Just Breathe by Susan Wiggs – Book Review
Written by Viki on Wednesday, June 17, 2009 23:10by Viki
Just Breathe Book Review
I want to begin by saying that this was my first Susan Wiggs book, so prior to reading Just Breathe, I wasn’t familiar with Susan’s writing style or her storylines.
The story starts out with Sarah, the main character, being artificially inseminated for the 12th time at a fertility clinic using sperm that had been stored away while her husband battled testicular cancer. Feeling lonely for her husband after the treatment, she decides to pick up a pizza and surprise him by stopping by his worksite at a model home. The surprise was on her, however, when she ends up walking into a steamy bedroom scene starring her husband and another woman. After absorbing the scene before her, Sarah calmly puts down the pizza, turns around and walks out the door in a state of shock, her nearly perfect life turned inside out and upside down.
With such a dramatic beginning, I had high expectations for the rest of the story. I’m sorry to say that I was disappointed. The storyline peaks at the infidelity scene and goes downhill from there. It quickly settles into telling the mostly mundane story of Sarah’s day-to-day life after she flees from Chicago back to her hometown in northern California.
Granted, there are some interesting parts in the book. Sarah finds out she’s pregnant with her ex’s babies. She begins a romantic relationship with Will, a guy she detested in high school. There’s a story behind Will’s first marriage and his teenage stepdaughter, Aurora, that is intriguing and well-executed. There is also an arson mystery that seems like an integral part of the storyline, but then it’s solved abruptly at the end of the book with little explanation.
Sarah is a cartoon artist and the life of her character, Shirl, often mirrors her own. There are actual cartoons of Shirl throughout the book. I, personally, didn’t find the cartoon to be all that funny. The comic strip was described in the book as being edgy and controversial, but I found it to be rather blah. Not to mention that the artwork wasn’t anything special and certainly didn’t live up to how it was described in the book.
There is occasional swearing in the book. I found it contradictory that Sarah swore up a storm when she accidentally locked one of her babies in the car and then shortly after that, reprimands her ex-husband for using foul language in front of the twins and then kicks him out of the house. Oh, please!
As a 40-something who went through a divorce 10+ years ago, the part of the storyline that I connected to the most was Sarah’s reflections on who she was in high school (shy and embarrassed by her family’s oyster business) to who she became when she married her husband, Jack (a woman who was a pleaser and quickly gave up her own identity in order to live up to her husband’s expectations). Once she separated from Jack and moved back to her hometown, she’s faced with having to figure out who she is and what she wants in life. She has to learn how to make her own decisions and stand on her own two feet, all while becoming a single mother.
I think Just Breathe could have been a winner had there been more intrigue and mystery and less predictability. I also think that some of the characters needed to be more fully developed as I didn’t feel a connection to many of them.
Recommended: No
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