Breathe My Name, a surprising book full of suspense moments, and makes you wonder “Is she really going to do that?” and “Oh no, I hope she doesn’t…” With Frances being scarred for life of what her mother did to her three little sisters and tried to do to her, she can’t almost stand to think of anything about her mother anymore. She thinks of her mother as a spider, saying none of us knew it and knew that in the middle of the night she would crawl out of her bed and get down on her fingers and toes and climb up the walls and scuttle across the ceiling just to keep in practice because she knew she would soon be transformed into a spider again soon. Does Frances still think about her mother like that? Did her mother do it all protect her in an insane way? Read the book, Breathe My Name, by R. A. Nelson to find out.



Frances Robinson hadn’t told many people about her secret, almost no people at all outside her family, just her best friend, Ann Mirette, and it hurt to do that. I thought it was confusing to understand her life and what she’s been through because it doesn’t really show her feelings until about the end of the book. It was also difficult to understand her life before being adopted in ‘Fireless’ and I didn’t even know she was adopted until the middle of the book, but that type of thing I think should be mentioned in the beginning of the book. The only way to separate them in the book is by their chapter (Fireless-chapter names, present-number chapters). Lastly, in Fireless, I couldn’t tell what she thought of her birthmother or how she feels about her adopted mother. For example, if Frances was proud of her birthmother, or got scared of her birthmother at times.





With the author, I liked how some of the characters talked but, I couldn’t really imagine them talking because in the book it said that Frances came from Tennessee but moved to Alabama. I could tell how ‘Nix’ talks because she wrote it how a person from New Orleans talks. With Ann Mirette, she talks like a teenager would talk right now. I don’t think Frances really talks that much too other people in the book. So, I would like to see more characters.




The two other semi-main characters came at the same time in the book, which I thought was interesting. Frances first noticed Mr. R. C. Carruthers in his car staring straight at her, making Frances believe he was a stalker or somewhat because she then saw his car at her house twice and the second time, her parents had let him because they thought he was a lawyer working with Frances birthmother. Actually, Mr. Carruthers is obsessed with her mother, Afton because the day that Afton (birthmother) suffocated her sisters and almost suffocated her, Mr. Carruthers had just lost his daughter and he was furious that someone would do that to their own child. So, he found Afton walking down the street and he started to become insane and he now wants to ‘get rid of’ every disposed of, damaged, insane, etc, person on Earth, starting with Afton. The other semi-main character is John Mullinix, Frances lover and the one who knows more about her than her parents do. He’s very clever, honest, and all the girls think he’s mysterious and brave. Frances was one of first people he saw on his first day of school.







Furthermore, Breathe My Name is an excellent book to read but it needs some improvements. Such as more leading characters and more information about them and the settings they’re in. I don’t think the author took much effort in expressing the characters feelings either. Although, there are many ‘OMG’ moments and surprising decisions the characters make. Even some moments where you want to throw the book at the wall because it so intense. All in All, I would recommend this book to people who like realistic fiction and suspense books.