Review: Breathe, Annie, Breathe by Miranda Kenneally

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire
Publication: July 15, 2014
Rating:3/5

Annie hates running. No matter how far she jogs, she can’t escape the guilt that if she hadn’t broken up with Kyle, he might still be alive. So to honor his memory, she starts preparing for the marathon he intended to race.

But the training is even more grueling than Annie could have imagined. Despite her coaching, she’s at war with her body, her mind—and her heart. With every mile that athletic Jeremiah cheers her on, she grows more conflicted. She wants to run into his arms…and sprint in the opposite direction. For Annie, opening up to love again may be even more of a challenge than crossing the finish line.(Goodreads)

Annie is running a marathon in honor of her boyfriend who died in a car accident (he was planning to run the marathon that she's decided to run). She hated running initially but the strict training schedule has brought order to her life that was slowly falling apart while she grieved for him. During one of her running sessions Annie met Jeremiah and was instantly intrigued and almost immediately felt guilty because of it.

I liked this book. Annie was a great character and broke my heart. She did what many people do, she met a guy, they began a relationship, and other relationships fell by the waist side, she never made many friends in high school, or joined any clubs because her boyfriend was her whole life, she when he died, Annie seemed to have nothing left until she began training for the marathon. Annie has great character development, we watched her slowly consider letting Jeremiah into her life, we watched her try to build up friendships and prepare for college. We watched as Annie repaired her relationship with her mom, and start her life in college. I could hardly find anything to complain about where Annie was concerned. I do wish there was more substance to Jeremiah though. He was an adrenalin junkie but I never really understood why. The author seemed to have a pretty good outline of Jeremiah (his personality was pretty in tact) but some of the substance seemed to me missing.

Overall I liked this book and would consider reading more by the author.

Well done.