Breathe, Annie, Breathe by Miranda Kenneally, published July 2014 by Sourcebooks Fire.
Read: February 2015
Genre: Young Adult/Contemporary/Romance
Source: Publisher – this does not affect my opinion of the book.
#Pages: 320
Get It Now: Wordery
Goodreads Synopsis: 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.
The Review
I’d seen this book, and others by the same author, doing the rounds on book blogs – so obviously it grabbed my interest, but I didn’t pick it up for the longest time. Sadly, I judged a book by its cover (this style of cover just doesn’t appeal to me). From what I know, this is part of a series but each book can be read as a stand-alone (correct me if I’m wrong!), and when Kayla @ The Thousand Lives wrote a gush-filled review, and then this appeared on NetGalley, well – who was I to say no?
This is one of those books where I thought it was a pretty enjoyable read, but I struggle to form coherent sentences with my words to describe it in any greater detail. When I first finished this book I was all set to give it a lower-than-I-was-expecting-to rating. However, it’s been a couple of weeks since I read this, and when putting this review together, a lot of what happened in the book has stayed with me, so props for that.
On a personal level, I often struggle with sports-related books, sports are not my forte! I know some people love them, and if you’re into running, you’ll probably enjoy this read more than I did. I did appreciate that we not only see character development in this novel, but also a realistic fitness-level development, if that makes sense? We go on the emotional and physical journey with Annie – that was well thought out – and I loved that the main relationship was built over time, yay for non-instant love!
Breathe, Annie, Breathe was well-paced with a good story-line, but it didn’t blow me away and I don’t know if I would go out of my way to read more of these novels. I did have one pretty major problem, which happened early on in the book, and just seemed totally out-of-character. That threw me off for a while and still left a sour taste in my mouth by the end of the book.
Quotables:
“Maybe you don’t have to figure life out at all. Maybe it just is.”
“A boy should fit into your life – not become it. High school is when you start to define yourself. Don’t define yourself as the girl who has a boyfriend and nothing else.”
The Rating
3.5/5
Have you read Breathe, Annie, Breathe, or any other books from this series? How do you rate them? Let me know in the comments!
Confessions of a Book Geek 
I’ve read one Kenneally book (Racing Savannah – I think that was the title) and I was just so-so about it. I also really am not into sports books. I actually like adult romances where the guy is an athlete, as long as it isn’t really about that sport. Because sports are just so boring to read about (or watch or talk about) for me. 🙂
I’m glad that you did enjoy this for the most part and that it has stuck with you. I’m still not sure if this book is for me, though.
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Sports is generally a no-go for me, partly because I’m so ignorant to terminology and culture of it, so I miss a lot of the important themes and elements that others pick up on, and partly because of my limited interest in it, so if the text is sport heavy it loses me. I do love me some One Tree Hill though, basketball and all! Lol This one wasn’t so bad, as it was running, so there wasn’t much I couldn’t relate to, even if I don’t enjoy running personally. I’m not sure if I’ll read any others yet, but this one was pretty solid and worth a read 🙂 R x
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I adored this book just for all the running bits. I don’t know if I want to read anymore of the series but as someone who loves running, I can say yes, I loved the fitness aspects of it and found it motivated me to run too. What threw you, was it the detour off the path on a run one day? That threw me, it just felt awkward and how come no one noticed how slow her run was that day!
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I definitely think if you’re a runner you’ll have a different appreciation for this read, because those bits felt authentic, even to me! Lol not sure how I’d fare with the rest of the series, as they’re all sports heavy but different sports, right? And YES! That’s exactly the part – haha I didn’t even think of her run speed that day, it just seemed very out of character and didn’t match her inner voice, or her history, and as someone who thinks the same way i.e doesn’t do that lightly, I just thought it was way too out there and made me uncomfortable for some reason! R x
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[…] Hopeless (4/5), Losing Hope (4/5), The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight (3/5), Breathe, Annie, Breathe (3.5/5), Dumped: Stories of Women Unfriending Women (4/5), and The DUFF […]
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