Sunday, March 29, 2026

Room to Breathe, by Kasie West

FBI agents ransacking the house one morning is how Indy discovers that her father has been accused of committing fraud.  But while the accusation and the subsequent investigation puts great strain on her and her family, Indy isn't allowed to tell any of her friends.  Suffering in enforced silence, her academics and her social relationships suffer.  She isolates herself, cuts off her friends, and ends up hanging out with a loser skateboarder who only adds to her troubles.

Then, through a twist of fate, she finds herself locked in the faculty bathroom with her former best friend Beau.  Stuck together for the next twenty hours or so, they have no choice but to dredge up recent events, confront each other, and work through their problems.  Told in alternating "then" and "now" chapters, their shared captivity leads to an easy-to-anticipate romantic breakthrough.

Cute and surprisingly breezy romance, in which the heavier material about family disintegration and Indy's acting out stands in awkward juxtaposition.  There's some pretty heavy stuff going on in this story for a story that obviously mostly wants to be about Indy and Beau finding each other.  There certainly would have been easier ways for that to have been pulled off.  

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