2.5 starsONE TINY LIE is the second book in the Ten Tiny Breaths series that features the other sister, Livie. In TEN TINY BREATHS, I loved Livie’s presence. She was a rock. She was funny, smart and I was looking forward to her story.
However, once I started getting deeper and deeper into this book, several things popped up that didn’t sit well with me. For the sole purpose of getting it all out, I’ll talk about everything individually.
Livie:
Like I said, I enjoyed her in the last book. Kacey and Livie feel like a ying and yang symbol, they are so different from each other. The major thing that disappointed me about Livie was that she had no presence in this book at all. She seemed so spineless, so closed off and any actions she did make, angered me. All her emotions seemed not fully manifested or just seemed wrong to me.
But someone said to me...but that’s her personality, that’s just how Livie is. She is closed off because of what happened to her in the past. Yes, I get that, but it doesn’t force her to make stupid decisions.
Which leads me to the other thing I didn’t like about this book...
THE CHEATING!
I’m not sure why that was put there. It held no real purpose. For someone who is apparently “sexually repressed” (those are words straight from her therapist, who I will be talking about later), Livie takes on two guys in a love triangle (and it’s not a very good one) and makes a series of bad decisions. I really wanted to like Livie in this one, but her actions just made it very difficult to do.
Ashton:
I know some people who liked Ashton. For me, I couldn’t find a single thing I enjoyed about him. The fact that he was with Dana, but is also going around with other people just rubbed me the wrong way. I don’t know how someone can find that attractive.
Also, the time that Livie and Ash are together are glossed over in the beginning. We don’t get the full range of emotions that happened when they were drunk, therefore, we don’t see the chemistry. Later, what interaction we do have between the two seems like a tennis match – the back-and-forth seems more like a game than anything else.
Conner:
Conner is Ashton’s friend from Dublin. Him I liked! He was funny, he was charming, he was sweet. He was the guy I would have paired with Livie’s personality if I were some matchmaking guru. Livie needed someone who could coax her out of herself after what she had been through slowly, not a bad boy who wanted to get in her pants.
Dr. Stayner:
Dr. Stayner has been the most far off portrayal of a therapist I think I’ve read. I know Psychology because I have a degree in it and what Dr. Stayner does in this book just doesn’t happen in real life. The constantly meddling, the texting, the popping in here and there – it just made for a very unbelievable character.
Furthermore, Stayner’s diagnosis for Livie just didn’t ring true. She is dealing with grief and the other range of emotions that have altered her life greatly at such a young age. If I were her therapist, I’d say she was normal for someone who experienced what she had. She doesn’t have a full-blown condition. Slapping a label on it and just pushing her out into the world won’t cure her. It’s something Livie has to do on her own. She has to want to trust again, want to live again and that closed off personality will crumble around her when she finds that.
The humor:
If you’ve read the first book, then you know that Tucker uses humor almost like an extra character. It breathes life into her stories. I liked that about the first book. Some scenes in this book had me laughing out loud, other times the humor felt too forced.
As I found it hard to accept many things that were happening in this book, I can’t recommend it. However, I will be reading the next book in the series, FOUR SECONDS TO LOSE and just hoping this was a one-time slump.
Read my review for Fresh Fiction here