This book centers around Katie, whose only escape from life has always been swimming. Her brother Will suffers from drug-induced schizophrenia, and after he tries to kill himself on the neighbor's swing set, both he and Katie are sent away: Will to a psychiatric hospital, and Katie to boarding school. Rather than being something she dreads, though, Katie finds herself looking forward to the change, where she can - and does - make herself into whoever she wants. She starts making friends under the lie that her brother is dead: Mazzie, her roommate who comes from an even worse family than Katie does, and who sees through Katie's lie to become her best friend; Estella, who makes a game of tormenting everyone, even Katie; Lindsey, who is always portrayed as nothing more than Estella's best friend; and Drew, the devout Christian and boys' varsity swimming captain who becomes Katie's boyfriend, even though his reluctance in their relationship due to his religion frustrates her. For three years life continues as normal and Katie begins to make a home in the boarding school, where she is away from her alcoholic mother and most memories of Will - but when Will does something that no one ever expected, Katie begins struggling to make it through life.
I loved the first three of four parts. Warman's writing style is so beautiful; every sentence was perfectly emotional and it was hard to tear myself away (I think I finished the whole book in less than two hours). It's really pretty hard not to fall in love with these parts, at the very least. Katie is so absolutely real, and... well, I have to admit it's hard to explain what exactly makes this book so incredible. It just kind of is.
The fourth part, on the other hand, is where things start getting strange. Katie changes into the bad-girl persona that most YA characters these days change out of. Admittedly she was never exactly "clean" - she smoked for the first time when she was twelve, and drugs and alcohol have always been a part of her life - but in this part, at least in the beginning, that bad-girl-drug-user came out a bit too strongly for my liking. While it died down as the end of the story came closer, that definitely brought down the book overall.
I loved the characters and relationships in this book, though. While I did hate how Katie treated Drew, especially near the end, she wasn't by any means a "perfect" character, and neither was he - just like how no one is truly perfect in reality. I absolutely adored Katie's relationship with her roommate, Mazzie; they were so similar yet so different in all their own ways, and though Mazzie started out distant, she gets closer with both Katie and the reader as the book goes on.
Others: The pacing was decent; it was perfect in some places, but then it would skip over several months, and I found that to be fairly disorienting. The plot was intriguing and more original than most things I've read these days. There was definitely a unique look at mental illnesses and the danger that can come along with schizophrenia. The background in the beginning was nice, something showing where Katie came from and giving readers a chance to get to know her better. And finally, considering Katie's obsession with the water, I would have liked if she focused more on swimming - especially near the end - but it was all right as it was.
It was a great book, and definitely poignant as Strasser's quote says on the cover (of which, I found, there is only one version). However, while it came close to perfect it didn't quite reach that point, so I'm going to give Jessica Warman's Breathless 4.5 out of 5 stars.
~Sky
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