Reason to Breathe (Breathing, #1)

by Rebecca Donovan

Reason to Breathe by Rebecca Donovan is a US bestselling phenomenon.

An utterly addictive and heartbreaking novel that will leave readers breathless and desperate for more. All fans of Jodi Picoult and new adult author fiction such Colleen Hoover's Slammed, Tammara Webber's Easy and Abbi Glines' Vincent Boys will love Rebecca Donovan's incredible writing. A must-read.

A passionate love. A brutal betrayal. Unwavering hope.

In a town where most people worry about what to be seen in and who to be seen with, Emma Thomas would rather not be seen at all. She's more concerned with feigning perfection, pulling down her sleeves to conceal the bruises. Emma doesn't want anyone to know how far from perfect her life truly is.

When Emma unexpectedly finds love, it challenges her to recognize her own worth - but at the risk of revealing the terrible secret she's desperate to hide.

Praise for Reason to Breathe:

'Emotionally intense and heart-achingly beautiful, Reason to Breathe will linger long in your thoughts after you turn the last page.' - Tracey Garvis-Graves, New York Times bestselling author of On the Island

• ISBN10: 0141348445
• ISBN13: 9780141348445
• Publish Date: 17 January 2013 (first published 8 November 2012)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 30 June 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Penguin Books Ltd
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 544
• Language: English

Reviews

[Pigpen.Reads]

Even though this took me awhile to read, I was hooked!
Yes, there is abuse in this story and some cringe worthy love interest, it's still a good read.

I cannot wait to pick up the second book!

[anastasia]

Where do I start? Amazing, heart wrenching, extremely emotional, beautifully written novel.

I loved it! I just couldn’t put it down, I just had to see what happened next. It’s definitely one of those books that just lingers for a while after being read. One of my favorite books that I’ve read this year.
Emma Thomas is every parent’s dream. She’s an excellent student. She does her chores without complaint and helps with the younger kids at home. She’s a star athlete and a talented artist. Her best friend, Sara, is one of the most popular girls in school. So why then does she live her life in a perpetual state of fear? Emma has a dark secret about which no one, not even Sara, knows the truth. Emma is not looking for someone to rescue her. She keeps a safe distance from those around her, never wanting anyone to get close enough to discover what she’s hiding. She is barely coping with the terror, but telling someone the truth would have devastating consequences.......

Read more of this review on myblog
-------------------------------------------
UPDATE: 10/09/16
Ahhhhhh!!! I forgot how much I love this boook

(Warning: This review contains a bunch of intended and unintended breathing puns!)

I was reading a helluva amount of dystopias and wanted to try something different. I wanted to read something that was dark, deep and depressing (please don't ask me about my frame of mind at the time). I wanted something that would tug my heartstrings, so I picked up this book from my school library.

Reason to Breathe was a difficult book to connect with at first, but as soon as I got into it, I started to enjoy it. From the beginning, I could feel that there was something horrible going on and as I kept on turning the pages, I felt as though things were going to become worse. It was this feeling that made me WANT to read the book, DREAD (Like I said before, please don't question my frame of mind)!.

Reason to Breathe deals with a very serious issue, abuse. I wanted this book to feel realistic, filled with scars and healing and Rebecca Donovan managed to do this by allowing me to feel Emma's depth of despair. Even although the book dealt with abuse in a fairly good manner, I felt that it could have been handled much better. This is going to sound really bad, but there wasn't anything special about Reason to Breathe, the abuse aspect was kind of cliche'.

Emma, the main character, is a great student and an amazing athlete, but her outside appearance doesn't match how she feels on the inside. Emma was a mixed bag. I admired her strength and her selflessness, but I also found it to be really foolish. This isn't really a spoiler because it appears early in the book, but just in case, (show spoiler)[Emma's aunt Carol abuses her, but Emma doesn't want to go to the authorities because she doesn't want Carol's children to lose Carol. This got me thinking that if she abuses Emma, what stops her from abusing her own children?] (hide spoiler)

Romance plays a huge role in Reason to Breathe. At times, I felt as though the romance overshadowed the abuse aspect of the book. Evan, the love interest, seemed to be the pushy, stalking and a I'm-good-at-everything guy, but I have to admit that my first impression of him was way off. He turns out to be a really cool and understand guy who's great boyfriend material. The attraction that he and Emma had was really cute and when Drew got in the way I was furious.

The other characters were also well written. Sara was the ideal and loyal best friend. I loathed Carol with every breath that I took (pun unintended) and I felt enraged that George actually accepted and made excuses for the abuse that took place in his home.

Even although it seemed that I had grips with this book, I didn't. It was just that the strong points of Reason the Breathe was also its weak points. Reason to Breathe was gripping and fulfilled its purpose. It was dark, deep, depressing, it tugged at my heartstrings and made me feel a ton of emotions, especially RAGE.

And of course to make my life miserable, there was a cliff hanger at the end. You all know how I love cliff hangers (please note:sarcasm). I need to find Barely Breathing, so that I can start breathing (pun intended) and see how life plays out for Emma.

[thebookdisciple]

I loved this book. At times though I felt like I had skipped a couple pages or something-it seemed to jump around (like, someone is gone one minute, and then back the next! I was sure I missed something!). That aside, I did really enjoy the book; I liked the characters and I felt that it was pretty realistic for the most part. Its definitely HS drama, so if you don't like that kind of stuff, you won't like this. I, however, love it!

[readingwithwrin]

One of the most heartbreaking reads that will leave you guessing what will happen next throughout the whole book.

[Leah]

New Adult is a genre that’s going to take the book world by storm this year. It’s like a fusion of YA and Chick Lit, destined for readers in the 18-21 bracket, though of course, it’s not necessarily just for those ages, though it is definitely more for the more mature teens/20-somethings. I read my first New Adult book when I read Easy by Tammara Webber and I loved it. I thought it was a fabulous novel and I was really excited to read more novels in the genre, and first up was Rebecca Donovan’s Breathe series, with the first novel Reason To Breathe.

Reason To Breathe is a novel that will make you feel a whole well of emotions. I spent a lot of the novel angry at what Emma was going through. Angry that someone who is meant to be a family member would do something like that. It was awful. It was horrific to read what happens to Emma. I winced every time Emma was attacked, and I just really, really wanted her aunt (although I really don’t want to call her that at all) Carol to get some kind of comeuppance. I can’t help wondering just what was wrong with her. I just felt so bad for Emma. I just wanted to cuddle her. It made me so ridiculously happy that Emma started to flout the rules and started to make her life better than it ever had been.

I really, really loved Emma’s friendships with Sara, her best friend, who is by far the best friend a girl could ever ask for, and also with Evan, the new boy in school who finds Emma ‘interesting’. I absolutely loved how Emma resisted but Evan slowly wore down her barriers. It was such a sweet friendship and I loved how it developed. How they slowly realised they both had feelings for each other. What I liked even more was how both Sara and Evan both tried to help Emma both with her flaunting of the rules and with her aunt (though, again, I am loathe to call her that). Jeremy Kyle would say she wasn’t even a real human being.

I was really impressed with the novel. It was a bit juvenile at times, with Emma constantly referring to her racing heart and unsteady breathing, but I got past that quickly. The novel managed to deal with a really tough subject, that was really hard to read about, and Donovan did it fantastically well. I loved Emma, I loved Sara and I loved Evan. The ending was shocking, utterly shocking. I do wonder if the novel was meant to be a standalone, what with how it ended, but I’m pleased to see there are two further novels, and I can’t wait to dive into them as soon as possible and find out exactly what happened after what happened at the end, if that makes sense. I thoroughly recommend the novel, it was excellent.

[Jo]

Originally published on Once Upon a Bookcase.

When I first heard about Reason to Breathe, I was excited by wary. Excited to read another NA book, but wary about the abuse within it's pages. I've not read a book about physical abuse before (not a spoiler, you're aware of this from the very beginning), and I worried it would be difficult to read. Now I've read it, I'm not completely sure what I think of it.

Because her father is dead and her mother couldn't cope, Emma lives with her aunt and uncle. At school, she does extremely well, but tries her best to go under the radar. She can't afford to let people get too close, in case they find out what home life is really like. The only exception is Sara, her best and only friend, who sees through Emma's excuses for the bruises and the pain. For Carol, Emma's aunt, can't stand the sight of her, and constantly reminds Emma of this - physically as well as verbally. But then along comes Evan, who notices Emma when hardly anyone else does. The attraction between the two of them cannot be denied, but Emma can't let him in. Evan is persistant, though, and won't give up. Can Emma manage to be with him, and keep him at arm's length so her secrets stay hidden?

Let's start with the positives. Reason to Breathe is a page-turner. With Carol, you never know when she's going to strike or what she's going to do next, and as Emma starts to slowly prod rather than push at the boundaries set by her aunt and uncle, you're in constant fear for her. You're turning the pages as fast as you can to see what happens, yet worry about what the next page might bring; what new bruises? What broken bones? You can't help but loathe Carol, this disgusting, evil woman who is nice as pie around everyone else, yet switches when she's alone with Emma. There is nothing she won't resort to.

However, there are a few things that bugged me too. Emma is completely clueless when it comes to guys. Fine, she's spent the past four years trying not to be noticed, so hasn't had any proper interaction with the opposite sex, but Sara is her best friend, one of the most popular girls in school, who is constantly on the receiving end of male attention. I do not understand how she could be around that for four years, and not know when someone likes her. She spends a great deal of the book confused by the words and actions of various guys in the book, and it was just so frustrating! It wasn't so much that I was frustrated with her for being so clueless, it was more like I couldn't believe in Emma's character properly as I just don't feel being that clueless is true to life. Sometimes she acted more like she was 12 than 16, she was just so young and naive - like being extremely shocked and embarrassed when asked by Sara if she had kissed a certain guy, like it was such a scandalous thing to ask. It just made the story so much hard to believe, and caused me to struggle with it. I try not to use this word in my reviews, but there's no other way to say it; after a while, I found her behaviour and reactions started to bore me - even when things should have been getting more interesting between her and Evan.

This meant that I struggled to pick the book up to read. I know I said above that Reason to Breathe is a page-turner, and so it sounds like I'm contradicting myself, so let me clarify; the book was a page-turner when I was reading it, but when I wasn't, I struggled to find the motivation to pick it up. And what didn't help is the fact that Reason to Breathe is 524 pages long. I don't have anything against really long books, but when a book is that long, and you're struggling, it can take a while. I'm the kind of person who has to finish a book if I start it, it's a rule that I was brought up with, and so I struggled on, but it took me about two weeks to read. That's a long time. And, in my opinion, Reason to Breathe could have been 200 pages shorter. I didn't see any real need for the book to be this long. There were events in the book that didn't seem all that important, and, in my opinion, could have been removed. So yes, you're turning the pages waiting to see what's going to happen next, and sometimes you would be waiting a few chapters for anything major to happen.

There are other issues I have with the book, but their more to do with choices and decisions made by some of the characters, more of a disagreement with them than a problem with the book, and I can't really discuss them without spoiling the story. Yet, the thing is, I don't hate the book. I don't completely dislike it. It's more frustration and indifference. Reason to Breathe ended on a massive cliffhanger, and although part of me really wants to know what happens next, because woah (!), I'm not too sure whether I could read another book like this one. I think I'll read some reviews of the second book, Barely Breathing, which will be published on 28th February, before deciding. If the series gets any better, maybe I'll check it out, but if not, I might give it a miss. Also, I'm not entirely sure why Reason to Breathe is marketed as New Adult; Emma is 16 and still in high school. Perhaps because physical abuse is considered a mature theme, but the book felt like YA to me.

Please read more reviews of this Reason to Breathe before deciding not to read it; other people have enjoyed it more than I did.

[Cocktails and Books]

My friend, Michelle, send me a list of books that I need to read. This book was in the list. I read the blurb for it and though it looked like tough subject matter, but how bad could it be? It's a YA book. Holy hell, Batman! This book ripped me apart!

Emma Thomas is a girl who is used to keeping her head down and blending in so she can't be seen. She may be a soccer, basketball and track star at her high school, but she does all she can to make sure she doesn't draw an unnecessary attention to herself at home. But the arrival of Evan Mathews throws her into a tailspin, in a good and a horrible way. Emma learns that no matter how hard you try, eventually the secret you're trying to hide will come out.

This was a HARD book to read. I flip flopped between wanting Emma to fight for herself, for someone else to fight for her in her place and wanting her to just run away. Her secret is ugly and devastating. But in all the ugliness that Emma had to deal with, she did find the value of true friendship and love. Emma knew that best friend Sara (and subsequently her parents) would be there for her if/when she decided she needed them. With Evan, she learned how to develop a friendship and allowing herself to have something special for the first time ever. With Evan, she learned to have hope and faith that maybe things will be ok.

The ending of the book is a total cliffhanger and it's devastating. But please don't let that stop you from reading this book, since book 2 is already available. This was an amazing story and one that I'm so glad I picked up.

[Kelly]

On one hand I could barely put Reason To Breathe down, but I spend the majority of the book cringing. The abuse endured is not only heartbreaking, but confronting and disturbing. The main character Emily, or Emma as she is affectionately known, endures torturous abuse by the hand of her Aunt, including verbal and brutal physical abuse. Her story is not for the faint of heart.

[chymerra]

I stayed up all night reading this book and it was fantastic. A little graphic (the child abuse scenes) but an overall great story. I am waiting for the 2nd book to turn up as free on Kindle.