOUS?) is a great self-pub YA contemporary that got picked up by a major publisher. I’ve heard her other books are just as good. If you like paranormal, though, Anthea Lawson’s FEYLAND: THE DARK REALM and Patricia Lynne’s BEING HUMAN are both worth checking out – and their quality is definitely towards the trad. pub. end of things.

    Great review, as always, and it was nice to see you hating on something a bit. 😉

  8. Oh wow, I totally expected you to like this book, since yes, you are a contemporary fan! I’m really sad to hear that the writing & dialogue was like reading papers from middle school.. that’s just terrible! And I hate it when a story doesn’t have a story! I’m so sorry you didn’t like this book, Katie! I think I’ll still try it out, just to see what I think. Awesome review, and thanks for being honest!

  9. I was going to get this one because of the cover, but now that you mention it was like “he said this, she said that” I changed my mind! That’s a big turn off for me. It just sounds so.. basic. Thank you for this honest review.

    Leigh
    Little Book Star

  10. Oh wowza. Should I still try this author you think? Also: “Breathe has some of the cheesiest dialogue I have ever read and this is coming from a hardcore romance fan. I had to stop myself from laughing out loud at how Sadie and Jax talked to each other. No teenage guy talks to a girl like that! And I didn’t even find it romantic, I found it hilarious. ”

    That right there is enough to make me not pick up this book!

  11. I’ve Steered clear of this one! I love the rest of the series but I think this one was published before Abbi honed her writing style!
    New fan of your blog 🙂

  12. Have you read any other Abbi Glines books? Perhaps she gets better as she continues her publishing journey – so many people love her, maybe this was just the first and even though that wasn’t all you thought it would be the rest might be good.