Reviews

Breathless by Jessica Warman

librariann's review

2.0

Swimmer Katie and her older brother Will live in a hick town in SW Pennsylvania, but her family is wealthy in comparison to the rest of their neighbors. Katie blames her brother's schizophrenia (diagnosed as drug induced) on the bullying Will received because he was "rich" and therefore different. In order to distance her from Will, who has grown increasingly violent and erratic, Katie is sent to boarding school her sophomore year. She falls in with the beautiful people, and tells them her brother is dead. As the years pass, Katie struggles with her relationship with her brother, parents, and other students. A lazy girl's "Prep."

Breathless is one of those books that is interesting, even sort of enjoyable while you read it, but which doesn't hold up when you think about it. Example: the school's convenient anti-technology policy enables a key plot point, but when reading the author's note (and realizing that she based it "80 - 90 percent" on her own life) it becomes a lazy method of avoiding the fact that the story happened 10-15 years ago.

_ninahannah's review

1.0

Oh boy. So I needed a book that wouldn’t require much thinking after i got my wisdom teeth out, and i made the mistake of choosing this. But honestly it was fun. It was a lot of fun to read because it was so terrible. It actually started off pretty good but then it just went downhill. Really poor and harmful portrayal of mental illness, and very cliche and corny characters. It was also completely predictable. I’m sorry to give it a Poor review but it really wasn’t good.

book_nut's review

It's been a bad month for books, and this one just wasn't doing it for me. I think if the author had condensed the story into one year instead of spreading it out over three, it might have been better, overall.

books_plan_create's review

5.0

This book gripped me from early on. While the premise does seem "done" before, it felt so different, much more real and authentic than other novels.

cinnabunsun's review

3.0

First of all, I didn't really like how each "section" had a space in between them. And, those sections should have been a little bit longer. I found it kind of annoying, but eh, who cares. The story was going pretty good, until Will dropped the cat off the roof. Kind of a turn off for me, kind of disgusted. I loved the plot, great ideas. But, I feel as though something was missing. Not enough detail, and missed some major marks that just left the characters in the story to be bland, and normal. I also think she missed the mark of "normal high school kids." Not all of us go out and party, drink, and smoke. Katie was pretty dumb for a smart kid. I think she didn't get the fact that she can't swim if her lungs are full of smoke. It's just pretty pointless. Overall, Jessica Warman had some pretty good ideas, but just left them as that. I read [b:Between|10397655|Between|Jessica Warman|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1312049408s/10397655.jpg|15195711], and the writing was so much better that I found myself comparing the two. I know I shouldn't do that, but I couldn't help it. I'm giving it 3 stars because, even though it covered a whole new topic, it was just too typical. A teenager goes and gets drunk every night and then wonders why she's always tired, goes to parties every night instead of worrying about her grades in school or swimming, and then makes up a lie about her brother so no one would know the truth. Although she could have said, "My brother... I don't want to talk about him... He's, uh.. Dead to me." And even though the front cover says some secrets are best kept beneath the surface it wasn't even that big of a secret... She could have just said that she didn't like her brother, so she basically disowned him. Who cares if a family member is crazy? It doesn't mean the whole family is.

laurahorn's review

1.0

I made it to page 200 and simply couldn't force myself to finish the book.

taliac36's review

dis books is so awesome in many different ways!! i loved it! i kind of wished katie could have stayed wit drew :( ....and she could see mazzie more!! bt it was still good though! dis book is abt a gurl named katie. she gets send off to boarding school because of what happened to her brother or probably ther parents didnt want to deal wit her no more. so like she goes there and lies to her friends at the beginning so them and other gurls wouldnt want to be her friend....meanwhile she meets this guy thats into swimming as well (:..they go out for a long time meanwhile she practically lives in the water for the whole time she was there....most of the times when she can...she takes her roommate home wit her so she wnt hv to face family stuff alone....in all is really a good book (:

mackenzierm's review

4.0

I really liked this book, but I found the beginning to be rather slow. It was lacking something to hook me in, but once I got about 75 pages in I was set. I had trouble putting this book down. I loved the plot, characters, everything. One thing, besides the beginning that I didn't especially like, was the ending, I found it a little abrupt, but beyond that.. this was a really good book!

jelisela's review against another edition

2.0

I'm disappointed in this book. The story was fine, I liked Katie well enough, but there was so much that went unpunished that I can't help but feel this story could have been so much better.

Yes, most teenagers will try drugs or alcohol at one point, but three years of alcohol and drug abuse and no consequences? Only a brief mention of it being harder to breathe the more she smoked? Please. Disappointing.

megankf's review against another edition

2.0

This book was definitely different from the type of books I normally read, and I cannot say I liked it. The book lasted over a period of three years, which is different than most. There was a lot of drugs, smoking, and under aged drinking in this book. I absolutely hated the ending, because Katie had so much going for her, and she wasted it. However, I did feel like there was good character development.