Room to Breathe - Review

Room to Breathe

By: Kasie West

Expected Publication: January 6, 2026 by Delacorte Romance

272 pages

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary

Source: Publisher via NetGalley (Thank you!!)

( Goodreads | Amazon )

*Note: The above link to Amazon is an affiliate links. Affiliate links support giveaways for Somewhere Only We Know readers.

Goodreads description--From the critically acclaimed author of Sunkissed comes a new swoony YA romance. Indy and Beau’s friendship is shattered, but getting accidentally locked in a bathroom together just might be what's needed to reconnect.

When the walls close in, the truth comes out.

When Indy’s life came crashing down, she made a no one could know. To the world, she’s still the same Indy—cool, calm, unshaken. But behind the scenes? It’s chaos.

Her tight-knit crew—Beau, Caroline, and Ava—were once her everything. Now they’re strangers she can’t seem to reach—especially Beau. And the only person she talks to these days is Cody, a skater-boy she used to think was so not her type. Funny how everything changes when your world flips upside down.

And then, as if things couldn’t get weirder, Indy finds herself literally stuck in a school bathroom with Beau. After months of silence, and there’s no escape. If they want out, they’ll have to face the messy truth about what happened between them and find a way back to what they once had. Or maybe even more . . .

Kasie West is an auto-read author for me. I've read nearly all, if not all, of her published books, and I find her to be a consistent author which is nothing to sneeze at. Most of her books are YA with clean romance. That's what genre Room to Breathe is categorized as well.

Room to Breathe is told by a then/now method. I don't always love books written in this method. Although, I do understand why they are done. I didn't love or hate it in Room to Breathe. You might find that you enjoy it more than I did if this isn't something that typically bothers you.

Here's the crux...Indy has had a falling out with her friends. And she find herself locked in a teacher's bathroom at school one afternoon. And she just happens to have gotten locked in with her ex-best friend, Beau. Slight spoilers, but Indy's dad was being investigated when his job noticed some iffy things. I can't remember if Kasie West spells it out for us, but I think it's embezzelment. Because he is being investigated in a criminal case, her parents and the officers have stressed that this isn't something that Indy is allowed to talk about with her friends. No one can know what's going on until the investigation is complete. It even gets to the point where Indy begins to question her own father and stress is building in her household between her parents and generally, everything. This is a lot on a kid. I remember two specific instances where my parents instructed me as a kid to keep quiet about two different sitatuations. And I ended up feeling like I was going to burst. In one instance, I did talk to an acquaintance. We weren't fairly close but she knew my family, and it ended up okay, but apparently she did talk to her dad who then ran into my dad and it was made known that I blabbed. The other instance, I ended up talking to a teacher, and as far as I know it didn't go any further. But secrets like that are hard for anyone to keep. And if it was causing the stress that it was on their family, of course, that stress would leak out to her friends.

Indy wasn't allowed to talk to her friends about what was going on with her. She did begin to make some questionable decisions which didn't help matters. But her friends could have put some weight into their history and given her the benefit of the doubt as well.

As I said, Kasie West is a consistent author. And one thing I find is that while I enjoy her stories, I never put too much weight into them. Like I don't overanalyze them or deconstruct them. I don't say this to put them down because I really enjoy them. But I enjoy them as they are for me, which is almost like a palate cleanser. I love reading them in between heavier books. They are usually light books that you know will have a happily ever after.

Favorite quote:

-But I also could no longer deny, without the distance we’d forced ourselves into over the past two months, that I missed him so much. More than I realized. But missing him wouldn’t fix anything. It was easier to be mad. Because the alternative was sad. And I was worried sad might destroy me. I’d been holding back that feeling for a long time. I’d been holding back a lot of feelings for a long time. The only one I had let flourish over the past several months was anger. And it had flourished. It had blossomed and bloomed and become beautiful.

Room to Breathe was another good book by Kasie West. I enjoyed it. I read it quickly. I can count on her to give me characters that I can like and root for, and Indy and Beau were just that. Room to Breathe gets 3.5 Stars. Have you read Room to Breathe? What did you think? Let me know!