Don’t For­get to Breathe is a poignant com­ing-of-age tale about two girls on the brink of wom­an­hood who are dis­cov­er­ing their tal­ents, their places in their fam­i­lies, their sex­u­al­i­ty, how to nav­i­gate rela­tion­ships, and where they fit into the world.

Zoe is a bud­ding bal­le­ri­na with a group of loy­al friends, a long­time boyfriend who has always been sup­port­ive, a lov­ing fam­i­ly, and a grow­ing ambi­tion to become the best dancer she can be. Hanna’s fam­i­ly is a bit more com­pli­cat­ed. Her moth­er is in the mil­i­tary and is often deployed. Han­na has spent her child­hood mov­ing from neigh­bor­hood to neigh­bor­hood and school to school as her moth­er is trans­ferred from place to place. Her father works hard to keep fam­i­ly life afloat as he explores, among oth­er things, his Jew­ish iden­ti­ty. Zoe’s own pas­sion is play­ing piano. When the sto­ry begins, she once again faces the chal­lenge of meet­ing new peo­ple and adapt­ing to a new home town. As Zoe and Han­na find one anoth­er roman­ti­cal­ly and sex­u­al­ly, each faces indi­vid­ual tri­als and tests of abil­i­ty to cre­ative­ly nav­i­gate new and con­fus­ing situations.

The writ­ing is clear, com­pas­sion­ate, and acces­si­ble. The two authors part­ner well and suc­cess­ful­ly bal­ance the nar­ra­tive between the two appeal­ing pro­tag­o­nists. Read­ers will relate to the strug­gles faced by Zoe and Han­na and may find bits of them­selves in the sto­ry as they watch two young peo­ple fig­ure it all out in a painful but ulti­mate­ly healthy way.