by Adam Skolnick
3.5 stars
In 2013, the world of competitive freediving was shocked to its core when one of its upcoming stars tragically died at the end of a dive. This book details Nick Melovi's life and the repercussions his death would have on the sport. Written in alternating chapters, it covers Nick's life from childhood and also the competitions that took place after his death. This is an interesting sport because the participants swear it is completely safe but yet frequently blackout and spit blood after dives which seems a bit insane to me. These divers learn how to control their breath with exercise, yoga, and other tricks in order to dive up to 100 meters on one breath. Normal scuba divers cannot even make those depths because of the air turning toxic. I enjoyed reading about this sport and learned a lot about deep water diving. I did find the author strangely absent from this book and didn't find out until the acknowledgements that he was actually present as a journalist at Nick's last dive. I think it would have actually been more interesting to have that outside perspective in this book. Overall though, I feel as though I gained some knowledge on an interesting and risky sport. I received a copy of this book from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.
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