Breathe by Anne-Sophia Brasne

Ali Mark
Feb 17, 2016
3 min read

Story Line - Not Good - 2 STARS

Writing Style - Horrible - 1 STAR

Characters - OK - 3 STARS

Excitement Factor - Boring - 1 STAR

Believability for type and topics - Mostly Unbelievable - 2 STARS

Entertainment Factor - Boring - 1 STAR

Similarity to other books - Unique - 5 STARS

Cover art/dust jacket Art - Good - 4 STARS

Title Relevance - Good - 4 STARS

Goodreads users gave this book a 3.61. I think it was more deserving of a 2.56.

Published in 2001.

Pages: 122.

Number of books by author: 6 Works.

Genre: YA Fiction.

When Charlene clings to Sarah, she assumes her life will be perfect for ever. But when Sarah leaves on vacation, she returns a different version of herself. A version that ultimately tears Charlene down. Charlene responds with murder, but who gets the death sentence?

You may like this book if you like the following sub-genres:

Friendship
Murder

Man, oh, man. This was a waste of trees to print. The only things that scored a 4 or 5 were the uniqueness of the story line and the title and cover art... that's pretty pathetic. If you take out those scores, the story itself would've gotten a 1.67. Mostly this book just sucked.

The story line was unique. But it wasn't even manageable. The story, for 112/122 pages was literally so repetitive. Charlene is obsessed with Sarah; Sarah ignores her; Charlene's heart is broken; Sarah makes her feel whole again. Repeat. For 112 pages. I'm not sure how this was even published, in all honesty. It was way too repetitive for it to really become exciting. From the beginning, I was wrapped into boredom. I tried starting this book yesterday afternoon, but I just couldn't do it. I was so bored that I needed to start fresh this morning. No book with 122 pages should be that boring. I expected it to be 112 pages packed full of action, not the other way around.

The characters were just annoying. Charlene, our star-of-the-show, should've been someone we felt sympathetic towards. But let's be honest, here... she set herself up time and time again (and I can relate... I think we all have that one person who gets under our skin, then we forgive, etc.). But this was just ridiculous. I never felt sympathetic towards her - even when she had the accident. I never felt like she deserved better, or worse, than Sarah. I just felt so annoyed with her constant self-pity that I didn't particularly care what happened to her. And Sarah, Ms. Popular - shouldn't that have been an average-joe...? I felt her character's personality and persona just didn't mesh well with the behaviors Sarah had exerted.

As I said earlier, the only real positives were the cover art and the title itself. The title, "breathe" makes a lot of sense. It's all about the personal suffocation that Charlene faces, as well as the suffocation she lends to Sarah. As teenagers, we feel as if the world is closing in on us, as if we can't breathe. We feel that pressure to expand and present ourselves as adults, but we're slowly realizing that it's a much bigger world than we're ready for. The art itself on the cover, the two girls, was fine. It wasn't great... but if you look closely, someone's face is scratched out - and it could be Charlene or Sarah, which I think the imagination there is compelling.