Title: Barely Breathing
Series: Colorado High Country
Author: Pamela Clare
Read copy: eBook (Kindle)
Published: May 7, 2016
Publisher: Pamela Clare
ASIN: B01FCFNHKW
BLURB
My rating:
***eBook available for free on Amazon***
Twelve years after they've broken each other's teenage hearts, Lexi Jewell and Austin Taylor meet again when she comes back to her hometown in hopes of fixing her father's marriage and letting him keep the family inn. Lexi and Austin are both matured and changed, yet one thing remains the same—their explosive attraction to one another and their lingering feelings.
Pamela Clare is my auto-buy author no matter what genre she writes. Though there were a smidgen of RS thrown into the mix to heighten the tension toward the end, this was a straight-up contemporary (unlike her I-Team
series, though one of the characters makes an appearance in this book).
When you start a new series, there's always this little hurdle of background to overcome...the necessary exposition to get the reader acquainted with the characters, backstory and environment. As recently experienced, in the hands of a newbie or less-skilled author the task of exposition can backfire splendidly. That was not the case in this book. Instead of a massive info-dump, the tidbits of backstory were expertly interwoven with the "present", slowly painting the bigger picture, highlighting what changed and what didn't, fleshing out the characters and their relationships, building on the current relationships and interactions, connecting the past with the present seamlessly and fluidly.
The characters were nicely layered and multidimensional, their actions and reactions relatable and realistic, making the reader root for each and every one of them, hoping to see them in the future book, reading their individual stories. The close-knit community made the town of Scarlet Springs, Colorado a character in its own right, but, unlike most small-town-America settings, this one turned out not to be creepy or harboring dark secrets (which was a nice change of pace).
The story, since it was a regular contemporary romance, revolved around the main protagonists, Lexi and Austin, and their attempt at second chance. They shared a past, both guilty of mistakes in their youth that drove them apart, both determined to keep things light (at least at the beginning). Their story was, unfortunately, one sex scene away from a PWP designation. I don't mind sex scenes in my novels, I mind when they're "overdone", over-abundant and seemingly never-ending. It was the backstory and the history these two shared that saved the romance part and their family, old and new friends, the town and Austin's job and volunteer work for SAR that provided much needed respite from the bedroom action that slowly wore thin.
Again, in the hands of a different author, this could've been an utter DNF disaster, but I got hooked to the characters and the little town and its community. I'm looking forward to the rest of the series. Austin's best friend Eric Hawke is next. That should be fun.
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