Book Review :: Breathing Under Water, by Sophie Hardcastle

Breathing Under Water by Sophie Hardcastle
on July 12th 2016
Genres: Fiction, Young Adult
Pages: 310
Goodreads

Ben and Grace Walker are twins. Growing up in a sleepy coastal town it was inevitable they'd surf. Always close, they hung out more than most brothers and sisters, surfing together for hours as the sun melted into the sea.


At seventeen, Ben is a rising surf star, the golden son and the boy all the girls fall in love with. Beside him, Grace feels like she is a mere reflection of his light. In their last year of school, the world beckons, full of possibility. For Grace, finishing exams and kissing Harley Matthews is just the beginning.


Then, one day, the unthinkable. The sun sets at noon and suddenly everything that was safe and predictable is lost. And everything unravels.

Last updated on 28 March 2023

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What is Breathing Under Water by Sophie Hardcastle about?

Breathing Under Water is the story of Grace and her twin brother Ben, surfing champions. Living in Australia, they’re right on the coast, with the wind in their hair, sun on their skin, and ocean in their veins. They’re going far, especially Ben who is outgoing and loved by all.

Then one day, tragedy strikes, and Ben is killed in a car accident. Grace doesn’t handle it well. She spins into self-destruction, drinking, drugs, and getting around with boys. She starts skipping school and hanging out with the wrong crowd. Grace doesn’t know how to handle life without her best friend, her other half, her twin brother Ben.

Grace battles with the loss of her brother, the seeming unnecessariness of school, friends who are over baring, boys who are too pushy, and people Grace herself has pushed away. She has to find a way to move forward without Ben. And it’s not going so well.

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My thoughts on Breathing Under Water

Spoiler alert!

Breathing Under Water was … okay. Not brilliant, not worth re-reading, not anything to write home about, but it was okay.

I didn’t actually read this, I listened to it. Perhaps that’s one of the problems. I can never quite tell with audiobooks whether I don’t enjoy the story in general, or if I would have liked it more, or in different ways had I read a physical copy. Maybe I’m missing something because this book got an average 4.03-star rating on Goodreads.

The plot didn’t really flow. I feel like there were way too many things that happened pre-Ben’s sad death, that didn’t really continue into the rest of the story. It felt jarred and odd.

The minor characters were pretty good, although Grace infuriated me. I get that her brother has just died and that her surfing career is going under, but calm down, girl! Sort yourself out! I think she was too crazy, even for the things she went through. She dived into the deep end (water puns, see?) from good to ridiculous and ‘making bad decisions’ really quickly.

Jake (Ben’s best friend) was definitely an enabler of Grace’s rebellious insanity, and when Grace finally starts coming to her sense, she has to find Jake and pull him back to reality too. They have this odd slightly-more-than-friendship-but-not-all-the-way thing happening which is weird and confusing. And what was with Harley? Here’s this nice boy who likes you, Grace, and yet … suddenly he’s not there for a good giant chunk of the story, and then Grace is sitting on top of his car at the beach and she’s all like ‘would you even care if I fell off?‘ I’m sorry. What?

“It’s everything and nothing … It’s like the absent moment between night and day.”

One of my main issues with the book was that it felt like every second sentence was a metaphor, a simile, or some sort of figure of speech that was so over the top it was painful. I get that emotive language and figures of speech definitely add things to a story, and can be something truly beautiful. I’m all for metaphors and similes … but not every few sentences. It lost the specialness of the language.

I can’t slam it completely – Sophie Hardcastle is a young author and this is her debut, I believe, and I’m so in awe of young writers, and I hope she goes far. The story she created had a heap of potential. Surfing, teenage drama, sunny skies and oceans, parties and tragedies. So much potential, even if it feels like ‘just another YA book’. But unfortunately, it fell flat for me, and that’s a real bummer because Goodreads told me ‘if you love stories by John Green, Rainbow Rowell … you will love this story.’

Alas. I did not. Ah well. You win some, you lose some. But if the majority of people on the internet who have read Breathing Under Water really enjoyed it, then maybe you will too!

Never let one bad review deter you from making your own book-reading decisions.

Have you read Breathing Under Water? What did you think?