Breathe Deep & Swim by Jenna Marcus Book Review

Book Description (via Goodreads): All 14-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Thomas wants is normalcy. But a global pandemic prevents him from having anything close to a typical teenager’s life. When Wolfgang discovers his father dead in bed from the coronavirus, his world is thrust into even more turmoil and chaos. Wolfgang and his 16-year-old brother, Van Gogh, know that they must do everything they can to stay together and avoid foster care. In a cross-country road trip, they hit the road in their father’s Pontiac to find their only hope: the mother who abandoned them a decade ago. As they journey for answers to their mother’s whereabouts, they uncover devastating mysteries about her that they never could have imagined. Just as they near their destination, tragedy strikes once more. Wolfgang is drowning in fear and pain, but he must pull it together or lose his family for good. Can this broken adolescent find the strength and courage to Breathe Deep & Swim?

I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. I have given Breathe Deep & Swim by Jenna Marcus two out of five stars ⭐️⭐️

We follow two brothers; Wolfgang and Van Gogh, who end up on the road after they discover their father has died from the coronavirus. Not wanting to go into foster care they decide to quickly pack up everything they can muster and venture out to look for their mother who had abandoned them. Unfortunately this book wasn’t for me. Reading about the coronavirus in a book was a little too soon for me and I thought that there wasn’t much of a point to this story overall. I couldn’t fully escape into this book due to the mentioning of the coronavirus as it is still very present at this moment in time.

I found that I didn’t mesh well with the some of the words written from Wolfgang’s perspective; as I thought the language used didn’t fit his supposed fourteen year old self. He was either whining like a young child or he was using words which made him sound a lot older than fourteen years old. Also, I found it difficult to really connect with the characters and feel anything towards them until the last part of the book where the author included quite a few emotional scenes.

Have you read Breathe Deep & Swim by Jenna Marcus? If so, what did you think? Let me know in the comments below.

Happy reading,

Claire 📚