Harper Bliss regularly writes novels with an unconventional theme. This certainly also applies to A Breathless Place . In this book, the main character plans to commit suicide and neither she nor her co-star in this romance are “spring chickens”😂. And yet it works, as always in her books.

The beginning of the book is immediately confrontational. You meet Isabel ‘Izzy’ Adler who is writing her suicide note. She plans to commit suicide in about six months on the day after her 60th birthday. Izzy is a world-famous singer who has been unable to sing for 10 years after an unfortunate surgery. As a result, she has lost her reason for living.

Nobody knows about her intention. And certainly not the biographer who has been following her for a while.  But then the brilliant and beautiful journalist Leila Zadeh replaces the biographer. Izzy’s fears she will get in the way of her plans. The journalist is the same age as Izzy and has been through enough in her life. Izzy can’t ignore her because of that, this is a lady knows enough about life. Leila manages to get through to Izzy and very slowly makes her see that there might still be reason enough to stay alive.

Ok, so this is not a fun and light-hearted book. But it is so beautifully written! It doesn’t happen often to me that I don’t like the main character in a novel. However, Izzy made it difficult for me to understand her rationale for ending her life. Eventually this understanding came. That’s why it was so beautiful to see how Leila and Izzy choose each other without initially knowing what the consequences could be. And that the ladies are no ‘spring chickens’? You don’t notice that at all 😉🥰.