Just Breathe by Heather Allen

TL;DR MC learns she has mermaid heritage

(finished 8/6/15)

I really tried to like Just Breathe. I really wanted to. I got Just Breathe as a free ebook through Bookbub and it was the second one I read out of the huge batch I downloaded (the first being What I Didn't Say), and I was kind of disappointed that I ruined a good reading streak so easily. 

As a disclaimer, I do realize that ebooks can be updated (and a few of the copies I own are revised versions), so it's entirely possible that I received an older version or that the book will be updated in the future. I don't know. I'm still pretty new to ebook / indie books. 

My biggest issue was really that it read like the first drafts of my classmates' short stories in Creative Writing class. It's one thing for a first draft to read like that; it's another when it's supposed to be a finished book. The narration was almost exclusively telling, and I honestly can't even think of a good "show" example in the whole thing. There were a bunch of grammar and formatting mistakes that should've been caught in a round of proofreading. 

Just Breathe taught me how to use the bookmark / commenting feature on iBooks. I used it a lot. The first one was on screen 35. (I don't know how to refer to placement in ebooks. They're not pages, per se. I'm just going to refer to them as "screens" until I figure out a better word.) 

     A smile plays on my lips, "Thanks, feeling alright today," my daily attempt at avoiding conversation.
     I grab a glass of juice and a banana, "Have a great day."
     My dad glances up from the newspaper, "You too learn a lot today."

 (Those are all separate paragraphs. It doesn't show up well on my blog page because they're all only one line.)

Now, I don't remember being taught this rule specifically in school, but I'm 99% sure you only use a comma to end dialogue when there's a dialogue tag immediately after it. I'm pretty sure you can't use commas like this. I feel like it should read like this instead:

     A smile plays on my lips. "Thanks, feeling alright today," I say, my daily attempt at avoiding conversation. I grab a glass of juice and a banana. "Have a great day."
     My dad glances up from the newspaper. "You, too. Learn a lot today."

Unfortunately, these kind of sentences happen frequently.

Ever (the main character and narrator) also seems to fall into the Mary Sue trope. She has a unique name while her brother has the common name "James", she gets away with a lot of crap without really getting in trouble or ever feeling the consequences, and is able to break a lot of the rules because she's the "strongest".

None of the characters have strong and consistent characterization. They just acted the way it would work best for the plot; Ever and Jack were really wishy-washy and all over the place, and there was nothing compelling about the rest of Ever's family or her friend, Gabbi. Gabbi actually started to get on my nerves with the way she read as a cardboard cutout of the "talkative best friend" trope.

The plot was pretty standard. There wasn't really anything unique about it, and unfortunately, the worldbuilding was really weak. I'd picked up Just Breathe for the whole mermaid aspect of the book, but it ended up being disappointing. Very little of the mer culture or the underworld location was really explained or described in the detail I'd been looking for, and it generally seemed to be consistent with human society except for being underwater.

I think Just Breathe is a fairly good start as a first draft, but I felt kind of let-down when I got something resembling a draft more than a finished book. I think if there'd be some more revision, both in grammar and in character / plot, Just Breathe could've been really strong. The characters and plot need more depth.

I'm not really sure what compelled me to read all the way through. I think a lot of it is my reluctance to review books I haven't finished. I was curious about what the ending of the book would be like, and a lot of people on Goodreads have mentioned that it cuts off really abruptly. I kind of expected that, tbh. I'm surprised that I made it all the way through the book without really getting angry. Usually I'm not so tolerant of immature characters all across the board or frequent grammar mistakes.

I typed up a spreadsheet of all the notes I made, but I typed half of them up the day this post went live instead of when I just finished the book, and I gave up with a lot of the contexts and comments. Some of them kind of speak for themselves.

TL;DR if I figure out that Just Breathe has an updated version, I'll probably read it and see if it's a stronger version. If you're not a patient and forgiving person, Just Breathe most likely isn't your thing.