Don't Breathe a Word

October 31, 2011
Cupala (Tell Me a Secret) plunges readers into the traumatized interior life of asthmatic high school junior Joy Delamere. Faking her own kidnapping, Joy cuts and dyes her hair and runs away from her suburban Seattle home and her abusive and controlling boyfriend, Asher. She heads for the notorious homeless haven of Capitol Hill, seeking freedom and an enigmatic musician named Creed, who once told her to find him if she needed help. Creed invites her into his makeshift home and family, which consists of fiery May and the more welcoming Santos, who teach Joy to steal and to survive. “Part of becoming a family was finding your place in it,” Joy thinks. “And despite the terrible air, I hoped there would be room to breathe in this one.” The tense, riveting story flashes between Joy’s past and present, illuminating the brutal extent of Asher’s efforts to control her and Joy’s slow process of rebuilding her self-worth with the help of her new friends. Though the hopeful ending is overly tidy, the characters and setting are tangibly and impressively rendered. Ages 14–up.

October 15, 2011
Two separate threads come together in this offering from the author of Tell Me a Secret (2010): a grim but compelling take on an abusive relationship and a coming-of-age love story. While they don't entirely mesh, the author's considerable narrative gifts keep readers engaged throughout. For Joy Delamere, asthma is a prison that shuts her in and burdens her family until she meets dangerous, sexy Asher, scion of a wealthy family. Their romance is liberating at first, but it becomes another prison as he gains power over Joy and her family. In desperation, she fakes her kidnapping and flees, losing herself among the homeless teen population on Seattle's Capitol Hill. Suburban naivete nearly does her in, but four teen squatters led by an attractive musician, Creed, take her in and teach her street smarts. Unlike creepy, psychotic Asher, Creed is gently protective of Joy, although there's a whiff of old-fashioned paternalism in their relationship. Tough issues are too easily resolved, but the vivid setting and characters, especially the street kids--outwardly jaded, they're fresh and likable survivors--compensate. Cupala knows her venue inside out and renders this harsh but lively world of hygienically challenged Dumpster divers with a lot of heart. (Fiction. 14 & up)

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January 1, 2012

Gr 9 Up-Joy feels like she's being smothered. The 17-year-old from a privileged family has asthma, but she suffers even more from her suffocating circumstances. Her professional parents want to keep her safe, and her wealthy boyfriend, Asher, is stifling her as well. A slick-talking sadist, he has manipulated Joy to the point where she hardly recognizes herself in the desperate, clingy, self-destructive girl she has become. She thinks there is no way out of her gilded cage except flight, so she stages her own abduction and disappears into Seattle's street life. Miraculously, the teen keeps her relatively innocent perspective throughout most of her sojourn, thanks in large part to the intervention of a street musician and his little family of thrown-away teens. Ultimately, the true terror of life on the streets is revealed when Joy finds a friend beaten nearly to death by a john. She activates her cell phone and calls 911, which allows her parents to find her. Re-entry into her loving family is swift and begs the question: Was it really necessary for Joy to inflict such suffering merely to break up with her boyfriend? The storytelling is less than subtle, but it has strengths in the portrayal of an overprotected young woman's emotional bondage and in the vivid depiction of Pacific Northwest communities. From hyper-rich society fundraisers to the grungy late-night alleys of Capitol Hill, from students at Starbucks to Seattle's vibrant underground music scene, the settings are keenly observed and memorable.-Carolyn Lehman, Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA

Copyright 2012 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2011
Grades 10-1 You have got to be desperate to stage your own kidnapping, but that is just what 16-year-old Joy does. To make matters even more precarious, she suffers from life-threatening asthma, which Cupala uses as a powerful metaphor for Joy's figurative suffocation in the inescapable trap into which she has been drawn. The first-person narrative shuttles back and forth in time between Joy's abuse at the hands of her boyfriend (the reader has to add up clues that Joy herself has trouble facing) and her life on the Seattle streets after she has fled from her abuser. Cupala's depiction of what it takes to survive on the streets and the various perils that can ensnare runaways is vivid and fascinating. This novel recalls Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak (1999) in its psychological astuteness about the many terrifying tendrils connected to teen sexual abuse, and it works just as well on a suspense level, too.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

April 5, 2021
With its boarding school setting and intertwined pair of timelines, this solid novel by Taylor (The Paper Girl of Paris) calls to mind the Truly Devious series. The narrator of the present-day thread is Manhattanite Eva, who recently started as a junior at Upstate New York’s tony Hardwick Preparatory Academy. Eager to make friends, Eva is thrilled when she’s tapped to join the Fives, a secret society, and vows to do what it takes to become a part of the glamorous crowd. Back in 1962, timid Connie, 16, is persuaded to join an experiment dreamed up by Hardwick’s charismatic new faculty member, Mr. Kraus. To test a program that Mr. Kraus says will prepare people for the reality of life after a nuclear attack, Connie and five other students, including her crush Craig, spend four days of spring break locked in the school’s fallout shelter. Through their chatty first-person narratives, Eva and Connie, both white, neatly convey their contrasting personalities and eras while revealing their growing uneasiness with their respective situations. As the novel’s pace accelerates, ratcheting up the tension, the connections between the two girls’ stories become ever clearer. A persuasive argument for the virtues of questioning groupthink and looking beyond glittering surfaces. Ages 13–up. Agent: Danielle Burby, Nelson Literary.