Breathing Underwater By Alex Flinn

Getting Started With Breathing Underwater By Alex Flinn

I picked this book up because a friend recommended it, and honestly, I wasn't expecting much beyond a quick YA read. It's about a teenager named Nick who beats his girlfriend so badly she nearly dies, then finds himself in a court-mandated anger management class where the counselor, Mr. Burns, makes him tell the truth. The book is short. About 250 pages, so you could finish it in a weekend. But the subject matter is heavier than the page count suggests. It deals with domestic abuse, manipulation, and the slow process of someone realizing what he's actually done.

Breathing Underwater By Alex Flinn

There's no magical transformation happening here. Nick doesn't suddenly become a good person by chapter twelve. That's the part people either appreciate or find frustrating. The book is structured around the sessions between Nick and his counselor, and you hear Nick's version of events, which is a version that keeps shifting as he either realizes the truth or tries to hide from it. One thing I noticed that most reviews don't mention: Flinn writes Nick's internal monologue in first person present tense, which makes you sit inside his head the whole time. Some readers find that uncomfortable because you're forced to confront the rationalizations he makes. I get that. It's intentional. He's trying to make you complicit for a while before pulling the rug out. The anger management setting is where the real work happens. Mr. Burns doesn't let Nick off the hook with easy explanations. The counselor uses a breathing exercise as a recurring metaphor throughout the book — the title comes from a line about how abusers need to learn how to breathe underwater, meaning they have to survive in an environment where their behavior is no longer tolerated.

I found the pacing uneven in the middle section. The early chapters move fast because Nick is still in denial, and the later chapters drag slightly as the counseling sessions repeat similar patterns. The book could have been trimmed by fifty pages without losing anything essential. I'd suggest skipping ahead slightly if you hit that middle stretch and feeling like not much is changing. The ending is realistic rather than neat. Nick doesn't get a clean resolution. He's just starting to understand what happened, and the book ends on that note of beginning rather than finishing. If you want a story where the protagonist fully redeems himself, this isn't it. If you want something that shows the actual first steps toward accountability, it works. You can find this through most book retailers or libraries. It's widely available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats. The audiobook version is decent if you want to go that route, though it doesn't add much beyond what the text already does.