Blog Tour Review: Breathing Black – Piper Payne

A desolate childhood; a scarred, jaded, damaged girl. Larkin Grant knew she couldn’t end up like her mother … so she ran. All her belongings packed in the back of a rusted, brown Cadillac, her best friend June in the passenger seat as the co-pilot, she fled Aspen and never looked back.

A new life in a new city, Larkin was finally starting to breathe again, an unfamiliar sense of happiness seeping into her lungs. Landon Black, the boy she loved from afar, came back into her life despite leaving him and her awful memories buried hundreds of miles away. A weakened pulse brought back to life.

He said she was beautiful. She was starting to believe him. He pursued her and changed the course of everyone’s plans. Life had dealt Larkin a cruel hand, but maybe this was it. Maybe the boy that never knew she existed finally saw her and came to free her from the darkness of her past.

But we are never truly free. There are secrets that bind us and lies that unravel from the most beautiful of lips. Blackness that suffocates and makes us question everything we thought we knew. Larkin and Landon are intertwined in ways they never imagined, their future unclear as ghosts come back to haunt them.

Friendship. Revenge. Love. Drugs. Murder. Deceit.

The first in a two-book series, Breathing Black is a mix of suspense and breathless romance. It’s a provocative tale that challenges what one is willing to do to protect the ones they love. An emotional journey where trust isn’t an option and falling in love never hurt so bad.

Series: The Black and White Duet #1
Release Date: December 2nd 2014
Publisher: Self Published
Source: AToMR
Reviewer: Shannon
Rating:

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Reviewer’s Thoughts

The blurb for this book completely pulled me in.  A girl broken down by her childhood trying to rebuild herself as an adult and then running into the boy who she secretly loved in high school. A boy, when now man, who has searched for the girl who changed his life but couldn’t find.  But BREATHING BLACK went down a path I hadn’t been prepared for and introduced me to characters I found myself having a hard time liking

Larkin Smith had a horrible childhood.  With no father in the picture, she was raised by a mother who was an addict, sometimes whore, but always on the lookout for another man to marry and swindle out of his money.  Her mother’s lifestyle forced them to move around, a lot.  Larkin feared her mother and her mother’s unsavory friends, which forced her to turn into the invisible wallflower at school.  And being the wallflower, Larkin learned to watch and learn.  Everyone ignored Larkin, but there was one person she couldn’t ignore and that was Landon Black.  She was drawn to him and she didn’t know why, despite his reputation and who his friends were.  And when her best friend June gave her an opportunity to be alone with Landon one night, she took it…even though Landon didn’t know who she was.  So imagine, several years later, when she has a runs  into Landon again the feelings and memories that stirs up.  But as she tries to navigate her feelings and Landon’s attention, her fears from hers and June’s past rear their ugly heads and then even stranger things start to happen, making Larkin question everything and turning to her new friend Jesse White.

I wanted to like Larkin, I really did.  You couldn’t read what she had gone through and not feel sorry for her.  But there was an even bigger part of me that wanted to shake her and ask what the hell she was doing, especially when it came to Landon and Jesse.  Let’s start with Landon.  A guy from your past, whom you secretly loved, appears out of nowhere and says he wants to get to know you.  It felt like some key getting to know you topics were skipped and for a girl that used to be so good at reading people, she obviously choose to overlook some very sketchy things about Landon’s behavior.  Then there’s Jesse.  She picked him to date for a work function to make Landon jealous.  He turns her down but they end up meeting by chance at a bar.  When she runs into trouble, his house is the first place you think of going to for help?  When did he become that kind of friend?  And when did she develop these feelings for him when she was so gaga over Landon.  It left me confused.

The subplot about the suspicious activities involving Landon’s father, June’s uncle and Larkin’s mother was lost to me.  Maybe because it seemed ridiculous to have them breathing down Larkin’s neck now over something Larkin’s mother had when she’s been gone for so many years.  And as much as I want to understand why Landon would be his father’s pawn in all this, I just can’t see it…especially after how distraught he was over what had happened between himself and Larkin.

The story had it’s moments and the more I read the more I wanted to fall in love with it like everyone else, I just couldn’t.  I may have read this at a time when I just wasn’t feeling this kind of storyline, but I’m sure others (as reviews have shown) will enjoy Larkin’s story.

My mother once said love is like a drug, fast and euphoric. Licking lips, high on the idea it’s going to last forever, until you’re clawing at your skin trying to escape the destructive poison you let inside.

I woke up to my phone vibrating in my purse. The realization of the darkness that surrounded me came crashing back into my pounding head along with everything else that had taken place. I sat up and crawled on the cold tile floor, following the sound of my phone drumming into the ground. I grabbed it out of my purse and dismissed an unknown Colorado area code number.  

 4:30 p.m. I’d been in this bathroom for hours.

 By choice.

 I didn’t want to leave, and I didn’t want move or face reality, so I chose to lie there and let the crippling fog of sleep take over so I could pretend none of it happened.

I peeked under the bathroom door into his office. It was dark and silent so I felt up the wall finding the light switch and turned it on. Walking over to the bathroom sink and looking into the mirror was painful, a visible reminder of how pathetic I truly was. Splashing water on my face wouldn’t rinse away the misery. I left as quickly as possible, peeking out of the blinds into the hallway until the coast was clear so I could open the door and run down the emergency exit stairs. 

Right when I got home, I got into the bathtub. All I wanted to do was cleanse myself of Landon Black, but the water wouldn’t get hot enough, and my hands couldn’t scrub fast enough. I wanted to wash away the way he made me feel. I wanted to wash away everything he did to me Saturday night. I was so disgusted with myself. How could I be so blind? Sobs strangled my lungs as my cries tore up my throat until after a while I finally just stopped. Like a blown fuse, my body shut off. I lay in a white bathroom, in the white tub, with white noise resonating in my ears, yet all I could think about was red. I sat in the bathtub letting the hot water that had now turned to ice soak my skin. He used me. Everything that happened between us was a goddamn lie. So many questions raced through my mind. The biggest one was why?

My love for literature and writing is an addiction. My mind is continually telling stories and I have a queue of books I want to write being stacked up in my brain. I don’t know how to write pretty and perfect so I write perfectly flawed and unpredictable. Just like life.

I’m married to my best friend and I’m mother to three little miracles. I love going to farmers markets, bookstores, and long drives with my family in my ruby red Bronco. I also have an unhealthy love for makeup, Oreos, Halloween, queso dip, psychic readings, sushi, massages, and Redd’s Apple Ale.

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