Review Detail

Don’t Breathe a Word is certainly something different when it comes to YA Contemporaries. First, the main character, Joy, suffers from an extreme case of asthma which had her in and out of hospitals when she was young, and now keeps her mother on high alert for the tiniest speck of dust. At the beginning of the book we find Joy chopping off her long locks, bleaching the rest almost white, and staging her bedroom as the site of a kidnapping. Her own kidnapping, as she’s leaving home to leave on the streets of Seattle. If that’s not different, I don’t know what is.

Of course there had to be a trigger that made Joy want to run away. That would be Asher, her older boyfriend. There’s hints at the beginning that he’s abusing her. Joy never out right says she’s being abused by him, but it’s in the way that she phrases things that involve him. But as the story moves forward we get to see what he’s been doing to her, and it’s disgusting.

Don’t Breathe a Word was definitely an interesting read. I had never read about homelessness before, so it was an eye opener. Joy, or Triste as she goes by on the street, started with somewhat of a plan, but soon enough she learns that you can’t really prepare yourself for living the streets. She’s left with absolutely no supplies except the inhaler in her pocket and her hidden cell phone, which she is determined not to use for help.

Then she finds Creed, a mysterious musician that she hopes can help her. He introduces her to his “squat mates” and they become a kind of family. Life on the street is not easy, especially for Joy/Triste with her asthma. She can be triggered at any moment and that could mean instant death for her, but she’s determined to survive and not return to her suffocating life. Thankfully she has the others to look out for her.

I couldn’t see where the end of Don’t Breathe a Word was going, but I do think it was a good one. Joy is not the same girl that she was before she ran away, and she’s stronger than she had been. She doesn’t feel the need to hide anymore, and she’s made some great changes in her little square of the world. Overall, I would definitely recommend this to all YA Contemporary fans.