Review: Breathing Room – Susan Elizabeth Phillips

She’s Dr. Isabel Favor, America’s diva of self-help.
He’s Ren Gage, Hollywood’s favorite villain.
Sometimes you just know that God has a sense of humor.
Dr. Isabel Favor, author of Four Cornerstones for a Favorable Life, has sacrificed everything to build her self-help empire. Then, in a matter of weeks, it all comes crashing down. She loses her money to an unscrupulous accountant, her fiancé to a frumpy older woman, and her reputation to headlines denouncing her as a fraud. America’s diva of self-help soon discovers she can fix everyone’s life but her own. Broke, heartsick, and soul-weary, she heads for Italy in search of a little breathing room.

Lorenzo Gage makes his living killing people… on the silver screen, that is. He’s viciously handsome and sublimely talented. But as he begins his vacation in Italy, he’s also vaguely dissatisfied. Being a villain with a face to die for has its rewards, but he hates the feeling that everything he’s neglected in life is catching up with him. Then he spots Isabel sipping a glass of wine in a sidewalk café. A good guy wouldn’t think of seducing such a tidy-looking woman… but he’d never seen the fun in playing the hero.

It doesn’t take long for Isabel to realize she’s escaped one kind of chaos only to be plunged into another. Even the shelter of a simple stone farmhouse nestled in a Tuscan olive grove can’t provide her with the refuge she needs—not when the townspeople are scheming to drive her away, and her plan to restore her reputation has come up empty. And especially not when the man who deceived her refuses to leave her in peace.

Breathing Room is a book for any woman who’s dreamed of wandering through a vineyard, of lazing under the Tuscan sky, or of reforming a deliciously wicked man. This is a story of hope and renewal, of love and redemption when it’s needed the most. Sometimes it takes a special place… a special love… a little breathing room… for life to deliver all its glorious promise.

Series:
Release Date: April 29, 2003
Publisher: Avon Books
Source: Provided by Publisher
Reviewer: Shannon
Rating:

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Reviewer’s Thoughts

BREATHING ROOM is one of those SEP books that just fun.  Fun because of the extremely witty banter between the hero and heroine.  And fun because Susan Elizabeth Phillips can make you believe you are wherever her characters are.

In BREATHING ROOM, we’re introduced to very high strung, always in control Dr. Isabel Favor.  She’s a self-help guru who finds herself without money, a fiance or patients.  So in a not so Dr. Favor move, she impulsively flies off to Tuscany, books at a villa and was determined to figure out a way to put herself back on track.  But she mets Lorenzo Gage, Hollywood’s hot villan, and her already out of control world spins even more.

Ren and Isabel has a chemistry from the moment they met and it was hard not to fall under their spell as the battled with each other.  Their banter, wit and sometimes sarcasm drew me to them.  But it wasn’t just them.  It was Ren’s ex-wife Tracy and her husband struggling to keep their marriage together.  There was a little bit of everything in the book:  sass, fun, hot sex and a very believable emotional connection between the characters and the reader.

If you haven’t read a Susan Elizabeth Phillips book before.  This is a great one to start your love affair with, because you will fall in love with SEP and her style of writing.