The Air He Breathes by Brittainy C. Cherry

DNF @ 18%

Not quite my fastest DNF, but it didn't take me long to realize that this book wasn't for me. THE AIR HE BREATHES employs your typical Early New Adult Formula, which means it's 2 parts tragedy, 3 parts insta-love, 1 part toxic gender roles, and 5 parts cliche.

Elizabeth meets Tristan when she accidentally runs over his dog. She's about as sympathetic as one might expect, i.e. not very. ("Oh my God, why is he being so mean to me? What did I do?") Honestly, if someone ran over my pet and then started arguing with me about what the fastest route to the animal hospital was, I'd probably be pretty sour, too.

Tristan is a bit of a psycho. He yells a lot and when we first meet him, he's running around without shoes. I'm guessing that his rage is what he uses to hide his emotional pain, because he's just too ~macho~ to emotion, you guys, oh, the suffering, oh, woe, woe.

It seems that each of these characters had someone close to them die and now they're upset and afraid of letting others in and being hurt all over again. Tristan has a dog. Elizabeth has a young daughter. Both of them (Elizabeth and Tristan) have the emotional maturity of teenagers. I guess if you're into authors like J.A. Redmerski and Abbi Glines, you might like this. Me? Not so much.

1 out of 5 stars