Breathing Underwater by Julia Green

Breathing Underwater Reviews

• 
  HattieB

  A surprisingly decent read that deals with themes such as grief, growing up and family relationships. However, I feel that at times it is inhibited by its own genre and never reaches its full potential. Some of the secondary characters also felt a bit too similar and it was at times hard to differentiate between them all.
• 
  Cat Parker

  Freya is fourteen, she and her brother Joe always spend the holidays with their grandparents who live on a fairly remote island. Last summer, Joe died in a boating accident. This year Freya is back alone. We join her as she tries to piece together what happened last summer and with the help of some new friends, she begins to come to terms with her loss. The story is short and easy to read and there is a depth that surprised me. Julia Green does an excellent job of using vivid imagery to set the scene and to build the characters. It's not a complicated read and not much really happens, but it is both moving and thought provoking. I will endeavour to read more from Julia Green based on this book. A good 3.5 stars.
• 
  jemima

  14 year old Freya spends every summer at the island her grandparents live on. Her brother Joe died there the previous year at sea and she wants to find out what happened to him that night.
  
  It was ok I guess. I was more interested in the descriptions of the setting than the plot because to me it was really thin and bland. It just felt like there was something missing. It doesn’t take long to read so it works as a 1 time summer read but it’s not particularly memorable.
• 
  Gi123

  Great book about a girl named Freya finding out what really happened when her brother died in a "boating accident" Freya is not convinced that it was an accident and feels that her brothers presents is still haunting her.
• 
  Skylar (Unicorns & Typewriters)

  Really beautiful and heartfelt novel. This novel really pulls the reader in and propels you into the story, while also immersing you in the calm of a beautiful setting. It made me think about childhood emotions I haven't considered in a long time, and even as an adult, comforted me in my own experiences with loss and death. I'm lucky to be working with Julia as a professor this year and gaining her advice on my own writing.
• 
  Jennifer

  Breathing Underwater is a story I couldn't put down. I loved the mystery element and discovering what happened to Freya's brother Joe on his last days leading up to his death. What happened out on that boat? We know everting from Freya's view but not of Joe's, only speculation. The ending left much unanswered, as we are left not knowing what happened to Joe, because that happens in real life. People die and our questions are left unanswered.
• 
  Trish

  3.5*
• 
  Stephanie

  On first glance Breathing Underwater appears to be another feel good teenage summer romance with the sandy beach and clear aqua blue of the sea. In reality it has a lot more depth to it.
  It is not the kind of book that has a complicated plot and any exciting twists and turns that jump out for your attention but it shines in its own particular way. Not much happens in the course of the book in an event way but that the end I could see a clear and dramatic change in Freya and the other characters around her which is what this book is all about.
  
  The main character and voice of the story is Freya,a young fourteen girl old girl who is suffering with the grief of the loss of her older brother a year on from the accident. Coming back to the island where it happened has mixed feelings for her, she likes the way that she can feel her brother there and remember the times they spent together there but it also brings back the painful memories of what happened that summer and how he changed so suddenly.
  Freya comes across as a quiet and fragile character at times and it was easy to sympathise with her. Despite this, she also has a strong and bright side that helps her to cope. As well as coping with her thoughts and feelings about Joe, she is growing up and finding her true self and dealing with insecurities, first love and the power and complications of friendship.
  The way that she is portrayed and the book is written is beautiful, nothing is exaggerated and Freya's emotions were captured in a touching way that is often hard to convey in words.
  
  I loved the island setting because it helped to lighten the book up and inject some summer fun into it, the descriptions of basking in the sun, sailing races, the clear blue of the sea, barbecues on the beach and star gazing with all the other children and teenagers at the campsite were wonderful.
  I liked the way that the book had chapters of flashbacks to the summer before which helped me to get to know Joe's character and understand what happened better. Sometimes flashbacks ruin the effect of a story by cutting it up but these complimented the story and fitted hand in hand with the main narrative.
  
  The only thing that I found a little unrealistic was a scene near the end when Freya feels Joe's spirit physically helping her and saving her life. However, this is such a small point and did not detract from my enjoyment of the book at all.
  
  This is the second Julia Green book I have read and it turns out that this is her debut and I read her second book first unintentionally. I loved this one just as much and I can see how she has developed as an author in Drawing With Light. I can't wait to read more from her!
  
  Verdict: Breathing Underwater explores teenage grief with sensitivity and poignancy with a message of inspiration as well as describing a sun soaked summer beautifully-fans of young adult books will find it a breath of fresh air.
  
  My favourite quote from the book: "Energy fizzes along every nerve and muscle in my body. I keep my breathing steady: in, out, long breaths that take the air deep inside, a flow along my blood . . . The water, deep and clean and cold, washes through my mind, cleansing me of thought, until that's all there is: water. Clear and open and free."
  
• 
  Carrie Stewart

  Breathing Underwater by Julia Green is a sweet story about loss and moving on. 14 year old Freya spends every summer with her grandparents on a remote island, with the freedom to roam around and make friends with the children of vacationing families. Having once spent those summers with her brother Joe, she returns alone after the loss of Joe in boating accident the year before. Freya’s parents are not coping with the loss, and she worries they may split up. She’s also trying to remember what went on last year, why Joe was so distant, and exactly what happened the night he died.
  
  Julia Green explores this in two separate timelines. There’s this summer and last summer. Here we get a sense of Joe, and some of the reasons for his moodiness as he pulls himself away from his sister. Freya is putting the pieces back together, but this means remembering a Joe she didn’t particularly like, one who wouldn’t always let her join in, who left her alone and angered easily. She’s looking for an explanation, but also worries about the part she played.
  
  This is a quick and simple read, but also moving. And although it deals with grief, Freya isn’t overwhelmed by it. She’s getting on with things the best she can, she’s trying to have a life, to have fun, to still be around people, while also trying to resolve her feelings for Joe and what life means without him. She has a crush on an older boy which is complicated by her friendship with his girlfriend, and there’s also a younger boy’s affections to deal with.
  
  I think the cover of this book does it a disservice, as they one I have makes it look like a throwaway teenage romance, like it has little substance. And while it isn’t the best book I’ve ever read, it has much more going for it than the cover suggests. I’m trying to avoid puns here about depth or other water related imagery, but that does sum it up nicely. It is deeper than you would expect. The writing is strong and I enjoyed all the characters. Possibly more could have been made of her crush, since it’s hard to see exactly what Freya sees in him, but her friendship with his girlfriend and Freya’s doubts about her own feelings are well done. The overall mystery, such as it is, of what happened to Joe seems to be resolved too quickly, and I was a little disappointed with the resolution, but all in all, a nice read.
• 
  Lyndsey O'Halloran

  From the cover, this book does look like it is going to a lovely, light-hearted summer read but it also has much more to it than that. This is a story of Freya and the search to find out what really happened to her brother who died the previous year. Instead of being a book about an island summer romance, this is a book about discovery and closure. The island setting does help to take away some of the drama and tension from the story with wonderful descriptions of the sea and breathtaking sunsets though and it helped to make the book not as dreary as it could have been.
  
  I was left feeling quite unsure about Breathing Underwater overall. While the writing was beautiful for the most part, I didn’t connect with the main character, Freya, as much as I thought I was going to. Going back to the island where her brother died must have been extremely hard for her and for a while, I did feel her grief. As Freya spends more time on the island and with her newfound friends, I could feel her grief disappearing. In one sense, I thought this was good because it made part of the story be more about Freya finding herself and dealing with the past but it also took away from that the book was supposed to be about. Many parts of Breathing Underwater had me torn as to whether I liked them or not.
  
  Freya’s determination to find out what happened to her brother deteriorated quite quickly and I felt like the main point of the story quickly changed to it being about a guy. That being said, the guy/s in this book were not amazing. I didn’t feel like I wanted Freya to be with anyone, especially when she was on the island to figure something out. The male characters were really not that interesting or charismatic enough for me to even like them very much, let alone route for them in any sense. Some of the other secondary characters though, like Freya’s grandparents were great and they really added in some much needed humour into the story. They were also great characters and were truly interesting to read about.
  
  Overall, I didn’t love this book but because parts of it were written so beautifully, I would definitely give Julia Green another chance. As a debut writer, Green shows a lot of promise and I hope she delivers in future books.
  
  
  
• 
  Jenni

  I read Julia Green’s Drawing With Light a couple of years ago and really enjoyed it, so I was really looking forward to reading Breathing Underwater. I have a real liking for books set on islands, I blame Enid Blyton, so I had pretty high hopes for this book.
  
  The book tells the story of Freya, she’s grieving for her brother Joe who died last year and whilst she’s trying her hardest to come to terms with his loss she has a nagging feeling that all is not as it seemed with his death. She tries to pursue these thoughts at the same time that she finds a way to carry on without Joe. She makes friends with a group of teenagers who are all staying at the camp site on the island, which allows for some lovely scenes that made me wish I was there with them.
  
  The story is split between the current day and flashbacks to the previous year when Joe was still alive. I really liked this as it meant we got to know Joe through Freya’s eyes at least, and we could understand why she’s so driven to find out what happened to him. I’m not always a fan of stories told this way, but I think in this book it worked really well and added a lot to the story.
  
  I liked Freya a lot, I found that I was really drawn to her and cared about her. I liked the way that whilst she was focussed on trying to find out what had happened to Joe she kept her concerns for everyone else at the forefront.
  
  Both this book and Drawing With Light are beautifully written books, they’re quiet and contained but deal with pretty significant issues. I love the way that Green manages to show that adults are flawed humans too, quite often it as teenagers that we realise this about our parents.
  
  This was such a lovely read, I see that Julia Green has a new book Bringing The Summer out later this year, I’ve got it on my wishlist already.
• 
  Atiqah

  Breathing Underwater starts with Freya and her brother Joe finding a washed-up body on the beach of an island where they go every year to visit their grandparents during the summer. Exactly a year after, he died. Another year following Joe’s death, Freya goes back to the island to try and work through her troubles. She tries to remember and understand, and figure out what happened. Now that she thought about it, Joe seems engrossed in the topic of death since their horrible find on the beach. Signs pointed to Joe’s death not being a complete accident…
  
  This is yet another YA about grief that I have put my hands on this year. The last one I read and reviewed, which at that time I thought was unique, was P is for Pearl by Eliza-Henry Jones.
  
  Breathing Underwater is relatable especially to teens who have lost a loved family member, especially of a sibling that has slowly grown more distant as they grew up.
  
  I gave it a 4 instead of a 5-stars because there isn’t a crystal-clear plot, which is important to a vast majority of readers. This book follows the getaway of a teen trying to deal with grief. You can’t put a clear end-goal for that. People don’t get over the grief, they just learn to deal with it and accept it. That is the journey and direction this book is taking.
  
  Read full review on
  Bookmarks & Blue Light
• 
  Ringo The Cat

  Freya is 14 when she revisits the island where her older brother Joe died a year before. You wouldn’t really guess from the pastel airy-dreamy cover of this book that this is a story about a girl coming to terms with her brother’s death and having to deal with all the things that make a 14-year-old girl’s life complicated. Freya has doubts about her parents’ marriage, doubts about her own role in Joe’s death; doubts about Joe’s motives the day the accident happened; doubts about her own budding love life (which boy should she like? The Joe lookalike Danny who’s honest, sincere and seems to have feelings for her) or Matt (the boyfriend of her new friend Izzy), who makes her feel things she never felt before?
  
  All in all, the cover is seriously misleading the reader into thinking this will be a light and forgettable summer read. In a way, it really is light and fluffy. It’s only about 200 or so pages, so ideal beach material. Moreover, Julia Green’s style often feels fairly dreamy (the first person narrator and the present tense of the story largely take care of that), but the story itself and the writing is never too dreamy not to be taken seriously, or to forget easily.
  
  Breathing Underwater is a nicely executed and touching coming of age story about a girl dealing with loss, grief and first love jitters. A summer read, yes, but not one to forget quickly.
• 
  Charlotte

  Whilst the cover promises a story of light-hearted fluff, this teen novel actually revolves around the difficulties of losing a loved one. Freya lost her brother in an accident a year ago and the effects of the loss are still keenly felt: her mother isn’t coping and her father has thrown himself into his work. Despite being the location of the accident, Freya has decided to return to her Grandparent’s home for the summer, as she and Joe always did, on the mature understanding that it was the place he loved best… Sensitively told, without getting too heavy, this is a story about dealing with grief, finding closure and, eventually, moving on.
• 
  Millie Wright

  this is and amazing book filled with mystery, love and friendship and all about freya ho is trying to find out exactly what happened to her brother last summer who drowned in a boating accident!
  I love the way Julia writes and it is lovely to get into a book to quickly and read until you fall asleep and as soon as your awake in the morning
  this is the best book i have read in ages!
• 
  Kiki Marriott

  Got it on Kindle for my young daughter, it's for teens , but it's a lovely read. Freya, a 14 year-old goes back to her childhood island holiday home where her brother died the previous year at sea. As she comes of age, she tries to put pieces the pieces together and she also has a lot to sort out with family relationships, grief, friendship and love. Beautifully observed.
• 
  Ruby

  This was really good, a great book about the journey of grieving the loss of a person. Asking questions, losing yourself, just wanting to find *the* answer. And then in a very lovely, not overly sentimental way, the coming to terms, the acceptance.
  
  I really enjoyed the story, it kept me guessing as to what was going to happen.
  
  Highly recommend!
• 
  Sienna

  I didn't really enjoy this book that much. It was more a story about a young girl whose brother had died and she came back to the place he met death. It was basically just telling you the grieve she went through, and how she is surviving through it.
• 
  Bhoomika Sharma

  The people who said it was a good book were right! I really like it - though the ending wasn't as good as I'd expected it to be. I thought that there was going to be something cool at the end but nothing like that happened. :(
• 
  Stephanie

  A beautiful, magical book. The setting is so vivid, the story and characters are so compelling, and the atmosphere is so strong. In different ways, Julia Green's writing reminded me of both Jo Knowles and Margaret Mahy. I loved it.
• 
  Bethany

  3rd Book by Julia Green I have read. I like the way she writes and some of the quotes she uses are absolutely gorgeous. This book was good but
  Drawing With Lightis still my favourite so far.
• 
  Michelle (Clover Hill Book Reviews)

  
  http://cloverhillbookreviews.blogspot...
• 
  Mrs Harris Librarian

  This is a gentle, thoughtful story of coming to terms with loss and growing up.
• 
  Sugarpoplady

  Emotional story.
• 
  Serena Wong

  I thought that this was a really interesting book. Slightly slow but still captivating.
• 
  Candycloud

  Interesting, but in a good way...