Readers beware; here there be spoilers.

Breathless follows the misadventures of a teenage couple as they blunder their way through a religious-flavored conspiracy dedicated to the task of either getting them to bump uglies or kill each other. I didn’t stick around long enough to find out which.

I’m not a fan of Twilight, so keep that in mind—harnessing the combined power of teenage sexuality, angst, and hints of the supernatural has about as much appeal to me as a root canal minus the nitrous oxide. But if creepy vampire love (minus the vampires) is your thing, then Breathless will no doubt appeal—it follows the standard YA love-story equation with a fanaticism that would leave its religiously-oriented villains blushing with envy.

My two main problems with this story are as follows:

Number 1: It’s listed under ‘Young Adult’, and yet it starts with the main character groping some guy’s crotch and trying to get laid. Now, I’m certainly no prude when it comes to prose and sexuality—and I’ve certainly pushed the limits of what’s appropriate for a ‘Young Adult’ novel myself—but if you’re going to bill a book as YA, you might want to hold out until at least chapter two before our beloved protagonist grabs some guy’s junk and asks for sexytimes. Just sayin’.

Number 2: It’s as predictable as a story about me and a plate of bean burritos (SPOILER: Somebody gets eaten!). From chapter 2, I knew the email at the top (morningstar68) was one of Azazel’s parents. As soon as Azazel’s best friend (Lilith) opened her mouth for more than six lines of dialogue, I knew that she was in on whatever conspiracy Azazel’s parents were part of. And as soon as I knew this, I knew that Toby’s reservations concerning sex were probably centered around this same conspiracy (I glanced ahead to confirm these suspicions before writing the review—but if I’ve somehow completely missed the boat on this, I beg both your pardon and the author’s pardon). To be fair, it might not have been the author’s intent to cloak these things in mystery—maybe we’re supposed to figure it out early on. But when I read it, it felt very much like it was supposed to be more mysterious than it was.

Now that I’ve gotten all the nastiness out of the way, onto the good: It’s clean, it’s easy to read, and (so far), Azazel walks that fine line between being a self-loathing ninny and an overly confident Mary Sue (and in this respect, Breathless has already managed to top Twilight). Though it follows the YA love equation closely, Breathless barely avoids turning its central characters into shallow stereotypes—though competent, capable, selfless, and incredibly handsome (ugh), Jason avoids becoming some horrible sparkling vat-bred Edwardian-clone thanks to his self-confidence issues and the confusion he experiences as a result of being some immense conspiracy’s centerpiece. In addition, the prose strikes that ever-fragile balance between sounding like a teenager without sounding like it was written by a teenager. There are some issues that jar my inner editor (too many ellipsis, odd formatting choices), but nothing too terrible.

It’s for these reasons I’m giving it three stars—I hate this type of fiction with an unspeakable passion, but those who enjoy it could certainly do far, far worse.

PS: I skipped ahead to confirm a few suspicions, but otherwise I only read four chapters in. So, keep that in mind—it might start going way south sometime during Chapter 5.

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