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Saturday, June 16, 2012

Don't Breathe A Word by Jennifer McMahon

by:  Jennifer McMahon
published by:  HarperCollins
publish date:  May 17, 2011

On a soft summer night in Vermont, twelve-year-old Lisa went into the woods behind her house and never came out again. Before she disappeared, she told her little brother, Sam, about a door that led to a magical place where she would meet the King of the Fairies and become his queen.

This was one of those books that kind of surprised me.  I expected it to be one of those books where the door to the magical place was really a door to a pervert's house and Lisa had been kidnapped.  I wasn't expecting Don't Breathe a Word to actually be about fairies and how evil they can be in the human world.

Lisa, Sam and Evie spend the summers of their childhood exploring the nearby forest where town of Reliance disappeared 100 years before.  It's rumored that the entire town was taken to the land of the fairies.  The children spend their time in the forest leaving gifts for the fairies hoping to coax them out.  One night Lisa makes deal with the King of the Fairies, in exchange for each of their first born children they'll get one wish and Lisa wishes to cross over in to Fairy World.

After that night she's never seen again, until Sam and Evie start getting strange letters supposedly from Lisa.  Is it her?  Where has she been all these years?  Are the fairies real?  This book will keep you guessing beyond the last page.  It was great. Better than I was expecting really!

3 comments:

MamaMunky said...

Thanks for the review! I had the same thoughts about the book, but now that I know it is really about fairies, I might check it out. Thanks!

Nicole Pyles said...

This actually sounds right up my alley! This will go on my own to read list!

Autumn said...

MamaMunky you'll go back and forth about whether or not the fairies are real throughout the entire book. It was great!