Don't Breathe a Word -- Holly Cupala
When Joy Delamere first meets Asher Valen, handsome billionaire's son, she is dazzled by his intelligence, looks, and intensity.
Less than a year later, she stages her own kidnapping in order to escape him. She ends up living with and among the street kids of Seattle, all of whom, like herself, are running from someone or something. But, even though they all have one thing in common—running—not everyone on the street is trustworthy or safe... and there are those who have no reservations whatsoever about preying upon each other.
In time, Joy—who now goes by Triste—begins to find her footing in this new life. But abandoning one's past isn't always possible, especially when that past doesn't want to be left behind...
Abusive relationships. Guilt. Homelessness. Runaways. Drug addiction. Prostitution. Sexual assault. Power dynamics. Don't Breathe a Word has it all, so if you're looking for a light, boppy story about first love and kittens, this isn't it.
While the story starts with Joy making the much-needed break from Asher, there are lots of flashbacks about their relationship. And as it's much easier to see a dysfunctional, emotionally and psychologically abusive relationship for what it is when you're on the outside of it, many readers may be frustrated with Joy's inertia in the earlier days of their romance. If you set aside the desire to do any backseat-driving, though, the push-pull of Joy's internal and external navigation of that relationship will feel honest and true:
This was the beginning of my dance with fire—the heat, the burning, the pleasure of him going deep into me, trying me, testing me, pulling and pushing and molding and shaping me into the other half of him, distant and cold in some moments and shocking me with his force at others. And just when I was finished, tired of being pushed away and then reeled back into the sheer consumptions of it, he would do something so amazingly tender that I would forget what made me want to leave him. Because there, at his apartment, in his car, in his arms, we were two, only two, and I was the most important thing in his universe—not the girl crushed by her parents' constant worry but the center of someone's passion.
Her integration into street culture will likely strain credulity—although she certainly deals with hunger and some dicey situations, she ultimately lucks out by falling in with Creed, a sensitive guy with a hero-complex who just-so-happens to also be on the run from his economically privileged background. If you get past that, though, the fascinating details about the life, language, and culture of the street kids, the compelling plotting, and the parallels of Joy's suffocating influences—her life-threatening asthma and, of course, Asher himself—all meld together into a thoughtful page-turner.
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Author page.
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Book source: ILLed through my library.
(Though the library copy was, oddly enough, an ARC. Tsk tsk tsk.)