Breathe and Count Back From Ten

Breathe and Count Back From Ten - Natalia Sylvester

Genre: Young Adult Fiction | OwnVoices

Release Date: Expected 10th May 2022

Publisher: Clarion Books

Verónica has always been told what she can't do.

By her overbearingly protective parents, by society, even by her own body.

She spends her time strictly supervised, and spends too much time in hospitals recovering from surgeries to help her hip dysplasia.

But not this time - Verónica has decided enough is enough, and it's time for her to take a deep breath and try a leap of faith. She decides to go against her parents and audition to be a professional mermaid at Mermaid Cove, something she's dreamed about for years, and maybe even explore her newly blossoming relationship with the boy next door.

It's time for Verónica to find out who she is when nobody is telling her who to be, and she's willing to risk it all to get there.

"Maybe I was just used to it by then, this idea that pain is meant to be endured quietly."

Breathe and Count Back From Ten is a strikingly authentic story of acceptance, discovery and love for our ourselves. Verónica is a young girl who has been defined by labels - disabled, immigrant, daughter, teenager - and wants to find her own definition of self and this resonated with me in the most moving ways.

Verónica is a complicated narrator - her strength and insight is stunning, but she's also a young girl trying to figure out what to do with her life so she doesn't always make the best choices, she makes mistakes and complains and whines but that is part of what makes her so very human.

The entire story flowed perfectly together, with the characters written so vividly and personably that they came alive on the pages - each with their own complex, complicated relationships and hidden struggles somewhere under the waves. Verónica and her family are Peruvian, and there is a beauty and love invoked for the country and the culture that shines through Sylvesters words.

There was a lot of mixed language throughout, sentences where characters will use words from multiple languages and dialects which I know some readers can struggle with but it was written well and easy to understand.

I definitely can't wait to see what else Natalia Sylvester is writing, and I definitely want to visit a Mermaid Park and see them in action!

⭐⭐⭐⭐

I was gifted an advanced reviewers copy of this title in return for an honest review.

cw: ableism, surgery, illness, misogyny, depression.

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