Try Not to Breathe

December 14, 2015
The crippling alcoholism of freelance journalist Alex Dale, the heroine of British author Seddon’s impressive first novel, has cost her nearly everything—her husband, a baby, and her job. Her current assignment writing about health issues takes her to the neuro-disability ward at Tunbridge Wells Royal Infirmary, which treats patients in long-term comas. New research shows that some patients, while unable to communicate outwardly, are still able to communicate using brain scans. Alex becomes interested in one patient in particular, Amy Stevenson, who was brutally attacked at age 15, in 1995, and has been in a coma for the 15 years since—trapped inside her body, but unable to tell her story. Alex becomes determined to solve the mystery behind Amy’s attack, convinced that breaking this story will resurrect her journalism career. Told from alternating perspectives and alternating decades, this gripping thriller about family and redemption will keep readers engaged to the very end. Agent: Jenny Bent, Bent Agency.

November 1, 2015
Two unlikely friends--a woman left unresponsive by an attack when she was a teen and a divorced alcoholic--intersect in Seddon's psychological thriller. In a story that shifts perspective between characters and jumps back and forth between the years 1995 and 2010, Seddon chronicles the tale of a teenager assaulted and left for dead, the girl's now-grown-up boyfriend, and a troubled freelance journalist trying to solve the crime. At age 15, Amy sneaked away with an older man in order to lose her virginity, which she hadn't done with her gentle boyfriend, Jacob. What she couldn't have known was that the man had too much to lose to let her stay alive. He strangled her and left her for dead, but Amy didn't die. Instead, she lies in what appears to be a persistent vegetative state in a hospital where reporter Alex is working on a story. Deserted by her fed-up police detective husband, Matt, Alex lives in the house she inherited from her mother and drinks herself to sleep every night. Such is her level of alcoholism and encroaching liver disease that she's accustomed to wetting the bed almost every night. But when she visits the hospital to do a feature on people in vegetative states, she sees Amy, whom she remembers as a news headline while she was growing up. What follows are Alex's attempts to wrap her mind around Amy's story by reinvestigating her attack. Cutting among the perspectives of Amy, Alex, and Jacob, Seddon builds an oddly interesting dynamic. The world she's constructed is fascinating and slightly dark, especially since Alex is a committed alcoholic in the last throes of her dependence. Seddon's storytelling skills are strong and the book engrossing, but her bizarre comparisons--she describes a doctor as squirming like a child with worms, for instance--serve only to yank the reader out of the story. Great plotting, but the author's oddball imagery proves distracting.

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February 15, 2016

At 15 Amy can't believe an older, handsome man is paying attention to her. Bored with her high school boyfriend and seeking excitement, she doesn't think twice about getting into the man's car. After she's found unconscious, badly beaten, and left for dead in the forest, her abduction became front-page news. Her family destroyed, she is now held prisoner by her own body--comatose these last 15 years. Who is the stranger who visits Amy every week, and why does he get teary-eyed when he holds her hand? This is what Alex Dale, a raging alcoholic who has lost everything herself, wants to know. Trying to revive her career as a professional journalist by interviewing Dr. Haynes, a specialist for people in vegetative states, she stumbles upon Amy's situation. Knowing the crime has never been solved and recognizing that she is as trapped as Amy, Alex persists in trying to solve the case. VERDICT Written from multiple perspectives, this debut psychological thriller blends two unrelated plotlines into a harrowing tale. For fans of Laura Lippmann and Tana French. [See Prepub Alert, 8/17/15.]--Marianne Fitzgerald, Severna Park H.S., MD

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2015
Capitalizing on the recent trend of crazily dysfunctional female leads, forged by Gillian Flynn and taken up by Paula Hawkins, debut novelist Seddon focuses on alcoholic journalist Alex Dale, who has lost her career and her husband due to her excessive drinking. She manages to carve a few precious hours out of every day when she can function, giving over the rest of the time to guzzling bottle after bottle of wine. She's currently working on a freelance story about the work being done with coma patients and recognizes one of them as Amy Stevenson. Amy has been in a coma for 15 years after being assaulted as a teenager. In chapters alternately narrated by Alex, Amy, and Amy's high-school boyfriend, the whole sordid story unfolds. There are some credulity-testing passages on how researchers can communicate with coma patients, and of the narrative voices, it's Amy's that is the most affecting. But the main attraction here is the voyeuristic appeal of Alex's meticulously detailed drunkenness, as she oh-so-carefully plans out her day so that she can drink herself into unconsciousness every night. Not for the faint of heart.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)