SILENCING BREATH by Joanne Brothwell – Review + Giveaway!

I was so happy when Joanne asked me to read and review the second book in her romantic paranormal Stealing Breath series, Silencing Breath. Keep reading after my review to learn about another book of Joanne’s, and you can also enter to win one of (3) e-books of Silencing Breath!

Silencing Breath by Joanne Brothwell

Genre: Adult Paranormal Romance

Publisher: Crescent Moon Press

Release date: March 15 2013

Source: e-book from author

Pages: 278

In a word: sexy, disturbing, violent, and full of nail-biting tension

I read the first book in this series, Stealing Breath, last August, so I was a little worried that I wouldn’t remember enough details to easily get back into the story of Sarah and Evan and the Skinwalkers. But if you have not yet read Stealing Breath, you can still enjoy Silencing Breath, since the author fills in many of the blanks as she goes along in a very unobtrusive way. I think I enjoyed this installment even more, although I wasn’t prepared for some of the extreme graphic violence. But the pages flew by very fast, and I reached the end before I knew it.

The book opens four years after the events in Stealing Breath, and we find Sarah and Evan happily cohabitating and celebrating their recent engagement. Sarah and Evan have a special bond: she is an Indigo Child and has the ability to not only feel other people’s emotions, but to help heal negative thoughts. Evan is a Sapphire Child, and when the two of them touch, they are a powerful force. Both of them have finally recovered from attacking Skinwalkers, followers of black magic that are able to leave their bodies and steal the souls of others. Sarah’s soul is particularly potent due to her Indigo Child status, and she and Evan barely escaped the Skinwalkers at the end of Stealing Breath.

The couple is deliriously happy and relieved that Evan’s evil brother Stefano is no longer a threat. But not too surprisingly, that happiness is about to end, when Evan disappears one day without a trace. Sarah calls upon her besties Amber and Kate (who are aware of Sarah’s powers and privy to the badness of Skinwalkers) to help her find Evan, and before you know it, the girls are once again mixed up in the evil-doings of Evan’s family. Stefano, an evil necromancer, has decided to bring his father Alesandro back from the dead (in a very creepy scene, I might add), and father and son are determined to make Evan pay for leaving his evil ways behind and joining Sarah in the light. What follows is a fast-paced race as the girls, along with some prison guard friends of Kate, search for Evan and try to stay alive long enough to get him safely out of Alesandro’s clutches.

Fair warning to the reader: there are some very bloody and disturbing torture scenes in this book that I wasn’t expecting. This caught me off guard a bit because I don’t think the first book was this violent. Alesandro is a terrifyingly evil creature. He demands complete obedience from those around him, and he’s willing to do anything to get it. The book is filled with descriptions of black magic, much of which involve cutting and stabbing with very large and nasty weapons. Sarah is so focused on doing whatever it takes to get Evan back, that she ignores the obvious traps that Stefano and Alesandro have set for her and brazenly drags her friends into danger not once, but multiple times.

There are some sexy scenes between Sarah and Evan, at least in the beginning before they are separated. I love the relationship they have, and the fact that they’ve been together for four years and are still wildly in love is a charmingly romantic element. But their love is tested, and even by the end we’re not certain if things will work out for the couple. It’s just another example of how well the author uses tension to unsettle the reader. She did throw in some romantic tension between Sarah and a man named Alex (who is helping the girls find Evan), and I was a little worried a love triangle was brewing, but it didn’t really go anywhere.

Brothwell’s prose is wonderfully descriptive and was a joy to read.  She sets her characters up in some very emotional situations, and I felt each one was completely believable. The emotions and tensions run high throughout most of the story, because no one is really safe in Silencing Breath. The author throws in a few twists to keep you guessing, and some characters are deceptively hiding their true natures. Aside from some confusing logistics near the end of the story that slowed the pace a bit for me, the book ends too soon and leaves us with unanswered questions. I’m hoping Joanne is hard at work on Book Three! If you love paranormal romance and can stomach some brutal torture scenes, I highly recommend this book.

Many thanks to the author for supplying a review copy.

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About the author:

Joanne Brothwell lives in the country on the Canadian prairie where her stories are inspired by the dead things that appear at her doorstep on a daily basis. Of course, her two pets, a retired police dog with titanium fangs and a feral barn cat missing two toes, make the safety of surrounding wildlife, at best, uncertain.

Joanne is known to daydream, and ever since grade school has been accused of having a poor attention span. The truth is, Joanne has an alternate reality inside her head, where characters speak to her, sometimes so loudly (and incessantly) she just can’t hear anything else!

You can rest assured you’ll see much more of Joanne’s writing in the future, as those characters in her head, having tasted the sweet freedom of release, simply refuse to be silenced!

Find Joanne:

Facebook * Twitter * Goodreads * Website

Just can’t get enough Joanne Brothwell? Her book Forest of the Forsaken: The Witch’s Snare is also available now:

In this eerie adaptation of Hansel and Gretel, the fairy tale ending may be far from happy.Following her mother’s death to cancer, Meg’s world crashes in around her. Her father re-marries within weeks of their loss, her witch step-mother is cold and rejecting, and her new step-brother, Joey, has some rather unusual sexual preferences. Meg’s only hope is to move away and leave her father and the tainted memories behind.When her father forces her to attend his honeymoon with this new and unwanted blended family, Meg finds herself in the remote wilderness of the Rocky Mountains, miles from civilization. Meg begins to see things in the forbidding forest—strange, unexplainable things she believes are the result of compounding stress. But when her father and step-mother disappear, leaving Meg and Joey to fend for themselves, lost and without supplies, she realizes her paranormal visions are not merely her imagination after all.

Meg’s knows of the dangerous and tortured demons of Joey’s past but her heart can’t resist him. Bound together in desperation and fear, their romance blooms bright and all-consuming despite the evil magic of the formidable forest.

Will Meg and Joey find their way back to civilization? Or will their love wither in submission to the shadows within the Forest of the Forsaken?