Don't Breathe a Word

by Holly Cupala

Joy Delamere is suffocating from severe asthma, overprotective parents, and an emotionally-abusive boyfriend when she escapes to the streets of nearby Seattle and falls in with a "street family" that teaches her to use a strength she did not know she had.

• ISBN10: 0062094041
• ISBN13: 9780062094049
• Publish Date: 3 January 2012
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Imprint: Collins
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 320
• Language: English

Reviews

[boghunden]

"There comes a point when a runaway decides it's safer to live on the streets than to live at home."

[Angie]

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.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.

[Joni Reads]

This may sound odd but the idea of being homeless fascinated me as a child. I thought it would not be cool but be like an adventure. Being a scavenger, turning trash into treasure. Of course that was before I realized that it would be cold and lonely and dangerous but I was like six at the time and didn't connect the dots. But reading this book took me back to when I thought the idea sounded like an adventure.



In the Afterword of this novel Holly Cupala says that she was told that at some point every homeless teen decides that being on the street is safer than being home. That sums up this novel perfectly.



Joy has severe asthma and her parents insist she be constantly "protected", first by her older brother and then when he goes to college by her boyfriend Asher, who she met at a fundraiser at the local zoo.



At first things were ok with Asher but then he started to become verbally abusive towards her. The situation was made even worse when Joy's father was laid off and Asher had his father give Joy's father a job with his company. Asher constantly told Joy "you owe me", threatening to take away her father's job if she didn't do everything he asked her to do.



When Joy goes on a day trip to see her brother without telling Asher the abuse become physical and Joy sees no other way out than staging her own kidnapping and running away to the Capitol Hill district of Seattle where the homeless teen population is large and where a boy once offered his help after seeing Asher publically degrading Joy at a nightclub.



So Joy runs to the city and encounter Creed, the mysterious boy who offered her his help. She also finds May, a girl has lived her life on the streets and has a wall up that she won't let anyone behind, and Santos, a short boy with a lot of heart and a pet ferret that he keeps in shirt at all times. This groups of teens squats in a condemned house, scavenges for food in dumpsters behind restaurants, they turn tricks, play music on the sidewalk, steal from markets, they do whatever it takes to survive.



But Joy is different. Her parent's are looking for her and she will have to make choice between her street family and her real family and finally come to terms with the abuse she suffered at Asher's hands.



This novel was so powerful and haunting. I'm almost speechless as I write this. The reality of this book is jarring, that so many teens are living the contents of this book right now, at this minute. I couldn't even begin to imagine living on the streets. Especially in Seattle where it rains more often than not. It's a terrifying thought and one that is always in the back of your mind as you read Joy's story.

This book is in a word: excellant. I think it should be recommended reading in high school English. It would open up so much discussion and while some of the language and situations are for a mature audience, I think all teens age 16 and up should read this.