Room To Breathe by Kasie West
Kasie West is one of my favorite YA authors. Her books are sweet, fun, light, and genuinely feel-good. They always have the perfect happy ending and lovable characters who are easy to connect with. Room to Breathe is one of her newest books, and I read it a little while ago. I’ve read all of her books and waited so long for this one to become available on Libby (which, by the way, is a great library app where you can have access to so many books for free!). I finished it in one day and couldn’t put it down.
I think what I loved about this book is how emotional it was. The main character, Indy, is struggling due to some legal trouble her father is in. This impacts other areas of her life until she feels like literally everything is falling apart around her. Most of all, her friendships are broken. Especially the one with her best friend, Beau.
The tension and iciness between Beau and Indy give off best friends to enemies to lovers vibes. Such a good combination, in my opinion! Basically, they end up in a forced proximity situation, locked inside their school with no way to get out. This forces them to confront the hurt and anger they’ve been holding onto and ends up bringing them back together. Even though it’s a very messy process filled with lots of misunderstandings and complicated feelings. I loved the ending and couldn’t put it down until everything was resolved. I thought it was interesting how the perspective kept switching from past to present.
This book felt very similar to a few of Kasie West’s other books, such as By Your Side, Love, Life, and the List, and Places We’ve Never Been. I highly recommend those three, especially if you end up liking Room to Breathe. This book was a perfect combination of romance and the deeper battles of isolation, going through challenging struggles, and navigating relationships. The emphasis on healing and being vulnerable also stood out to me. I like how Indy has her flaws but is likeable at the same time.
As far as content goes, I would recommend this book for high school-aged teens and up. For sexual content, I wanted to mention that there is a decent amount of kissing. Due to the forced proximity subgenre, the characters do end up spending the night together, cuddled up to share a jacket on the floor, but nothing happens besides kissing. So there is no explicit content, and I thought it was a safe read overall. But the book does have more kissing/hugging/cuddling than her others, in my opinion. The level isn’t spicy, though. Overall, it’s a wonderful book.