Don’t Breathe a Word

Don’t Breathe a Word follows parallel stories of two teenaged girls at the same elite private school separated by more than half a century. Connie attends Hardwick Preparatory Academy at the height of the Cold War, and Eva attends in the present day. Soon their stories intertwine and collide as Eva investigates the dark secret that Connie witnessed.

In 1962, Hardwick is in a Cold War panic and building a fallout shelter beneath the administration building. With the pretense of testing the shelter, Mr. Kraus, a young charismatic teacher, recruits six students to live in the shelter for four days. The students soon discover themselves in the midst of a psychological experiment reminiscent of real-life infamous experiments such as Stanley Milgram’s experiments on obedience, which the book does mention in passing, and Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment. The students are quickly sucked into the narrative presented by Mr. Kraus, and soon an unthinkable tragedy occurs and the students band together to cover up the truth.

Years later, in the present day, Eva arrives at Hardwick as a new student. She quickly makes a new friend and then gets recruited to join the school’s elite secret society, The Fives. Initially, Eva is thrilled to be inducted into The Fives; she makes friends and enjoys their company. However, as she gets deeper into the group, she starts to have misgivings. She finds The Fives’ motto disturbing, and it’s odd that they habitually report minor disobedience among the student body straight to the Dean of Students. Soon Eva is distancing herself from The Fives while helping another friend investigate the Cold War era fallout shelter that the school wants to keep secret.

Don’t Breathe a Word is an engrossing and suspenseful read. The parallel storyline structure works well, and each storyline is equally interesting. Without seeming forced or turning into a lecture, the novel provides history and context on the Cold War for an audience that may not be familiar with the details. The novel is fast paced, getting into the action at the very beginning and quickly tying up all the loose ends at the very end. The pace of the ending felt a bit rushed, and details of characters’ reactions to the events of the novel and their ultimate fates were lacking. The covering up of the fallout shelter’s existence was necessary for the plot, but the characters motivations seemed unrealistic. The focus on the novel is more on Eva than on Connie, and, while it makes sense to focus on the contemporary storyline, this meant that Connie’s story felt underdeveloped and unresolved and left a slightly unsatisfying ending to an otherwise enjoyable read. Overall, however, Don’t Breathe a Word was an engaging read.