Breathe (original 2012; edition 2012)

This was a fast-paced novel with a good balance of character development and world building. What I love about this book: The love story, the wacky kid and the gentle yet uplifting cliffhanger. What I hated: The bad guys, the sheeple and the evil herbicide. Verdict: Excellent! ( )

Pretty good book for what it was. Although I have the same issue with it that I have with most young adult fiction these days, the romance is annoying an unrealistic.

The premise is great. In a world with no trees and thus no oxygen, members of society live in Pods where they are supplied everything they need to live. But life outside the Pod isn't as desolate as it is claimed to be. There's a resistance forming, they can grow trees and can live without the aid of the Pods and thus deem them useless - governmental disaster.

We follow the story from the POV's of three lead characters. Quinn, a premium boy who has the best of life in the Pod. Bea, a member of a working-class Pod family who struggle for the barest of oxygen. Bea also harbors a lust for Quinn. And Alina, a resistance fighter who infiltrated the Pod for some reason and is now breaking out.

The trio meet at the start of the novel and Quinn, with his Premium Powers, is able to sneak Alina across. The reason he does this annoys me, it's because she's pretty. She is a stranger to him, he is supposed to be going camping with Bea, and instead he sees a pretty face and literally sacrifices his own and Bea's safety to help Alina, who isn't that thankful. In fact, she's downright furious that they have wormed their way into her escape (which I don't mind by the way, Alina was my favourite character mainly due to her anti-social and abrasive ways).

The trio get out and Alina ditches Bea and Quinn, only to have to be saved by them when a decrepit old woman attacks Alina for her oxygen tank. Rather than leave the attacker behind or kill her, which is Alina's preference, Bea is horrified and decides they must bring her along. Bea bugged the crap out of me, she's so righteous. It's insufferable. And her whole life is Quinn, even though she's well aware that he's into Alina and doesn't like her "that way".

So this old woman, Maude, becomes part of the gang. With limited oxygen, food and having to be constantly on the move it seems like the worst decision to have brought along someone who will only slow them down, use their supplies and tried to kill them, but whatever.

Then odd stuff starts happening. We're told at the start of the novel that no one can live outside the Pods, but there seems to be a pretty big world of people living out there. There are armies in tanks who apparently work for the Pod Minister, there is a large resistance gang who scout for new members all over the land which presumes that people are living on their own in small groups somehow.

Alina steal a tank, and then claims that she's started a war. I'm not really sure how.

Anyway, Alina brings Quinn, Bea and Maude back to her resistance hideout where her sadistic leader, Petra, locks up Bea and Maude and plans to use Quinn because of his status as a Premium. The war has presumably been building for some time as the resistance have a large base, full grown trees large enough to sit in which would indicate decades of growth if they had planted them, which is implied in an abandoned stadium where the seats are full of seedlings. Alina knows most of the people in the resistance despite the fact she's been living in the Pod forever. It's drummed in pretty hard that people can't just come and go from the Pod when they chose, so how she's keeping in contact with the hundreds of resistance members I have no idea.

Long story short, a war doesn't start. At least not in this book, I'm sure they'll go into it more in the next one but I don't care to read it. Things started picking up, action-wise, throughout the last third of the book and I read it way faster than I did the first two thirds. It's slow to start and it felt like I was missing something, perhaps something was lost in being in the minds of three characters. Personally, I would have liked to read the story purely from Alina's perspective. Quinn and Bea don't really add much to the overall narrative except to pine for each other. Oh, in the end Quinn realizes he is in love with Bea and they're soul mates or whatever.

Recommended, I'm sure it'll hit the mark for fans of dystopia :) ( )

Plot: 3 1/2 stars
Characters: 4 1/2 stars
Style: 3 1/2stars
Pace: 4 stars


Nice concept, a bit predictable, but that's true for much of YA lately. I think the genre's stuck in a rut. Good, relatable characters, though it changes POV every chapter, which diminished any emotional reactions, for me. ( )

BREATHE left me breathless. Sarah Crossan has created a world so profound and scary, I hope to never see something like this happen. But even scarier…it could.
They say that humanity is the largest and longest plague Earth has ever experienced, and there is no better illustration of that than Crossan’s new dystopian novel, BREATHE. In it, humanity has been nearly decimated of its own hand, by logging all the forests, causing oxygen levels to plummet. The lucky few chosen by lottery – or sheer importance to their field of study – won homes inside the glass-enclosed dome, where class systems have been put into place and families get taxed on the amount of air they use. Everything is run by the Ministry, and the Ministry watches everyone.
I was blown away by BREATHE. It’s been awhile since I’ve enjoyed a dystopian novel as much as I enjoyed this one. Crossan’s use of oxygen as the controlling element is so unique, but even better, it’s frightening because with all the logging we do now, this isn’t an impossible scenario. Improbable, maybe. But impossible? No.
I also enjoyed how relevant it all seemed. Because the government provides an essential commodity (in abundance), its citizens are absolutely indentured to them. I’ve always been a fan of the old adage “give a man a fish and he eats for one day; teach a man to fish and he eats for life.” The citizens in BREATHE ate for one day, at a time, because commodities were provided to them. And the lesson I took away from this was, the more one can take care of themselves, the less they have to depend on others for what they need. I never want to need from my government, but I especially never want to need air. The message overall felt particularly relevant to the political climate of today with the many social programs and the government’s desire to decide what is best for us.
Crossan’s characters covered the gamut of what a dystopian should have: the rebels, the people who are complacent and/or believe that what’s going on is good for the people, and finally, those who work for the government, ruling with their iron fist. I liked all these characters equally, because each had something so important to contribute to the story.
Bea, a level 3 sub, wants so badly to be a Premium, and is in love with a Premium. She believes in the cause of Breathe, the entity that created the dome and sustains their way of life. Except, she’s a reasonable girl, and what she thinks is the cause may not be afterall.
Quinn, a Premium, is humble and honest. It’s refreshing to get a privileged character like Quinn who hasn’t let it go to his head. He’s oblivious to a lot of things around him, something I did find irritating at times, but I chalked that up to his being a teenage boy. They’re all kind of dense. ☺
Alina is the smartest of the bunch. She sees things for what they are, but at the same time, her experiences have jaded her. And she feels she may have lost herself.
The three of them are such an unusual group, but I enjoyed their interaction with one another, as well as the other characters throughout the novel. I am not going to go into the other characters, especially the villains, because I want you to read it and make up your own mind about them. Are they truly evil, or are they surviving with what they’ve been given? I’ll leave that to you to decide.
BREATHE is a keeper and I urge every fan of the dystopian genre to read it. You will especially love it if you’re a fan of Under the Never Sky and – dare I say it – The Hunger Games. ( )

After reading this, I take the air I breathe a little less for granted. The plot in this dystopian novel is built upon a world where people had used up the earth's resources so badly that oxygen levels are so low no one can breathe without air tanks or living in the "Pod". The people who control the oxygen in the Pod control all the people. It is told from 3 character's points of view. It was interesting to see the change that took place in the 3 characters throughout the course of the book. Alina softened up, Quinn grew up, and Bea had her eyes opened. It will be interesting to see where they go from here, because yes, it is the first book of either a trilogy or a series.

Areas of concern: 3 uses of the "d" word, 1 each of "h" word and "a" word. 2 instances of body part and bodily function crudities. Dystopian violence with several non-graphic deaths and one disturbing death where a 16 year old watches someone get killed by a family member. 3 or 4 kisses. ( )