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A review by erica_whitney
Don't Breathe a Word by Jennifer McMahon
3.0
There were parts about this book that I loved, and parts that irritated me so much that while I was reading it I was thinking about how I was going to write my review of it for Goodreads. Not a good sign, eh?
This book is split into two perspectives: one that describes the past, what happened 15 years ago, and one that describes the present. It is the portions of the book that take place in the past that are the book's great strength. The author writes children beautifully, and I was immersed in their world that summer. However, whereas she writes children beautifully, I can't say the same about the adults in the book. It may not be a problem with how she writes adults in general, but these specific adults, perhaps. Could I have cared less about these adults? I honestly wouldn't have cared anything for them if they hadn't been the children I was reading about in the other sections. Except for Phoebe, whom I was not given this attachment to because she's always an adult in the book. The adult Sam is not believable to me---the person characterized in the book is not the person that little boy would have grown up to be. Phoebe had no character whatsoever.
The suspense is kept up quite well, and it made for an interesting read. As I was reading it, I kept wondering about how it might be made into a movie---it very much has a cinematic feel to it. I wish that she hadn't been quite so cagy toward the end, and that things had been resolved a little more.
The end, though---blargh! I'm tempted to take off another star just for that.
This book is split into two perspectives: one that describes the past, what happened 15 years ago, and one that describes the present. It is the portions of the book that take place in the past that are the book's great strength. The author writes children beautifully, and I was immersed in their world that summer. However, whereas she writes children beautifully, I can't say the same about the adults in the book. It may not be a problem with how she writes adults in general, but these specific adults, perhaps. Could I have cared less about these adults? I honestly wouldn't have cared anything for them if they hadn't been the children I was reading about in the other sections. Except for Phoebe, whom I was not given this attachment to because she's always an adult in the book. The adult Sam is not believable to me---the person characterized in the book is not the person that little boy would have grown up to be. Phoebe had no character whatsoever.
The suspense is kept up quite well, and it made for an interesting read. As I was reading it, I kept wondering about how it might be made into a movie---it very much has a cinematic feel to it. I wish that she hadn't been quite so cagy toward the end, and that things had been resolved a little more.
The end, though---blargh! I'm tempted to take off another star just for that.