Joy Delamere has asthma, but that’s not what causes her to feel like she’s suffocating. It’s Asher, her boyfriend. At least, that’s how he sees himself and that’s how Joy’s family sees him. To her, though, he’s about as far from a boyfriend as she can imagine. He has her in a choke hold — quite literally. Joy’s older brother, who used to help keep her in check, left for college and now her family depends upon Asher to keep an eye on Joy. And he takes the responsibility very seriously.

Not only is Joy’s boyfriend abusive and controlling, her parents are about as absent as they come. Her friends keep slipping further away, too, the more time she and Asher spend together.

Joy wants out.

She cuts off her hair, hops an early morning bus from her suburban town, and lands in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. She’s packed her inhalers, a few granola bars, some cash, and a lot of hope for figuring it all out. She’s turned to the street to get out of her life, and she hopes that the boy she ran into a few weeks back — a street kid playing outside one of the shops she visited with Asher — might be the person she needs in her life.

Don’t Breathe a Word is Holly Cupala’s sophomore novel, and like her debut Tell Me A Secret, it surprised me with the how well the complicated issues at stake were handled. From the beginning, we’re dropped into that moment where Joy decides she wants nothing more than to give up her suburban home life and move to the streets. From the details we’re given, it all seems ridiculous she’d want to do that — she’s got married parents, there’s money and food, and she has this boyfriend who takes care of her. As readers, we’re not privy to the decision making at this point. We’re given Joy at her lowest and from there, she spills the events leading to that decision.

In setting up the story this way, my emotions and feelings toward Joy were toyed with in the best possible way. I thought the fact she was running away from her problems was a cheap solution and I thought she was being incredibly selfish in her actions. But as the story unraveled, and as Joy began detailing the abusive and powerful hold Asher had over her and the lack of allies she had in the situation, my sympathy for her increased. I felt for her. Nothing in her life seemed redeemable, and as I got to know her parents (both too busy with work and with their own lives to pay attention to their daughter, thus their insistence Asher watch Joy so closely), it was clear they weren’t on her side, either. Joy was suffocating under the weight of Asher and the pressures put upon her to be right in her parents’ eyes.

I’m not an expert on street culture, but I do know a bit from reading and research and, quite frankly, from working in libraries (anyone who has worked in a public library, no matter how small or rural or quaint, becomes familiar with transient and homeless populations through the course of their education or their own experiences). What Cupala offers readers is realistic and challenging to read because of how honest it deals with the truth of street life for kids. It’s gritty and raw. But it’s also an entire culture in and of itself: there are families and alliances, and when Joy spends her first few hours on the street, she realizes how essential aligning herself with people who would help protect and guide her was. She’s motivated to find that boy who talked to her, and when she does, it’s not an instant love connection — it’s tenuous at best. He wants to help her, but he is understandably wary that her intentions might not be the same as his or those he spends his time with. He ended up on the streets for a reason, too. He’s got pain and a story he’s keeping hidden until he truly trusts her, and that trust takes a while to build.

In the street, people don’t tend to use their real names. They adopt new ones, and the boy Joy seeks out calls himself Creed. When he asks her name, she adopts a new name, too: Triste. By doing this, she not only protects herself from being found by anyone who might be looking for her, but she cements in her mind and in the mind of Creed and his “family” that she’s serious about living on the streets. This isn’t simply a case of running away. She’s desperate.

There’s much more to talk about in the novel, particularly when Triste’s time on the street is through. I don’t want to ruin it, but I’ll say that while I saw some things coming, I didn’t see it all play out the way it did. Although the ending felt a little convenient, particularly when it came to how Creed and Triste’s romance plays out, I was okay with it. They both deserved the endings they got because of how much they went through alone and together on the streets.

This is an emotionally-charged story, and it’s going to appeal to readers who love the way authors like Ellen Hopkins shed light into stories of teens who are in situations that are outside of the norm. Cupala’s writing is much different, as her prose and pacing is slower — deliberately so — than Hopkins, but it’s a book that challenges readers. What worked well for me was that I never felt entirely sure throughout the book how I wanted it to end or how I wanted Joy to confront the real problems at hand. I love a character I can’t make predictions for and a character who challenges me to consider my own preconceived notions of how life works or should work. Joy does that here. Don’t go into this book prepared for a quick paced story; investing the time to really fall into this world that’s so foreign is worth it. Cupala’s done her work on the book, and there’s something to be said this needs to be read not only for Joy’s story, but also for the sheer research and crafting of that research into the writing. Not everything in the book worked for me — I found many of the secondary characters distracting rather than interesting, and some of the situations felt a little too convenient or required a bit more of a stretch of my beliefs than I’d like — but because so much did work, I’m okay overlooking the problematic areas. It won’t work everyone, but it will speak to so many readers who themselves have felt like there is no other way out, and the restraint Cupala uses in not laying down judgment of street culture is admirable.

Don’t Breathe a Word is a quiet kind of powerful novel. It digs at the heart of feeling alone and feeling desperate without sacrificing story nor taking an easy way out. So while we’re thrown into the book at Joy’s rock bottom moment, we know there is a whole lot of “going through” for her to do, both forward and backward.

Finished copy received from the publisher. Don’t Breathe a Word is available now. Bonus: it’s a paperback original release.