Since being released from Patterson Hospital, sixteen-year-old Ryan has spent most of his free time by himself at a nearby waterfall. He misses his friends and co-patients from Patterson, people who understand exactly what he's been through and how he's feeling; he's avoiding his overprotective mother*; and he's trying to break through the numbness that resulted in his stint at Patterson in the first place:
Actually, it had been easy for people to figure out the truth about me. Right after I'd disappeared, the school had had a suicide-prevention assembly**. And for some unknown reason my mother had gone to pick up my assignments and clean out my locker in the middle of the day, instead of after classes. And so everyone knew, even without me saying a word.
Enter Nikki Thornton, who, unlike everyone else, doesn't feign ignorance about where he's been for the last few months. Just the opposite, in fact: she wants to know exactly what he's been through, because she's trying to understand why her father committed suicide.
If you're my age (or thereabouts), you're probably unable to read the title of this book without immediately contracting a mild case of R.E.M. earworm. Oh, Out of Time Automatic For the People. I still know you—and all of your tortured glory—by heart. [ETA: Even if I embarrassingly named the wrong album. Sigh. Thanks to my secret email friend for the heads up!]
However. While Try Not to Breathe pulls its title from that album, and while it deals with some heavy-duty issues—grief, depression, and suicide—it NEVER even FLIRTS with being tortured. Because when I describe something as "tortured"—and I can't believe that I'm only explaining this now, like, eight years after starting this blog—what I really mean is self-indulgently mopey***.
Ryan is always frank and straightforward and matter-of-fact, whether he's talking about his day-to-day life, or explaining how and why his father found him in a closed garage with his hand on the car key, or admitting that he still thinks about suicide. His voice always sounds real, clear, and most importantly, true.
And, as you may have guessed from the cover art, there's a romance. But it isn't a story in which the Romance Heals All Ills, or even a story about a romance that's necessarily going to Work Out. Rather than a simple romance—and there are some serious moments of steam—it's a story about two people connecting, and about how important, at that specific time, that connection is to both of them.
I'll be going back to read Jennifer R. Hubbard's previous stuff, and she's going right on my YA Realistic Contemporaries To Read & Recommend list.
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*He understands why she's being overprotective, of course, but that doesn't make her any easier to deal with.
**This immediately made me think of the five-minute pause between the lice check and the list of names called to the nurse's office. Elementary school administrators, in case you've ever wondered: IT DOESN'T FOOL ANYONE.
***And which, my High School Self hastens to add, isn't necessarily a bad thing.
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Book source: Review copy from the publisher.
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