Breathe (Breathe, #1)

by Sarah Crossan

Years after the Switch, life inside the Pod has moved on. A poor Auxiliary class cannot afford the oxygen tax which supplies extra air for running, dancing and sports. The rich Premiums, by contrast, are healthy and strong. Anyone who opposes the regime is labelled a terrorist and ejected from the Pod to die.

Sixteen-year-old Alina is part of the secret resistance, but when a mission goes wrong she is forced to escape from the Pod. With only two days of oxygen in her tank, she too faces the terrifying prospect of death by suffocation. Her only hope is to find the mythical Grove, a small enclave of trees protected by a hardcore band of rebels. Does it even exist, and if so, what or who are they protecting the trees from?

A dystopian thriller about courage and freedom, with a love story at its heart.

• ISBN10: 0062118692
• ISBN13: 9780062118691
• Publish Date: 2 October 2012
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: Collins
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 384
• Language: English

Reviews

[layawaydragon]

I received this book as a free gift from Mikey @ I’m A Book Shark. This is a hard review to write, torn between how I mindlessly enjoyed it while reading and how hard realizations hit afterwards. I will be continuing the series with Resist. It’s in the mail now from Hanna T. @ Oh It Is Wonderful

The Good:

+Love triangle subverted
+fast paced easy read
+lots of action
+character development
+ Events after getting out the gate felt natural/flowed
+ Liked how it was about climate change, conservation, and income inequality.

The Bad & The Other:
-dystopian government procedure falls apart when you think about it
-the beginning getting out the gate, the start of it all, felt…constrained.
-Still don't know why there's two guys and a girl on the cover.
-Showing not telling


I flew through Breathe quick with action packed scenes and movement on every page after briefly introduction our troublesome trio. However, when sitting down to write this review problems starting appearing like Pop Up Video.




I want to call this shot gun pellet book: quick whipping it out and convincing but once it goes off, it scatters. Ah, 2AM writing. Anyways…


We start with the standard trio and romantic subplots: Alina the tough solitary stringent rebel with a cause that catches Rich Boy’s eye, Quinn the privileged oblivious girl-hopping boy with daddy issues, and Bea, the proletariat naïve tree-hugging goody-goody madly in love with Rich Boy.

The only thing I was really happy about before and after with these three is the love triangle psych and Quinn’s growth.

Before:
Loved how they played off each other and mingled to grow and become more balanced.

After:
Alina’s thawing out wasn’t so smooth (0 to 60) and I can’t pinpoint why she changed exactly.

Bea didn’t grow at all, she just got what she wanted and stopped mopping/whining about it.

Starting off the plot with Quinn’s dick leading the way feels stupidly forced after meeting Alina for the first time ever at school. It was obviously going to happen and had to happen. Everything that follows flows naturally but getting out the gate just didn’t sit right.



Worldbuilding:

A dome isn’t new but I loved how it was about the environment and class inequality. It felt solid while reading but…




You’d think they’d do a better job with propaganda and proving the need for the control methods like the vaccines. It was really weak. Alina gave the equivalent of a “have you seen it?” and Quinn’s all over it and parrots her. And so Breath’s major policy to keep people dependent have been disproven with common sense from a 16-year-old.

Why can’t they tell the difference between fake and real plants? Isn’t there a smell at least the soil? Really convenient that the old dude next door worked out so well. Okay, maybe they haven’t seen plants in so long but…eh. Alia & The Resistance should’ve known, especially given how close the balconies are.

The thread with Abel was dropped for this book and should come back into play but it felt very…haphazard and lazy?? Since it matters so much to Alina. You’d think she’d want to know. It’s like after moaning and grieving for him the whole time, she just stopped caring after that tantalizing tidbit.

Love Triangle:

Psych! I LOVE Breathe’s version. I LOVE the resolution and Quinn’s character development there.

[Quirky Cat]

It went from really unique and interesting to slightly overcomplicated. Not bad though.

[neddieb]

After reading this book I was really surprised at the 3.69 rating on Goodreads. I believe it should be at least 4.0. The story is very interesting and it keeps you interested. The characters work well together and the author does a great job in making each character's chapter flow smoothly into the next.

[Kelly]

50% read and I just can't get into it. Will try again eventually, but the points of view are boring and the characters aren't engaging.

[violetpeanut]

Loved it! Review to come.

[Amber]

Awesome but predictable. Full review here: http://www.booksofamber.com/2012/09/breathe-by-sarah-crossan.html

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Daph read this months and months ago, and I had been absolutely DYING to read it after she recommended it to me. I'm so happy and grateful that I received a review copy from the publisher so I could read it sooner than I would have normally, even if it was only a month earlier!

Breathe was everything I was expecting, although nothing more. The plot was engaging enough. It was told from three points of view: Alina's, Bea's and Quinn's. I applaud Crossan's decision to do this, as it really gave us a view of three different societal structures inside this world. Quinn is a rich guy whose father is high up in the government, and so he has never had to know what it's like to live on limited resources of air. Bea is his best friend who is poorer, so she lives in a different section of the pod. Alina is a rebel, and that's all I'm going to say about her. I loved every one of them, and while I do think Alina made some silly decisions (which ticked me off at the time), I think it worked well to get the story going and for a bit of character growth.

Sarah Crossan's writing style is what really sets this book apart from the rest. The storyline that pretty much followed the same set outline as most dystopian novels, making the plot itself generic and predictable. But Crossan's writing style swooped in and saved the day, hooking me in from the very first page. The way the words flowed off the page was fabulous, and I am DEFINITELY going to be checking out her other works because she's very talented.

My absolute favourite thing about the novel was the world it is set in. This along with the writing style made for fantastic reading. There is nothing more scary than a world without air, and the thought of having people control your air supply is terrifying. There were times as I was reading when I felt claustrophobic and as though I was the one without enough oxygen. It was amazing.

There is a love triangle in Breathe, but I think it's handled very, VERY well in comparison to most. It didn't feel as though it was in there just for the sake of it. It pushed the characters onto their correct paths and made for some excellent realisations towards the end. I also love that it wasn't a 'I-Will-Die-For-You' thing for all the characters involved in the triangle. I hate that. One of the characters didn't even have feelings for the one who had a crush on them, so that was something new and refreshing as well.

Overall, this is a brilliant book. It's not an all-time favourite purely because, like I said, the plot was average and predictable. But the world building and the writing were some of the best, so I'll definitely be reading the second book to see where that takes us. I recommend this to everyone, obviously.

[Ashley]

booknook — Young Adult book reviews

Breathe — 3.5 stars

Breathe is an interesting sci-fi dystopian book told from three different points of view! We have Quinn. He's a "Premium" — the elite in this new kind of society. His father works for the Breathe corporation. He has always had plenty of oxygen and lives the high life. Bea is Quinn's best friend.. to her utter dismay. She wants to be more than friends! But Bea is just a "lowly" auxiliary. How can she stand up against all the eye-fluttering, hair-flipping Premium girls? And finally, we have Alina. Alina is part of the Resistance — the group of people that has taken a stand against the government in the Pod. They live in the Outlands and do their own thing.

It was awesome reading from all these characters' POVs and seeing their stories intertwine. However, I think the characters felt a little under-developed. Maybe it's because Sarah Crossan spread herself thin by trying to fully develop three characters.. but whatever the reason, I just didn't get strongly attached to any of them. I mean they were interesting and I could clearly tell them all apart through their 'voices,' but they were missing that extra layer of depth.

Bea is a pretty great character though. At first, Alina looks down on her and accuses her of just swallowing all the stories and lies she was fed. But really, she just sticks to what she believes to be right, and that's awesome. At first she might look like a Goody Two-Shoes who follows the law unquestionably, but she's not. She's just a kind-hearted, helpful person. It's hard not to love her.

I really enjoyed the story behind Breathe but part of me is bummed that we didn't see more of it. I'm kind of a detail whore and I always feel like we never get enough. We do get the story behind Breathe and why people have to live in this "Pod," but it's just quickly explained on literally 1 or 2 pages. I'm just the kind of person that always wants more more MORE! I want to see how it happened and know exactly who did this, rather than some vague descriptions.

I enjoyed Breathe a lot, but it wasn't the earth-shattering book I was hoping it would be. My expectations were really high—probably too high—so I was a bit disappointed. It was a good book but I felt like the story wasn't that original. I guess I feel like I've read a lot of books this year about humans destroying our world. Like The Lost Code, where we've destroyed our planet to the point where radiation is so intense that it will kill you, so people live in this big dome that protects them. That's not too far off from Breathe where there's so little oxygen left that people live in a Pod that's pumped full of oxygen. I mean Breathe wasn't totally unoriginal, but it just didn't blow my mind. It didn't shake my core. I wasn't giggling insanely and I never felt like I absolutely could not be parted with the book.

Ultimately I suppose Breathe was just missing that X-Factor — that little something special that makes a book amazing. Even though there are sad parts of the book, they never really felt heart-wrenching. I wasn't feeling the panic, the despair, the helplessness. I think this book had a great opportunity to touch on deep emotions like loss and pure horror, but it didn't fully take advantage of it. A lot of these "book-changing moments" felt very quick and fleeting. One minute we're reading about something totally devastating, and the next minute we're ready to move on. I feel like with a bit more work, Breathe could have been a really intense and emotional book. All the material is there: the lack of oxygen, the conspiring company, the betrayal, the murders, the lies, the loss... It just needs some more depth and emotion.

This book wasn't perfect, but I still thought it was an enjoyable read and very easy to get through. I wasn't in love with it, but I easily and happily got through it in almost one sitting.