"Try Not to Breathe" by Holly Seddon

WOW! What a great read. I liked this book for so many reasons, not sure where to begin.

Amy Stevenson has been in a persistent vegetative state in the hospital for 15 years. She was brutally beaten and left for dead when she was just 15 years old. Her attacker was never found and no viable suspect ever turned up.

Alex Dale is a freelance journalist and an alcoholic. She is writing an article about the work doctors are doing with patients like Amy in trying to communicate with them. She becomes very interested in Amy's story and decides to try and untangle the mystery surrounding her attack.

First of all, this novel is extremely well written. Sometimes, mystery/thriller authors make their plots quite confusing with too many suspects, leads and characters. Not so with this novel. It has a very limited number of characters and the story is told from several different points of view. Even though the suspect is not revealed until the very end, the information that is presented is never confusing or misleading. I really enjoyed that. In addition, even though there are flashbacks to 1995, the story flows on very smoothly without any confusing elements.

Secondly, I thought Seddon did a great job describing Alex's alcohol addiction. So often, drinking is glamorized in our culture. It was really refreshing to see the ugly side of the coin. Even though she struggles with addiction, she is not, what could be termed, an unreliable narrator. She does her work while sober and slips into drunken oblivion in the afternoons. If anything, Amy's case is her way to salvation, and she tries very hard to keep her head above water and not sink into a drunken stupor.

All the main characters in the book are extremely relatable, and the story moves along at a very nice pace. I literally flew through it. Even though you might be able to guess who the attacker is at some point in the last third of the book or so, it is not easily predictable. Clues are gradually fed to the reader. Nothing was jarring or out of place. A great-great read. I cannot wait to see more work from this author. I hope we'll get to see Alex in her future work also.

I got a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The book is already out in Europe and will be available for sale in the US on February 23, 2016.