Laura J. Brown (Children's Literature)
Travis Morrison is a high school athlete on the rise. He is an excellent diver, and his whole high school team is counting on him to help them win the state championship next year. Travis is looking forward to the competition too; in the meantime, though, he plans on enjoying summer. He loves being in the water and often wonders if he is part fish. On the first day of summer vacation, he goes out to the lake with his girlfriend Darla, his best friend Cooper, and his kid sister Emily. It is a beautiful day, and the water is perfect. Travis decides to do a diving stunt because he cannot stand being near water and not diving. His friends and sister do not think it is a good idea, but Travis is fearless. When he takes the dive, something goes very wrong. In an instant, Travis’s life changes forever. This is the story of a young man, his friends and his parents doing everything they think is right in a very difficult situation, dealing with horrible news, and finding themselves at odds with each other. This is a story of courage, pain, struggle, death, suicide, and victory. The story is presented in chapters told from each character’s point of view. Unfortunately, although Travis’s parents are referred to in the book, neither gets a first-person chapter to express their fear, frustration, and sense of loss. Their struggle about doing what they think is best for Travis can only be guessed at, although that information could have only made the book richer. Still, this is a book that does back away from the hard questions about life and death. It is a book that will tug at readers’ hearts. It will render them incapable of putting it down until the last page. 2009, Delacorte Press/Random House, $10.99 and $13.99. Ages 14 to 18.

Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, April 15, 2009 (Vol. 77, No. 8))
The prolific author's latest novel features her signature pull at teen readers' hearts. In the slim volume, four distinct voices describe Travis Morrison's terrible health situation. Travis is a champion high-school diver until his femur snaps while cliff diving at a rural Alabama lake. It's bone cancer. In alternating chapters, the fragile emotions of his best friend Cooper, his girlfriend Darla and little sister Emily come forth. Travis's health deteriorates after his leg is amputated and he bounces between chemo treatments and false remission over the next year and a half. But there are other story lines. Cooper's mother is an alcoholic prostitute, Darla is labeled the school slut and Emily is the kid sister in love with her brother's friend. The pages drip with angst as Travis's health fades to a point where he pressures the other teenagers to help him commit suicide. Melodramatic scenes, stock characters and stiff phrasing blemish this work. Despite—or perhaps because of—these formula-wrought flaws, McDaniel's fans, who seemingly read with tissues in hand, will snatch it off the shelves. 2009, Delacorte, 176p, $10.99. Category: Fiction. Ages 13 up. © 2009 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.

Angelica Braaten (The ALAN Review, Summer 2010 (Vol. 37, No. 3))
Breathless looks into the lives of four teenagers living in southern Alabama: Cooper Kulani, a half-Korean, half-Hawaiian misfit; Travis Morrison, champion diver of his high school; Emily Morrison, Travis’s younger sister; and Darla Gibson, Travis’s girlfriend. Cooper lived with his alcoholic mother until he was taken in by Travis’s family years ago. Both Cooper and Emily have feelings for one another but never express them. Darla lives with her abusive father. The novel begins on the first day of summer vacation when the four take Travis’s boat out on the lake. Travis decides to dive off the edge of a cliff into the lake and ends up in the hospital. He finds out he has bone cancer. Each chapter takes the first-person perspective of one of the four main characters. Category: Family Relationships/Illness. YA--Young Adult. 2009, Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 176 pp., $7.99. Ages young adult.Shreveport, LA