Family secrets and fairy lore create a shifting reality in McMahon's unsettling novel about the disappearance of a 12-year-old girl who longed to become Queen of the Fairies. Fifteen years after Lisa goes missing, her younger brother, Sam, gets a strange phone call that leads him and his girlfriend, Phoebe, to discover a book, supposedly written by the King of the Fairies, that Lisa used as her bible to cross over, and which prompts Sam and Phoebe to meet up with Sam's cousin, Evie, to see if they can figure out what happened to Lisa. Nothing is as it seems from that moment on, and Phoebe's longtime fear of a dark man in the shadows seeps back after she discovers, in true woo-woo fashion, that she is pregnant. McMahon (Promise Not to Tell) alternates between the past and present with loads of portent and foreshadowing, creating a rural Vermont chiller with a Rosemary's Baby vibe, but even after a surprising villainess emerges and more than a few disquieting passages about Lisa are burned through, many readers will remain in the dark. (May)
Beautifully written and spooky, Don’t Breathe a Word wraps around you and pulls you into a dark world of fairies and family secrets.” — Chevy Stevens, New York Times bestselling author of Still Missing
“Jennifer McMahon never flinches and never fails to surprise as her stories twist down unexpected roads. Don’t Breathe a Word balances love and horror as McMahon weaves a young couple into a perverse fairyland where Rosemary’s Baby could be at home.” — Randy Susan Meyers, author of The Murderer's Daughters
“[McMahon’s] smart mystery-thriller grabs you by the throat and won’t let go....making this a page-turner you’ll neglect sleep for.” — People
“Jennifer McMahon’s novels are like the perfect winter truffle: dark, rich, earthy, and an absolute, decadent pleasure. Don’t Breathe a Word is a haunting page-turner that kept me up, spine shivering and enthralled, way past my bedtime.” — Joshilyn Jackson, NYT bestselling author of Gods in Alabama and Backseat Saints
“[A] strange and unsettling shocker ... With the tale’s outcome utterly unforeseeable even as it races along, “Don’t Breathe a Word” leaves you breathless.” — Wall Street Journal
Beautifully written and spooky, Don’t Breathe a Word wraps around you and pulls you into a dark world of fairies and family secrets.
[McMahon’s] smart mystery-thriller grabs you by the throat and won’t let go....making this a page-turner you’ll neglect sleep for.”
[A] strange and unsettling shocker ... With the tale’s outcome utterly unforeseeable even as it races along, “Don’t Breathe a Word” leaves you breathless.
Jennifer McMahon never flinches and never fails to surprise as her stories twist down unexpected roads. Don’t Breathe a Word balances love and horror as McMahon weaves a young couple into a perverse fairyland where Rosemary’s Baby could be at home.
Jennifer McMahon’s novels are like the perfect winter truffle: dark, rich, earthy, and an absolute, decadent pleasure. Don’t Breathe a Word is a haunting page-turner that kept me up, spine shivering and enthralled, way past my bedtime.
[A] strange and unsettling shocker ... With the tale’s outcome utterly unforeseeable even as it races along, “Don’t Breathe a Word” leaves you breathless.
A young girl disappears in the woods one summer night. The only clue to her whereabouts rests with her brother and her cousin, who never reveal what they know because to them it seems crazy—another one of her wild imaginings. The King of the Fairies was coming to take her away, she told them. And so, it would seem, he did. But 15 years later, Sam Nazzaro has grown up and moved on with his life when he receives word from his long-lost sister. She is back, and the Fairy King wants to make good on old promises, she says, to take what belongs to him. At first Sam is disbelieving, but soon he and his girlfriend, Phoebe, find themselves wrapped up in a sinister plot, no longer knowing what is real and what is imagined. VERDICT McMahon's (Dismantled) latest literary thriller seems designed to keep readers guessing, but with an overly complex plot and excess of characters, the thrill of suspense is lost amid confusion and frustrating loose ends. Only for the author's fans.—Leigh Wright, Bridgewater, NJ
