TRY NOT TO BREATHE, by Jennifer R. Hubbard

From the summary: Learning to live is more than just choosing not to die, as sixteen-year-old Ryan discovers in the year following his suicide attempt. Despite his mother’s anxious hovering and the rumors at school, he’s trying to forget the darkness from which he has escaped. But it doesn’t help that he’s still hiding guilty secrets, or that he longs for a girl who may not return his feelings. Then he befriends Nicki, who is using psychics to seek contact with her dead father. This unlikely friendship thaws Ryan to the point where he can face the worst in himself. He and Nicki confide in one another the things they never thought they’d tell anyone—but their confessions are trickier than they seem, and the fallout tests the bounds of friendship and forgiveness.

Christina: I should start by saying that TRY NOT TO BREATHE is not technically a swoony read. There’s no hero that will leave you draped across a fainting couch, no kiss that will have you clutching your pearls (there’s kissing but ykwim). The subject matter is pretty dark, but it’s a book that will make you feel, the kind you want to talk about and remember long after you turn the last page.

I first saw Try Not to Breathe on twitter months and months and months ago (it had a different cover then but I had grabby hands just the same). I remember texting Lo immediately with I HAVE TO HAVE THIS BOOK. I couldn’t explain it, but there was something about the summary that just pulled me in. I tried to get an ARC and failed. I begged everyone going to any convention to look for it. But with no luck, I resigned myself to wait.

It did not disappoint.

Ryan seems like the boy who has it all–a beautiful home, successful parents, a room full of everything a teen boy could want, but those things don’t help him connect to the world around him. He likes a girl that doesn’t like him back, he becomes labeled as a person he doesn’t want to be, his only friends (fellow patients at Patterson) live hours away, he’s lonely. And it’s not just that Ryan feels alone, he feels invisible.

It was dangerous to stand under the waterfall, but some kids did it anyway, and I was one of them. The water pounded my mind blank, stung my skin. It hit my naked back, chest, and shoulders so hard I couldn’t think. That water could knock me over, force the breath out of me, pin me to the rock. I knew it.

But I kept doing it.

With “the incident” so fresh in everyone’s mind, Ryan’s worried and over-protective parents would be furious if they knew what he was doing. But at the waterfall he doesn’t have to think, he only has to be stronger than the water that pushes against him. There, he meets Nicki. She tells him that her dad committed suicide, and wants Ryan to tell her the one thing that everyone in this type of situation wants to know: WHY.

The summary sets up the book pretty well so I won’t get into too much of that here, but for me it’s not just what happens, it’s how, and how beautifully Jennifer Hubbard nails teenage emotions. When you’re sixteen it’s hard to have ALL THE FEELINGS, and imagine a world that will exist out of high school. Pretty much all teenagers feel lonely or isolated at some point, they feel pressure to conform to the ideas of what others think they should be, but for some, like Ryan, it’s so much more than that.

I couldn’t help but care for and feel protective of Ryan, and the scene where we finally see exactly how “it” happened took me by surprise and broke my heart a little. I felt his confusion and his sadness, but eventually I also felt his hope. And because of that, this one goes Straight to the Favorites Pile.

About the Author: Jennifer R. Hubbard is the author of The Secret Year, and Try Not to Breathe. You can find her on: Goodreads – Twitter – Website – Live Journal