Saturday 20 April 2013

Review: Breathe by Sarah Crossan



Title: Breathe
Author: Sarah Crossan
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Rating: 3/5 stars

Synopsis:

When oxygen levels plunge in a treeless world, a state lottery decides which lucky few will live inside the Pod. Everyone else will slowly suffocate. Years after the Switch, life inside the Pod has moved on. A poor Auxiliary class cannot afford the oxygen tax which supplies extra air for running, dancing and sports. The rich Premiums, by contrast, are healthy and strong. Anyone who opposes the regime is labelled a terrorist and ejected from the Pod to die. Sixteen-year-old Alina is part of the secret resistance, but when a mission goes wrong she is forced to escape from the Pod. With only two days of oxygen in her tank, she too faces the terrifying prospect of death by suffocation. Her only hope is to find the mythical Grove, a small enclave of trees protected by a hardcore band of rebels. Does it even exist, and if so, what or who are they protecting the trees from? A dystopian thriller about courage and freedom, with a love story at its heart.

 (From Goodreads)



 My thoughts:

I purchased this book as it was the chosen book for a book club that I was in. I didn't know too much what it was about, but the synopsis and the cover drew me in. 
When looking on Goodreads, it seems to be a book that you will either love or hate. Personally I found it OK.
I thought when reading the beginning that it started to have a bit of a promise. I was like "Hey, this actually seems good". I was feeling that up to halfway. It just lost its potential for me. I got a little bit bored with what was going on and just lost interest, which was a real shame. 
What I liked about this book was that it was told from multi-perspectives, which I have not read before. I have read books with two different views, but not more than that. 
The book is also split into five parts, and the chapters are fairly short, which is nice. 
I thought the main storyline was interesting. Can you imagine a world where oxygen is scarce? It just makes me think like what if this would happen in the future for us? 
I really liked the idea that the poor people couldn't afford the oxygen as much, well as the well-off had nothing to worry about. And, how the characters telling the story had different backgrounds and social statuses. 
Let's move on to the characters. You have Alina, Quinn & Bea telling the story from their point of view. Bea is lower class and likes Quinn. Quinn is a higher class and likes Alina. Alina is also lower class and isn't interested in Quinn. So you can see there's a weird romance thing going on. I do admit that Quinn started to like Alina WAY to fast in my opinion. I was like "Whoah, slow down, mate"  o_O
Out of the three, I did like Bea the most. I just think she was a strong character and really liked her. 
The ending of the book left me a little confused, and I'm not sure if I will read the sequel. It was sweet, but didn't leave me feeling like "OMG. MUST READ THE SEQUEL NOW" Like some books do. 
In general, I gave this book three out of five stars because I just felt it lacked in certain places. 
However, if you like science fiction novels about things that happen in the future, then definitely give this a read. For me, it was OK, but for you - you might like it.


Happy reading =)

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