When I was a young reader, I fell hard for literary writing. The only problem? There weren’t a lot of literary books being written with me in mind. It always felt like I had to make a choice: either read young adult novels whose prose was lackluster, or read books whose themes didn’t captivate me but whose poetic use of language did.
But the world of YA has changed. Today’s teens certainly enjoy a far more bountiful selection of literary novels, and The Place Between Breaths is one of them.
This novel is told in four interlaced seasons. In the anchoring story – the spring section – teen Grace is hard at work as an intern at the lab where her father hopes to find a cure for the disease that took her mother from them: schizophrenia. As the stories unfold, bouncing throughout time, our narrator offers a piecemeal look at her past, her future, her sanity, and her very mortality.
While the story itself is lovely, what Na truly masters is the expert voice guiding us through all of the seasons of this story. Thanks to many twists and turns – some inevitable, others almost impossibly surprising – this book truly trusts the intelligence of its reader, making it an enthralling, captivating story for all ages.