My thanks to Knof Doubleday and Net Galley for this arc to review. Cecily Wong is a journalist and gets to cover the world famous climber as they take on the highest peak in the world. She's not sure she is cut out for the climb, and there's some stuff happening to people...

This was good, although a little less of a thriller than I expected. It was a bit predictable, but it held my interest throughout. I liked reading about the climb itself! Can't wait for more from this author!

My thanks to Knof Doubleday and Net Galley for this arc to review.

Loved it! Cecily Wong is a journalist that got the scoop of her career. ....come on a mountain climbing expedition with famous climber Charles McVeigh and interview him once they summit. However Cecily finds herself involved with murder and greed.

Great book . Something different I have not read before. Fast paced and holds your interest. Highly recommend.

Breathless is an entertaining story of a woman's survival against all odds on a dangerous mountain expedition. Cecily Wong is determined to get the interview of a lifetime. Even though she has failed to compete climbs in the past she must reach the peak of Manaslu in order to talk to Charles McVeigh, one of the most celebrated mountaineers in the world. Everything seems to be in order until someone from the climbing party dies suddenly. Everyone assumes it is an accident but Cecily has doubts. By the time another climber dies suspiciously there is no turning back. Cecily is trapped on the mountain with a killer. This book was quite entertaining and it was clear by the descriptions of various points in the journey that the author had climbed mountains herself. My only complaint is that I guessed who the killer was well before the end of the book but overall it was well written and exciting. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

This book hit all the right notes in my opinion! Strong writing, intriguing premise, engaging plot, believable characters, and a TON of suspense. I went into it knowing nothing about mountain climbing, but I enjoyed every bit of the wild ride that was the MC’s ascent, and I came out of it knowing a lot more about mountain climbing (including that I never want to do it, haha). Really well-rounded book in a way that’s hard to find these days!

Thank you to NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest review. 4/5 solid stars.

This book left me breathless as I read it! What an exciting, exhilarating and thrilling story this is. Cecily Wong is a journalist who writes for an adventure magazine and this is the chance of a lifetime for her to get an exclusive interview with mountaineer Charles McVeigh who came to Nepal to summit Mt. Manaslu, the eighth highest peak in the world. Cecily was invited by McVeigh on the condition that she gets the interview if she makes it to the summit. McVeigh is delayed getting to their take-off point, but once the team gets to Nepal, strange things start to happen and Cecily begins to wonder if someone sinister is stalking her and is a threat to her.

Thank you NetGalley and Anchor Publishing for the ARC of this nail-biter that kept me on the edge of my seat from start to finish.

Imagine being an outdoor adventure journalist and having the chance to write a story that might just change your career. That is what happens to Cecily Wong, a struggling writer whose boyfriend recently dumped her leaving her homeless and heartbroken. This sounds like just what she needs to take a positive step in her life. But it comes with a rather large catch.

Charles McVeigh is a well-known mountain climber, and he offers her an exclusive interview after he reaches the summit of Mount Manaslu in the Himalayas. So, what's the catch I mentioned? He wants Cecily on his climbing team and if she doesn't make the summit with him there will be no story. Easy peasy right? Well not exactly. Cecily is a very amateur climber and her last experience left her quite shaken. But it's the chance of a lifetime and she decides she must give it her best shot.

You'd think the harsh conditions, unpredictable weather, egotistical climbers, and the actual climb itself would be enough. Unfortunately, there is much more going on here. Death, vandalism, theft, and strange noises in the night have Cecily questioning whether the peril is worth the story. I enjoyed the atmosphere, learning about how much determination it takes to successfully climb a mountain, and the Sherpas were so nice and worked so hard.
Oddly enough the only thing that pulled me out of the story was the main character, Cecily. Her ups and downs were at times a bit hard for me to handle. Of course, after finishing the book and thinking about it, some of her feeling like everything was great and then feeling like it was a total disaster might have been deliberate. After all, besides all the things that I mentioned that were against her, there was also the lack of oxygen. I just couldn’t quite relate to her exhilaration on climbing a particularly challenging part of the mountain, then her immediately questioning everyone about what she thought was wrong. I mean I would keep quiet if I was in a situation like that and suspected that someone was a killer!

Cecily is climbing Manaslu because if she climbs this eighth highest peak she will get an exclusive interview with a fellow climber, Charles McVeigh, who has set records for climbing without oxygen. Then there is a murder on the mountain. The murder is an interesting "who done it", but anyone who is familiar with mountain climbing would be very aware that the demands of climbing such a mountain and the training required are not well portrayed.

Breathless by Amy McCulloch

Journalist Cecily Wong has bitten off way more than she can chew. She's a mountain climber, new to the game, and best known for her blog about her biggest climbing failure. Her story about that failure is what attracted the attention of internationally famous mountaineer Charles McVeigh. Now he's invited her to interview him after his last leg of a record-breaking series of summits IF she too can reach the summit of Manaslu, the eighth-highest peak in the world. The leader of her team, Doug, seems to be very angry at her. Grant, another guy on the team, seems to be a loose cannon. But the rest of the team members and the team's Sherpa mountain guides all seem to want to help Cecily to either succeed to reach the top or at least get back off the mountain safely, to someday try again. But, not reaching the summit means not getting the biggest interview of her career, the one that will make giving up everything for this trip, worth all the losses.

An attempt like this is hard enough without suspecting that a murderer in on the mountain with you. She's heard rumors about McVeigh and they aren't good. That he might be cheating on his "clean" climbs, that people have died in his vicinity. Are those rumors spread by people jealous of his success? And now someone else has died right before they start the climb. At a time when Cecily needs to be at her best, she's having trouble sleeping, eating, and doing her best to stay focused on the climb, because she can't help also investigating all the strange things going on with the people around her. Is the anger and suspicion she sees and hears part of the stress of a climb that can take your life on the best days, is her imagination running away with her, is she going to mess this attempt up, too?

Breathless is a physical and mental state in this story. I'm glad to look at the successes of others with pictures and videos and read about them. The hardships, cost, and dangers don't make me want to be there. But this story puts us there with all the stress of the endeavor and then with the threat of a murderer on the mountain.

Thank you to Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group/Anchor and NetGalley for this ARC.

Between 3.5 and 4 stars - What I loved about this book was the atmosphere. I felt like the author really put me in the setting of this ultra difficult climb in the Himalayas, and I was was caught up in that part of the story. I also thought the oxygen deprivation and the overall extremity of the conditions added a layer of tension and suspense that was effective. My main quibble was that it was so obvious to me whodunnit from the jump. It was so clear to me and that really took the wind out of the sails of the mystery for me while I waited for our main character to catch up

CW: microaggressions/racism; misogyny

Well this was an exciting Lock-Room style thriller! It reminded me of One by One a bit. I really enjoyed all the descriptive scenes of the mountain and climbing. I don't know a ton about climbing, and I thought the author did a fantastic job giving details to the reader to help them understand what was happening!

I thought this was a fun plot that had me excited to see what happened in the end!

Breathless is the book One by One meets the movie Free Solo. I requested this ARC because of the beautiful cover and the premise. A group of mountain climbers set out to hike one of the world’s tallest mountains but their adventure soon turns dangerous when the climbers begin dying, one by one.

I don’t know much about mountain climbing, so I appreciated how the author explained things without being overly technical. I also thought all the mountain talk made for some very atmospheric scenes! Overall this was a fun thriller, but it won’t be super memorable for me. If you’re looking for a fast-paced, wintry locked room mystery, I’d recommend this.

The first quarter of this book is a fascinating read full of information about mountain climbing and the daredevils who do it. We are introduced to our heroine Cecily and her mission to scale a mountain above eight thousand meters. Running from a bad breakup, on her last chance to keep her job, she is desperate to snag an interview with a celebrated climber. It all goes downhill from here. Ha ha, get it?

We meet an interesting cast of climbers, get a lot of explanations of various climbing terms and supplies, and then things slow down considerably. Although Cecily is more and more concerned about the death of a climber who never made it out of base camp, not much happens for quite a while. We learn more (too much more) about the intricacies of mountain climbing. And the story kept getting interrupted by her blog posts. Which I felt added nothing to the momentum of the murder mystery.

Finally, after multiple mysterious deaths and Cecily not able to convince anyone of her suspicions (of the wrong person), we are released from the mountain climber's handbook and given an unsatisfying ending with a villain that I had figured out by Chapter 7. (out of 57 chapters). The writing is perfectly fine, but I took off one star for the over sharing of mountain climbing info and one star for the ending which (minor spoiler here) left the murderer alive and well while everyone else was either dead or incapacitated. A most unsatisfying ending.

This was so real, you felt as if you were there. Cecily is a travel journalist and her next assignment is to interview the famous mountaineer Charles McVeigh. But he will only grant her the interview if she completes the climb with him up Mount Manaslu, the eighth highest peak in the world. I knew nothing about mountain climbing but learned quite a bit from this story.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Escape in this alpine adventure where the air is thin, cold and the mountain holds danger at every turn. And not just from the elements, but from the climbers as well!

“Breathless” by Amy McCulloch is a thriller set in Manasula, the 8 highest mountain in the world in Nepal. Journalist Cecily Wong has joined the expedition of famous mountaineer Charles McVeigh to write about his record breaking summits. And then people on the team beginning dying one by one…
While I found the mystery fascinating, my favorite part of the novel was what I learned about mountaineering, it was a well researched book.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this ARC.

Thank you NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Anchor for the copy of Breathless.
I loved the mountain climbing storyline. I have never climbed a mountain or really even hiked, but I enjoyed the setting and the logistical information. This was an excellent adventure that kept me reading to find out what was going to happen next. The pace of the book was great and the writing really conveyed the feeling of fear and isolation at the end. Some of what happened was not a surprise, but some of it was. I never rate a book on whether or not I figure out what’s going to happen of course. I care more about the quality of the writing, the storyline, and the characters.
I never really connected to any of the characters, but I especially liked the relationship between Galden and Cecily and how Cecily and Elise bonded. I enjoyed how the other characters were depicted, both their good and bad sides.
I will be looking forward to more books by Amy McCulloch.
4.5 stars rounded up to 5

Is there a killer on the mountain? Under experienced climber Cecile will do anything for a story, including risking her life on a mountain, but she may have more to worry about than the natural elements. Who could the killer be? Who can she trust? In a situation where every breath matters, does she have what it takes to survive?I loved this book on so many levels. The in depth information provided about climbing and the mountains was so interesting and I really enjoyed learning about it. The characters and particularly Cecile’s internal struggles were well portrayed. And then the ascent! The journey to the summit of the mountain and the climax of the book were so well orchestrated by the author. It was am edge of your seat dance that brought you to the brink more than once for a terrifying ending that makes you wonder if you really know any of these characters. An excellent novel that I thoroughly enjoyed: Thank you NetGalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Breathless by Amy McCulloch is an epic, adventurous thriller about a struggling journalist who gets the once of a lifetime interview with a famous mountaineer. The only catch is she has to climb & summit a mountain with him to get the interview.
This thriller let me breathless reading the adventure rooted in survival, add in a murderer & I was completely enraptured in this story.
I’ve done indoor climbing for a couple years so I feel like I have a healthy respect & love for any climbing, but combine outdoor & this level of it & it is mind- blowing. This set an intense landscape & vigorous schedule that was just perfect to create a mountain of a mystery novel:
This book has short chapters, which I always love & kept me on my toes throughout. Breathless is extremely well-written & I gave this 5 out of 5 stars!
To Amy McCulloch, congrats on sending this book. (That’s a little climbing humor! I’m a nerd, forgive me.)
To be honest, I have read quite a few mysteries in my life. I love trying to solve all the missing pieces, figure out the clues amidst the fear & tension & hopefully eventually put the puzzle together that creates such wonderful mysteries & thrillers. But after you’ve read a lot of mysteries & thrillers, they can start to blend together. Or at least for me they do, I have chronic pain & a chronically foggy brain so this could just be a me thing. My point of this ramble is to say that this book stands out! This is a book I will remember because it’s so unique in both the location & the reasoning for them being there. Climbing one of the biggest mountains in the world in order to interview a world-renowned mountaineer is not something that will blend with other mysteries.
I was completely transfixed with this mysterious adventure thriller. The anticipation of the dangerous climb was entertaining in itself & then you add in a killer & I devoured this in 2 days. I would recommend this to anyone who loves mysteries, adventures, the outdoors &/or just wonderfully entertaining reads!

Breathless by Amy McCulloch comes out May 3, 2022!

Massive thanks to NetGalley & Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.for giving me the opportunity to read an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Trigger warnings: This book mentions &/or contains death, mountain accident, gore, violence, murder & avalanche.

Extra things I loved:
-“Be bothered.” I love that quote & the message behind it. It’s so smart.

I will post reviews to my Bookstagram & TikTok before publication & I will post to Amazon after publication. I will add links to the reviews after posting.

If you like adventure and are interesting in mountain climbing, this book is perfect for you. I have zero interest or knowledge of mountain climbing, so this fell flat for me. There was a lot of mountaineer language that I didn’t know, and I wasn’t invested enough to look it up.

I was intrigued in some of the mystery elements and it got really intense towards the end, but I just wanted to finish the book and move on! However, I think that if I was more interested in mountain climbing, I would have been hooked.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review and opinion. I enjoyed this book and found the entire mountain climbing story line extremely interesting. Lots of twists and turns and the ending will knock your socks off!