SYNOPSIS:

I was warned about Tristan Cole.

“Stay away from him,” people said.
“He’s cruel.”
“He’s cold.”
“He’s damaged.”

It’s easy to judge a man because of his past. To look at Tristan and see a monster.

But I couldn’t do that. I had to accept the wreckage that lived inside of him because it also lived inside of me.

We were both empty.
We were both looking for something else. Something more.
We both wanted to put together the shattered pieces of our yesterdays.

Then perhaps we could finally remember how to breathe.

*****Mel’s Review*****

5 “I’m Yours” Stars!
(ARC provided by author)
(BR with Patty & Dee)

-How did two people so broken find each other’s shattered pieces?

Elizabeth aka Liz is a 28 yr. old woman living in the small town of Meadows Creek, Wisconsin with her five year old daughter Emma. After suffering a heartbreaking loss a year ago, Liz is just trying to get through life one day at a time. She feels broken & is barely existing. She’s just sleep walking through life. The only thing she lives for is her daughter.

One day Liz crosses paths with a man named Tristan Cole. Tristan is intense & angry, but she sees the same sadness in his eyes that is in her own. She feels a connection to this man, even if it’s just to his pain. As Liz finds out more about the mysterious, reclusive Tristan, she learns they have a lot more in common than she’d like. Tristan’s life was also shattered in the blink of an eye. He lost everything he cared about & everything he knew changed.

-I wondered if he knew how handsome yet frightening he was.

-I saw past the hate in his stare and noticed the hurt in his frown. I saw the broken parts that somehow matched my own.

-Tristan was broken in all the same places I was shattered.

-He was beautiful. He was scary. He was real.

-We were living in our own worlds of little memories, and even though we were both separate, somehow we managed to feel for one another. Lonely often recognized lonely. And today for the first time, I began to see the man behind the beard.

-I’d seen a gentle, broken side of Tristan that many seemed to miss.

Liz & Tristan are both broken souls just trying to breathe. They find comfort & a level of peace in each other. They are both tired of being lonely all the time, & just want to remember what it’s like to feel again.

They eventually fall hopelessly in love & start to heal through each other. Their feelings are scary, but they both feel alive again. This was such a beautiful, emotional story about love, loss, & second chances. This book made my heart feel so much, & reminded me yet again how much I love this authors writing! Just a fabulous beautiful book that makes you feel EVERYTHING!!!

-I couldn’t stop touching him. I couldn’t stop needing him. I couldn’t stop wanting him.

-When we were together, the past wasn’t as painful to take in. When we were together, I never for a second felt alone.

-I didn’t know it was possible. I didn’t know the broken pieces of a heart could still beat for love.

-She’s the reason I started to breathe again.

-She breathed life back into my soul.

-He made me laugh in a world that was determined to make me cry.

-He was love.

*****Dee’s Review*****

***** 5 Breathtaking Stars*****

(ARC kindly provided by Author)
(BR with Mel and Patty <3)

When I first learned about this book, my first thought was, what a gorgeous cover! But what’s inside the pages of this novel surpasses the attractive cover or any expectations I had about Brittainy C. Cherry’s new book. The Air He Breathes is a thing of beauty, raw and emotional.

Elizabeth has been grieving the death of her husband. He died in a car accident a year ago and right after the funeral, she grabbed her daughter and left town. She went to live with her mother because she needed distance between her and the home she shared with her husband. Being there without him was simply too painful for her.

Her relationship with her mother is not the best. Elizabeth doesn’t approve of her mom’s lifestyle. Ever since her father died her mom has been going from man to man looking for an answer to the loss. Fed-up with it, Elizabeth decides is time for her and her daughter Emma to go back home and face their new life.

Elizabeth has a new neighbor; Tristan Cole, a recluse that everybody claims is the new town crazy. When she comes face to face with him, she can see past his rugged and unkempt appearance. She can see her own soul in his eyes. She can see that they share the same pain, the same loss.

After a few explosive encounters, Tristan starts to realized that whenever Liz is around his numbness goes away. Whether it’s annoyance or sexual tension, he feels. He no longer is a walking dead man when he is with her. Tristan and Liz start opening up about their pain. They’ve both lost loved ones and a big piece of themselves as well, and so they try to find refuge in each other. They find that they can both re-live their pasts through kisses and a fierce passion that while still painful, and makes them feel guilty, is the only thing that takes the loneliness away.

One day, they no longer see their dead spouses in each other. They only see and crave Tristan and Liz. The pain of the past has given them hope for the future. Tristan has fallen in love with Elizabeth and her daughter Emma. But just when things start looking up and they can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel a terrible secret threatens to take everything away, again.

“As long as air moves in and out of my lungs, as long as I breathe, I will fight for you. I will fight for us.”

This is one is one of those books you just want to hug tight. It was beautiful and heartbreaking but it also had a few moments where it made me laugh, hard. Every character in this story was complex and unique. Apart from loving Tristan and Liz; I adored her best friend Faye and Liz’s daughter Emma, they added humor to the story. Even though this is a story mainly about grief and finding love after a big loss, it wasn’t all sad. I’ve read a few books where grief is the main component in the plot and they make it all about the sadness and you even feel depressed after you read it, but not this one. Yes, it had sad moments but I found it so hopeful too. The message in this book was that love can heal, and that it’s possible to love and do it hard even after a huge loss. Beautiful read, I loved it!

My The Air He Breathes music playlist:
*I Miss Her by Jessie J
*Babe I’m Gonna Leave You by Led Zeppellin
*Lover of The Light by Mumford and Sons
*One Day You Will by lady Antebellum
*Tomorrow by Avril Lavigne.

*****Patty’s Review*****

*****FIVE+++++++++++++++++ STARS*****
(ARC Generously Provided by Author in Exchange For An Honest Review)
{BR with Dee and Mel}

BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!

“Every second. Every minute. Every hour. Every day.”

This story was AMAZING!! If I didn’t have so many RL distractions I would have devoured this book and honestly I am happy that I had those distractions, because I was able to savor this one!! After having finished this book, I can truly say that Brittainy C Cherry, is one hell of a writer! I would compare her to COHO from her Hopeless and Slammed days. The dialog between the characters goes from laugh out loud hysterical, to tug at your heart strings emotional!!! I literally highlighted the ENTIRE book!!!

Tristan and Lizzie are two people who sufferedTREMENDOUS loss. It’s the kind of loss that most people never recover from. Each grieve in somewhat different ways but both will feel a strong connection to each other.

Lizzie runs off with her little daughter Emma, and stays with her mom for a while. Being in her own home holds too many memories and she’s not ready to face all the ghosts of the past. But living with her mom proves to be much harder for her, so eventually she decides to take her daughter back to their own home. On her first day back in town, she runs into the meanest and most mysterious resident in Meadows Creek. He keeps to himself and can often be seen running barefoot all over town. Lizzie, however, sees past appearances and finds Tristan to be very intriguing. There is something about his stormy eyes that draws her to him.

Tristan has become a recluse. A monster. He lives with so much guilt and pain from his past. I tell you, my heart broke wide open for this man. I seriously think if this had happened to me, I would beg God to take my life!! Just thinking now about his pain is making me get all teary eyed. He instantly feels something for Lizzie but fights so hard to push her away because he knows he doesn’t deserve her and that eventually he’d only end up hurting her.

Eventually Lizzie, along with her little girl, Emma, are able to break through Tristan’s walls and they form a very close bond. Lizzie and Tristan eventually take their relationship to the physical level and both even agree that they will use each other while having sex to get over the pain of missing their loved ones. As time passes, they both start to develop true feelings and can no longer go on with their arrangement of pretending they are someone else while being intimate. Now they want to be that special someone to each other, but are holding back for their own reasons, which in my opinion, were misguided.

There wasn’t much that I didn’t love about this story. The secondary characters were well developed and happened to bring some of the laugh out loud moments and then also made some of the emotional scenes, gut wrenching. I loved sweet little Emma and her nickname for Tristan, aka TICK. Oh and those feathers!!!! I never knew the meaning behind “white feathers” but wow, what a beautiful sentiment!!

I swooned so hard over Tristan. Any man that would build a library for his woman and write little love post it notes as well, will always win me over hands down!!!

There were a couple of things I had issues with. I guess the author added them in to create the angst towards the end, and so I willingly overlooked them because damn I loved this book so HARD! I was sad when I got to the last page. This is the kind of book that makes me so hungry to find that next spectacular read!!

I HIGHLY recommend this one!!