A review by ashley_webb13
Fighting for Breath by Abrianna Denae

3.0

ARC Review

This story follows Lucas and Brooks, who have been in a relationship since they were teens. Also Cole and Nathan who are brothers.
Cole takes care of Nathan because they lost their parents a few years back. They have a pretty big age gap for siblings, not saying it’s impossible as my oldest and youngest have a 10 year age difference.
Nat/Nathan has trouble in school and his counselor is Lucas’ brother who ends up referring them to being trained by Brooks at the gym, which is how the 4 of them meet.
Brooks and Lucas are smitten with Cole right away and the feeling is mutual.
I did like how everyone was very supportive of Nat and his struggles.
So I’m not going to lie, I struggled a bit with this one. I felt the chemistry was off? I felt like it happened really quick, like they’re all friends then boom it’s the end of the novella and Lucas, Brooks, and Cole are in a relationship. I felt like the relationship aspect lacked development. Also the one spicy scene with the 3 of them didn’t include them all together, it was like they just passed Cole around.
I also struggled with reading Brooks pronouns, no offense to anyone, but for me it was difficult to read from a technical standpoint. I found myself having to skim back several times, especially in the beginning to see if I missed something. I think it’s because they/them typically refers to more than one and that’s automatically where my mind went the first half of the book. I will say this is the first book I’ve read where a MC has they/them pronouns so maybe I’m just not used to it, It got easier towards the end but still, I won’t lie and say I didn’t struggle with it. Overall the story was decent, well edited and maybe if it were longer and had more time for a relationship to develop I would’ve been into it more. It all felt very sudden.