Breathing Room - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Breathing Room – Susan Elizabeth Phillips

She’s Dr. Isabel Favor, America’s diva of self-help.
He’s Ren Gage, Hollywood’s favorite villain.
Sometimes you just know that God has a sense of humor.

Dr. Isabel Favor, author of Four Cornerstones for a Favorable Life, has sacrificed everything to build her self-help empire. Then, in a matter of weeks, it all comes crashing down. She loses her money to an unscrupulous accountant, her fiancé to a frumpy older woman, and her reputation to headlines denouncing her as a fraud. America’s diva of self-help soon discovers she can fix everyone’s life but her own. Broke, heartsick, and soul-weary, she heads for Italy in search of a little breathing room.

Lorenzo Gage makes his living killing people… on the silver screen, that is. He’s viciously handsome and sublimely talented. But as he begins his vacation in Italy, he’s also vaguely dissatisfied. Being a villain with a face to die for has its rewards, but he hates the feeling that everything he’s neglected in life is catching up with him. Then he spots Isabel sipping a glass of wine in a sidewalk café. A good guy wouldn’t think of seducing such a tidy-looking woman… but he’d never seen the fun in playing the hero.

It doesn’t take long for Isabel to realize she’s escaped one kind of chaos only to be plunged into another. Even the shelter of a simple stone farmhouse nestled in a Tuscan olive grove can’t provide her with the refuge she needs — not when the townspeople are scheming to drive her away, and her plan to restore her reputation has come up empty. And especially not when the man who deceived her refuses to leave her in peace.

Breathing Room is a book for any woman who’s dreamed of wandering through a vineyard, of lazing under the Tuscan sky, or of reforming a deliciously wicked man. This is a story of hope and renewal, of love and redemption when it’s needed the most. Sometimes it takes a special place… a special love… a little breathing room… for life to deliver all its glorious promise.

My Review of Breathing Room

I really struggled to find an audio book this week. I thought I wanted to listen to a sci-fi, nope. Thriller perhaps? Nope! Then I found this one and decided to give it a try, romance was the flavour of the week it seemed. And I really enjoyed it. Up until the end at least…

Isabel is a self-help guru who has just lost everything, when her accountant is found to have committed tax fraud. With no money to her name, newly single and destitute, with nothing to lose she decides to go and have a break away from the world in a house in a village in Tuscany. However, the man who owns the house is a world famous actor villain, and she has encountered him before. And he was less than honest.

It was a solid fun, cute and romantic read. I enjoyed the characters even though they felt a bit dated.

There were some laugh out loud moments for sure. I caught myself cackling a few times in some of the scenes. I really enjoy the way Phillips develops the relationships between her characters. Every one of her books is a slow-burn and they are generally extremely satisfying reads. In fact her book “Match Me if you Can” is one of my favourite romance books of ALL TIME!

However the ending ruined it for this one. I am not sure where it went with a lot of the “goddess” stuff, I didn’t really know what I was suddenly listening to at the end it all got a bit weird. And I was ultimately unsatisfied with the ending, otherwise this would have been a good 4-star read for me. Such a shame!

Did I enjoy the audio version?

I did indeed, the narrator Kate Flemming did a great job. She has such a strong voice that her male portrayals were not too bad at all and I loved her voice when she was using the little kids voices! Cute!