Guest
Post: Starting and Starting Over in Room To Breathe by
Liz Talley
Room to Breathe is a story of two southern women at very
different stages in their lives who are experiencing the same sense of
"starting over.” Daphne Witt is weeks from turning forty, in a career that
she never expected, and ready to start dating after a divorce. Her daughter
Ellery is essentially untested in the world. Young, beautiful, accustomed to
everything going her way, Ellery finds herself with a less than dazzling job, a
distracted fiancé and, for the first time ever, doubts about who she is and
where she’s going. When the novel begins, we find Daphne dealing with an
awakened libido she thought long dead, and Ellery struggling to accept working
for her mother and living with a fiancé who has little time for her. Both women
redirect their dissatisfaction toward secret desires - Daphne for a much
younger contractor, and Ellery for a secret email pal who thinks she’s her
mother. Like the vines of a vineyard, things get tangled quickly by decisions
that not only threaten the fragile mother-daughter relationship, but each
woman's future.
One thing I really like about Daphne is her self-awareness. She’s been content to stand in the wings while everyone else in her life commandeered the spotlight, but now she’s ready to take her turn on the stage. She’s bumbled into a dream she never knew existed as a children’s author, and she’s really good at what she does and becomes an overnight success. But her family, even her ex-husband, can’t seem to let go of the woman she once was. They want the old Daphne, the one who put everyone else before herself. I intentionally gave Daphne a secret crush on a younger man and had her pay attention to her sexuality. Women of a certain age are often set aside, as if their “ sexiness” has a shelf life. I wanted Daphne awakened to the fact that as a woman entering her forties, she still needed intimacy and affection. I wanted her to struggle with the guilt, be tempted, and have a little fun with someone…young enough to date her daughter.
Ellery is the girl I once was. I remember being invincible, tossing my curls over my shoulder as a flounced around in my cheerleading skirt. The world was about me and what I wanted, what I thought I deserved. I wasn’t a bad person, but I do remember my brother once bringing my requested shoes on a throw pillow, bowing, and saying “your slippers, my lady.” I led a charmed life…until life punched me in the face. It has a tendency to do that in your mid-twenties when you find out (gasp!) the world doesn’t revolve around you. So I wanted to take a princess, toss her in the mud, and see what happened. Ellery isn’t always likable, but she’s authentic. And by the end of the book, she sees her mother as a person and not just her mother. Both Ellery and Daphne have a big growth arc in this book.
Room to Breathe has secrets, twists, bad decisions, surprises, and angst, yet it also has humor, heat, and heart tugs. I love the guys in the book - Clay (the hot contractor), Gage (Ellery’s surprise crush) and Evan (the vineyard owner) and I really like the interactions between Ellery and Daphne. I think readers will recognize themselves most in Daphne, but they’ll also remember how hard it is standing on one’s own two feet as Ellery must do. I’m proud of this book about letting go and taking the lemons that life hands you, tossing them, and pouring a glass of wine. Cheers to all the women who aren’t afraid to start over and create their own new paths!
One thing I really like about Daphne is her self-awareness. She’s been content to stand in the wings while everyone else in her life commandeered the spotlight, but now she’s ready to take her turn on the stage. She’s bumbled into a dream she never knew existed as a children’s author, and she’s really good at what she does and becomes an overnight success. But her family, even her ex-husband, can’t seem to let go of the woman she once was. They want the old Daphne, the one who put everyone else before herself. I intentionally gave Daphne a secret crush on a younger man and had her pay attention to her sexuality. Women of a certain age are often set aside, as if their “ sexiness” has a shelf life. I wanted Daphne awakened to the fact that as a woman entering her forties, she still needed intimacy and affection. I wanted her to struggle with the guilt, be tempted, and have a little fun with someone…young enough to date her daughter.
Ellery is the girl I once was. I remember being invincible, tossing my curls over my shoulder as a flounced around in my cheerleading skirt. The world was about me and what I wanted, what I thought I deserved. I wasn’t a bad person, but I do remember my brother once bringing my requested shoes on a throw pillow, bowing, and saying “your slippers, my lady.” I led a charmed life…until life punched me in the face. It has a tendency to do that in your mid-twenties when you find out (gasp!) the world doesn’t revolve around you. So I wanted to take a princess, toss her in the mud, and see what happened. Ellery isn’t always likable, but she’s authentic. And by the end of the book, she sees her mother as a person and not just her mother. Both Ellery and Daphne have a big growth arc in this book.
Room to Breathe has secrets, twists, bad decisions, surprises, and angst, yet it also has humor, heat, and heart tugs. I love the guys in the book - Clay (the hot contractor), Gage (Ellery’s surprise crush) and Evan (the vineyard owner) and I really like the interactions between Ellery and Daphne. I think readers will recognize themselves most in Daphne, but they’ll also remember how hard it is standing on one’s own two feet as Ellery must do. I’m proud of this book about letting go and taking the lemons that life hands you, tossing them, and pouring a glass of wine. Cheers to all the women who aren’t afraid to start over and create their own new paths!
Excerpt: Room To
Breathe by Liz Talley
“What are you trying to say?” Daphne asked. Ellery always
tried to get her to go to exercise classes, but Daphne preferred running most
days. Organized classes had never appealed to her. Exercise was her escape, a
time she could jab in her earbuds and listen to podcasts or a book that didn’t
feature poodles and tea parties.
“That you isolate yourself out here. Hanging out with Pop
Pop and Tippy Lou isn’t exactly being social. You can make friends in these
classes, plus use muscles you never knew you had.” Ellery rose and smoothed the
T-shirt swing top she wore over a pair of ripped boyfriend jeans. Several
strands of delicate gold chain were layered around her neck. Her daughter
somehow managed to look stylish and trendy in sloppy clothes. Daphne always
looked . . . well, sloppy in sloppy clothes.
“Maybe,” she conceded, only because her daughter was
unfortunately correct. She enjoyed visiting her father and playing dominoes
with his friends, even if they were out of her age range. And her neighbor
Tippy Lou Carmichael, while delightfully droll and enigmatic to the point of
oddness, wasn’t going to go shopping with her or out to drinks. Tippy Lou
preferred herbal tea on her front porch while she watched the feral cats she
fed every morning chase lizards and laze about in her garden.
Daphne had always been the type of person to have only a
few close friends. Though she’d cultivated friendships with many of the other
teachers at Saint Peter’s Day School, where she’d worked as a teacher’s aide
for fifteen years before staying home to write, she’d never been good at being
social. She had church friends, a book club, and knew a few local writers who
wrote professionally, but her best friend, Karyn Little, had moved to Idaho
with her new husband over a year ago.
In a few short years, she’d lost her husband to
self-centeredness and her BFF to the land of potatoes.
“Not maybe. Definitely,” Ellery said, looking over at
her.
“Maybe I’ll try it.” Going to the class with Ellery might
help their relationship, something that Daphne couldn’t seem to get back on
track. She didn’t know what was wrong, how she should act, whether she should
have given Ellery a job or not. Daphne had only wanted to make things better
for Ellery. That’s what every mother did, right?
But Ellery had grown more and more distant over the past
few months. Daphne suspected that it had something to do with something Rex had
said, but Ellery wouldn’t open up. Any time Daphne asked her what was bothering
her or if she wanted to talk, her daughter would tell her everything was
“fine.” She’d begun to hate that word.
“I’m pretty much done for the day. I have to mail these
packages. These are a few of the winners from your online party.” Ellery picked
up a bag full of colorful pink envelopes, walked out the door and right into
Clay.
“Whoa, hey, Elle,” he said, grabbing her elbow and steadying
her. “I haven’t seen you in forever.”
“I saw you last week at Elmo’s,” Ellery said, shrugging
off Clay’s hand. “But I guess you were too trashed to remember?”
“Hey, I was celebrating a new contract, but, yeah, I
guess I had a few too many.”
“Honestly, Clay, it’s time you grew up,” Ellery said,
pushing past him before spinning back. The Tom Ford scent she wore tickled
Daphne’s nose.
“Guys never grow up, do we?” Clay joked.
“Some don’t.” Ellery gave him a flat look.
Her daughter had dated several guys in high school but
had been tight-lipped when it came to information on what had happened between
her and Clay. Daphne vaguely remembered a dustup with the head cheerleader for
a rival school. Ellery had been only a sophomore, and Daphne remembered Clay
being her daughter’s first heartbreak. Ellery had rebounded quickly with the
quarterback for the Riverton Falcons. She had an uncanny ability to hook a new,
even cuter guy after each successive breakup through high school and college.
Point in case—Josh was so pretty angels sang when he
walked by.
Daphne still didn’t know her soon-to-be son-in-law very
well because he was always studying, but he seemed to truly care about her
daughter. And that was what mattered most.
“I’m out, y’all.” Ellery disappeared.
Clay turned his pretty blue eyes on Daphne. “Sorry to
interrupt. I wanted to get your opinion on the marble. They sent two different
samples in your color range. One has a lot of movement, the other is pretty
simple.”
“Sure, I’ll take a look,” Daphne said, following him
outside her office and into the heat of late morning.
Ellery tossed the bag of packages into the narrow back
seat of her sleek new Lexus and gave them an absentminded wave.
“She’s a firecracker,” Clay said with a smile before
jogging down the front porch steps. Today he wore a T-shirt. Thank God. The
jeans fit him like a second skin, though. So now she had to contend with the
butt thing.
Not only had she practically drooled over a shirtless Clay
yesterday, but she’d actually rated the bag boy’s backside that morning at the
grocery store. Thankfully Steve the bag boy was older than Clay, but she was
now convinced her libido had written a memo titled “Take Care of Your Sexuality
before You Mount the Bag Boy.” She wondered if something was wrong with her
hormones. Or maybe she was ovulating. Something other than going middle-aged
crazy.
Wait, was turning forty years old hitting middle age?
Nah. And technically she was still thirty-nine for the
next two months.
***
About the Book
Title: Room To
Breathe
Author: Liz Talley
Release Date: November
1, 2019
Publisher:
Montlake
Summary
For a good part of
Daphne Witt’s life, she was a supportive wife and dutiful mother. Now that
she’s divorced and her daughter, Ellery, is all grown up, Daphne’s celebrating
the best part of her life, a successful career, and a flirtation with an
attentive hunk fifteen years her junior . . . who happens to be her
daughter’s ex-boyfriend.
Ellery is starting over, too. She’s fresh out of college. Her job prospects are dim. And to support her fiancé in med school, she’s returned home as her mother’s new assistant. Ellery never expected her own life plan to take such a detour. With no outlet for her frustration, she lets an online flirtation go a little too far, especially considering her pen pal thinks he’s corresponding with her mother.
As love lives tangle, secrets spill, and indiscretions are betrayed, mother and daughter will have a lot to learn—not only about the mistakes they’ve made but also about the men in their lives and the women they are each hoping to become.
My Thoughts…
I started Room to
Breathe and wondered if I’d be able to finish it. I didn’t love the characters at the
beginning. I found Daphne to be
odd. It seemed all she thought about was
the hot contractor that was fixing up her childhood house to sell. I’m not all that into cougar romance books
so I was doubting if I’d like what I was reading. Yet, I continued reading and I quickly
realized that there was so much more to Daphne. She started as a young mother and bride, a mostly
stay at home mother who did everything for her daughter and husband, and then
found a new way at life. She became a
successful author and her entire life changed.
I was in awe of all that she accomplished without the support of her
family and how she embraced her new life.
The rest of her family
left something to be desired. Her ex-husband
is a trip and doesn’t deserve how much Daphne did for him. Ellery is a spoiled brat. She was given everything in life and now doesn’t
know how to stand on her own two feet without her parents giving her money. I didn’t feel any compassion for them and
was hoping that Daphne would call her out on the lifestyle she felt like she
was due to live, not the lifestyle she could afford to live.
I ended up admiring
Daphne and wanting to kick Ellery in her booty. Room to Breathe is a fun book to read. The story flowed easily, the characters were
not all likeable but they were interesting.
Add to your MUST-READ
list on Goodreads
Purchase your own copy
on Amazon
or Barnes
and Noble
Author Biography
Social Media Links
Website: https://www.liztalleybooks.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/liztalleybooks
Twitter: https://twitter.com/amyliztalley
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