Breathing Underwater

Title: Breathing Underwater

Author: Alex Flinn

Pages: 236

Summary: Breathing Underwater is about an teenage boy at the age of 16 who is in love with his girlfriend, but does not really know how to treat her right. He claimed to have loved his girlfriend a lot and often did not listen to what he has to say about things and disagrees with her which causes him to get angry. One day he had gotten very angry and had slapped her, not knowing what had got into him he apologized for his behaviour and said never to do it again. But the day of the talent show he had told her not to sing because people would laugh at her and he did not want her to display herself up on stage singing to everyone. After the show had finished, anger and jealousy filled up inside of him causing to not know what he was doing, next thing he knew he was calling her names and throwing a fist at her and beating her to the floor. Caitlin was than taken away from a few friends, including Nick’s best friend. Caitlin and her parents than procured a restraining order to keep Nick away from her, and the judge had also sentenced him to Mario Ortega’s family violence class, where he sat around with other men who beat their wives or girlfriends because they are unable to keep their hands to themselves. Another sentence the court gave Nick was to write journals about his relationship with Caitlin, before the incident and what caused him to do what he had done to her. From the journals he wrote the story drifts back and froth from present to past of their relationship. It allows the reader to follow along with Nick (main character), it shows the struggles of losing all his friendships, popularity and respect he had among the school, being known as a abuser, and also the girl he loved did not no longer love him back for the actions he had done. Towards the end of the novel he realizes all the stuff he had put Caitlin from through the beginning of their relationship and how badly he had treated her feeling guilty of his actions he had no longer knew what to do, but he knew how to treat a girl with more respect in the future.

Express feelings of the book:

Feelings of the book, displays a message to teenagers and young daters that hitting, or verbally abusing someone emotionally is not going to help a situation whereas it will most probably make things worse. It also shows that some individuals don’t say much about it and when it happens the first time they don’t think much of it and believes their partner did it by an accident and not on purpose and when it starts repeating happening they start to feel as though they are doing something wrong and that is why it is happening this novel shows that teenagers don’t need to be influenced by their partner that they aren’t doing something wrong, but it might be other issues such as families where they learnt to have abusive relationships and think its right to hit someone.

Compare the book:

This book relates back to the novel that Alex Flinn also wrote because again it is on teen issues and something they are influenced upon the narratives are the same and is told in a first person view, from a male perspectives showing both sections but focusing on the male.

Name the author and something about the individual:

Alex Flinn is a teen author who had inspiration to write this novel because she had volunteered in various areas with battered women and their children. She had realized that their aren’t many novels out for teenagers expressing situations and solutions to these problems and social subject that is common among teenagers. She had believed that doing a novel that represents something and allowing young girls to speak up for themselves, and defend themselves would be a good topic for novels.

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