Breathing Underwater
Alex Flinn
Publisher: HarperTeen
Release Date: October 1, 2002
Pages: 263
Source: Read for my YA Lit Class at school

Rating: 2 stars

Like father,
like son

Intelligent, popular, handsome, and wealthy, sixteen-year-old Nick Andreas is pretty much perfect — on the outside, at least. What no one knows — not even his best friend — is the terror that Nick faces every time he is alone with his father. Then he and Caitlin fall in love, and Nick thinks his problems are over. Caitlin is the one person who he can confide in. But when things start to spiral out of control, Nick must face the fact that he’s gotten more from his father than green eyes and money.

So this book reminds me a lot of Inexcusable by Chris Lynch. I had a strong dislike for Inexcusable. Breathing Underwater had more redeeming qualities in it, but it was still not a favorite of mine.

I had an issue with the characters, feeling they never really developed. I wanted to sock Caitlyn in the face pretty much the whole book. I couldn’t stand her. Nick was annoying, but decreased slightly in his annoyingness throughout the book. Tom just was an awful friend. Most of the other characters just blended into the wall paper. The only character of the whole book I liked was Mario – who I felt was a really redeemable and good person.

The plot was good, but I have read other books in the same situation that I felt were better done. I really did like how the story started in the present moving forward, while also telling readers the past in the form of Nick’s journal entries. That was really interesting, as it let the plot to have a bit of a mystery aspect as readers had to piece together the story bit by bit and try to guess what would happen next.

This really isn’t a book I would suggest, it doesn’t even have a pretty cover to make up for some of the contents. It is an alright story, but is definitely not the most well done story in the situation I have read.