"Breathe My Name" pulled me in from the very first chapter. Francine was the sole survivor of matricide. The story alternates between flashbacks of the strange and isolated family life of Frances and her three younger sisters when she was a young child, to the present day when she is a high school student in her new idyllic home with extra normal adoptive parents. This idyllic existence is shaken when she receives a letter from her mentally ill mother which says "I need to see you. Please come right away. We have to finish". This letter prompts Francine and her boyfriend to seek and confront her murderous mother.

With short chapters and fast-paced action, this story is sure to engage teenagers who favor "problem novels". ( )

I thought it was very good until the ending, which made no sense at all. ( )

Frances was adopted at a young age. Now eighteen, she lives in the suburbs with her adoptive family and has a pretty decent life with friends and a new boy she's interested in...until she discovers that her birth mother has been released from the mental hopspital where she was being held for killing Frances' younger siblings. So Frances decides to take a road trip to find her mother and resolve some of the questions about her past. ( )

Frances has been feeling anxious lately. The sound of an ambulance racing down the street causes her to panic. She has a secret that has been causing her more and more distress. Other than her family, only her quirky best friend Ann Mirette knows. The secret is creating a dark cloud over her seemingly perfect life. She has a loving adopted family, a wonderful house, and has just met a dreamy guy from Louisiana named Nix that grows more important to her everyday. Eleven years ago Frances was know as Shine. She had three younger sisters and lived out in the country with her mother, Afton Jelks. It is clear from the flashbacks in the story that Afton has mental problems and is putting the four girls in harms way, but nothing prepares the reader for the truth of what happened. Your heart will break as you watch Frances come to terms with the day her world changed forever.Afton Jelks has been residing in a mental hospital since the courts sentenced her there after finding her guilty by reason of insanity for the deaths of her three daughters. Afton Jelks smothered her daughters one by one on a spring day when Frances was seven-years-old. The only reason Frances survived is because a man reading an electric meter heard the struggle and busted in the house and allowed Frances to escape.The memories are coming to the surface now that a lawyer contacts Frances to tell her that her mother has been released to a halfway house and would like to see her. Frances has mixed feelings but eventually, against the wishes of her parents, decides to make the journey to see her mother. With the help of Ann Mirette and under the guise of attending a weekend school trip, she and Nix hit the open road. They follow one clue to the next to find the exact location of the halfway house. What they find once they arrive is shocking and extremely dangerous. R.A. Nelson, the author who brought you Teach Me, has written another powerful novel that will leave you stunned into silence. ( )