A well-written and suspenseful ghost story, Breathe is the story of Jack, an adolescent who moves into an old farmhouse with his mother following the death of his father. Jack has a gift: he picks up impressions of a house's former, dead inhabitants through the furnishings and physical environment that they previously occupied. He also has a curse: severe asthma.
It proves grimly ironic that Jack's mum, in trying to find a home where she and Jack can make a new start following their bereavement, has lighted upon an establishment tenanted by five ghosts - four children and, the object of their terror, the Ghost Mother. Elated at finding the house tenanted by a real, living child, she is determined to make Jack accept her as his mother, by whatever means of persuasion, trickery or coercion she can muster.
Meanwhile, one of the ghost children manages to warn Jack of the Ghost Mother's true nature, while they themselves are horribly forced to sustain her earthly presence until they are claimed, one by one, by the terrifying Nightmare Passage.
Though this was generally an engaging and evocative tale, the concluding scene, when Jack attempts the challenge of using his gift to liberate those who have gone to the Nightmare Passage, seemed disappointingly rushed and left me with the distinct impression that the author had suddenly arrived at a premature deadline. But overall, this is a compelling and imaginative work and the passages detailing Jack's asthma attacks come across as well-researched and almost as alarming as the book's more supernatural terrors.
