He says all the right things for Kacey to feel desired, but continually holds back sex *for her own good*. Worse, he continually takes Kacey’s agency away from her. Trent lacks dimension as a character-not helped by the fact that the story is told in the first person by Kacey-and while the individual things he does for Kacey seem romantic-but borderline stalkerish-he’s really nothing but a plot device. And although there’s a lot to like about their dialogue, it’s not enough to sustain my investment in them as a couple. But for me, this made the romance feel tacked on and glamourised, rather than being a reflection of where Kacey is at with her grief. This is typical of the (very small number) of so-called extreme romances I’ve read, so perhaps this is par for the course. It has a very romancey feel whenever Kacey and Trent are together, but switches to a kind of angry and violent mood everywhere else. There’s an unevenness in the tone of this book. Which she will need after she accepts a job at the local strip club as a bartender. Instead, she seeks out the closest gym so she can expend all her energy on something productive, like kickboxing.

Kacey is attracted to Trent, but she mistrusts the attraction-after the accident, she resorted to all kinds of risky behaviour, and she’s determined not to fall back into bad habits.

They move into a dingy apartment building where Kacey encounters a mysterious but oh, so hot neighbour Trent, and single mother Storm and her daughter Mia. She and her sister Livie have basically run away from their guardians after their uncle made inappropriate advances towards Livie. Four years ago, Kacey Cleary was involved in a fatal car accident, and she’s been in state of post-traumatic shock ever since. The story starts off intriguingly enough. I picked this book up on a whim-young adult/new adult romance isn’t my subgenre of choice, especially now that this market is flooded with same-same books-but I was drawn by the title and the cover. Some great bits of dialogue can’t make up for a plot twist that undermines the happy ending beyond repair-a case of trying to make the characters suffer too much for no good reason.

Ten tiny breaths