Andrew Daddo

Representation: It's complicated.
Trigger warnings: Hospitalisation of a mother from a car accident mentioned, coma, near-death experience, ableism, ableist and other slurs
Score: Six points out of ten.
Find this review on The StoryGraph.

I wanted to read Just Breathe for a while but never got around until now. When I saw this one in a library I visited, I immediately picked it up, but headed in with low expectations after the massive disappointment that was One Step. The blurb made it look intriguing. However, when I closed the final page, it underwhelmed me.

It starts with the first character I see, Hendrix, training to achieve his father's dream to be an Olympian, particularly a runner. Nothing looks out of the ordinary for the opening pages until he collides with another character, Emily, thus starting part two of Just Breathe. It was an intriguing choice from the author to switch from the multiple first POVs to the third omniscient POV. I don't get why the author did that when he could've sticked to one POV only, which would've made for a better flow. I couldn't connect or relate to any of the characters. The tension builded the further I got into Just Breathe as Hendrix lied in front of his father's face to deepen his relationship with Emily rather than work on becoming an Olympian. Hendrix's father didn't have to micromanage Hendrix's life like that, but the latter didn't have to deceive the former either. The blurb promised an epic climax, but I got an anticlimax instead. Really? Hendrix didn't get first in the race, his father did a magical 180 and other insignificant events happened toward the conclusion of Just Breathe. It's so dissatisfying that it petered out like that.… (meer)

Trigger warnings: Bullying

5/10, it's not that great of a novel due to it getting quite disheartening towards the end and even before that I felt like I was wasting my time with this book. The antagonists were cartoonish and over the top, they just bulled the protagonist, Dylan, just because they were bullies. That's it. No other motives other than that, this is not a real motive; they go deeper than that. They were also quite vulgar as well since they had a Facebook group just for showing off their perversion, they used slurs, and Dylan was perverted as well, is this what school teenage Australian culture is like? Because it would be such a shame if this was real... Dylan was too much of a coward to do anything against the bullies since he let them beat him up without using self defense or telling a teacher which was disappointing to see. In the end he nearly decided to kill himself out of all the pain which was understandable but at the last second he didn't want to and fell off the cliff into the lake anyways and I'm not sure whether he died or not. I recommend any other book but this one, if you liked this one, good for you but unfortunately I didn't like it.… (meer)

This is an Australian "Fault in our Stars" without the boy having cancer too. Story opens with Emily moving from country town Benalla to melbourne for the start of the school year, so she can be closer to the Royal Children's Hospital and her surgeon. She has a growth at the base of her neck causing her excruciating headaches that is currently benign but may change at any stage. While walking her new puppy on the Tan, she runs into Hendrix who lost his mother a few years ago, and now has a father obsessed with Hendrix being the next super fast runner - he trains him with oxygen and tracks all his movements on an app on his phone.
After a shaky start, Emily and Hendrix start dating much to his father's annoyance - especially when Emily turns up to see him run and collapses from the tumor's pain. The father thinks that she has taken drugs and reluctantly agrees to take her to hospital.
Nice little romance set in Melbourne about parental pressure and facing up to harsh reality as well as gaining perspective from life when perhaps you haven't got long to live. For older readers because Emily and Hendrix run away to Dromana to camp overnight.… (meer)

This is an interesting one from the series in that it looks a bit deeper at the problems one might encounter in Grade 5. Ned is the youngest of three children - his sister Misty was School Captain in Grade 6 ( She is now in Year 7) and his brother Sam was Sports Captain (He is now in Year 9), so Ned has big shoes to fill. On the first day of Grade 5 he runs terribly late, due to Misty's mistakes and actually answers in roll call from outside the classroom window. His day gets worse when he discovers he has the toughest teacher in the school, Miss Lukas ( who he calls Miss Mucus) and, fed up with her comparing him to his "perfect" brother and sister, he insults her on the very first day of school. (He is the tallest in the class so she asks him if he plays basketball - in retaliation he replies has she ever played mini-golf - because she is so short)
Needless to say, he ends up in the Principal's office where she gives him the new age advice..."get out there and be the best you can be. There is no point in trying to be anyone else, they're all taken."
What follows as the year progresses is an attempt by Ned to not be his sister and brother, avoid the taunts of his teacher and basically survive Junior school. Unfortunately, things come to a head when Ms Lukas proposes a time capsule that will be opened at the end of the year. In it, she places a cheeseburger and Ned is oh so hungry...will he get caught raiding it?
As a teacher, I found this is a very strange book , as the things the teacher says to Ned do not ring true. No genuine teacher would mock a child's name nor do the things that Ms Lukas apparently does to Ned - they would be instantly dismissed! Is it Ned's perception of what she says or is Daddo trying for comic effect?
Best bit was when the older brother had a melt down at the dinner table ( p.64- 65) about the differences between how he was treated in Grade 5 and how Ned is treated...it shows us how Ned's perspective is not quite right.… (meer)