Thank you to NetGalley and BooksGoSocial for the copy of this ARC!

Breathe Deep & Swim focuses on two brothers, Wolfgang and Van Gogh (yes, I’m serious) and how they handle the sudden death of their (less than stellar) father from Covid-19. Knowing that they have no family around to take them in with their father gone, the boys decide to make a run for New York, where their estranged mother grew up, on the off chance that she might have gone back. The book focuses on them trying to get to New York to see if their mom is still there and hoping she’ll take them in so they don’t have to go through the foster system.

This book was just not for me. The writing wasn’t bad, at all, but it felt very rushed and like it only touched the surface on a lot of topics that could have been so good if there had just been a little more to it..

The brothers felt a little too codependent for me, but I get that it was to impart the idea of family over everything.

I also wasn’t a fan of Janelle, who is black, telling Van Gogh they couldn’t be together because he was willing to cut off his racist father just to be with her. A racist father is still a racist, and I would want nothing to do with him, so I thought that was odd even if the *idea* was coming from a well intentioned place.

Overall, it was a quick read that I just didn’t connect with.