A heart pounding thriller with elements that make you feel the isolation.
Many thanks to Knopf Doubleday and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review this advance title.

The author is very good in telling a story in the world of mountain climbing combined with a thriller full of suspense and twists no one would suspect (at the end). It is a page turner and couldn't be better titled as "Breathless". Because in between reading the book you*re holding your breath what might happen next. Highly recommended

Have you read Breathless? I enjoyed this deadly trek into the Himalayas. Did it take my breath away? No. But it was entertaining! 😉
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I feel like this book is perfect for anyone who has an interest in mountaineering and thrillers. But without that interest in mountaineering, the book is too slow. About 80% of it focuses on the main character prepping to summit Manaslu and what that entails. And while we get some insight that bad things are happening on the mountain, only the last 20% of the book is really suspenseful. If the entire book was as suspenseful as the end, or I had an interest in mountaineering, I would’ve loved this book but the majority of it was just too slow for me.

Thank you so much to Amy McCulloch, NetGalley, and Knopf Doubleday Publishing for an ARC of Breathless.

I've come to love books that take place in the mountains. I think in large part due to my fear of falling. This book was capable of keeping me on my toes. Although, it didn't scare me in any way, it did keep me turning pages. That is by no means an insult to Amy McCulloch. I am hard to scare. After countless years of reading horror and watching horror or thrillers, it's hard to get under my skin these days. I would suggest reading this book. For those like me, it's just plain fun. For those who are not yet jaded, you might just get a bit scared!

legit gave me a fear of hiking or going to the mountain☠️☠️
im legit scared and im like bruhhhh
this had a thriller that makes you scared of everything especially nature

Cecily Wong is an adventure travel journalist and is on her biggest assignment if she can just survive the most mental and emotional strain she has experienced. She must remember to breathe! She has the most exciting, gripping and stressful story to write. She is going mountain climbing with Charles who is about to climb the 8th highest peak in the world without cheating by using ropes or oxygen. Cecily will be blogging and has the opportunity to interview and write the story once they reach the peak. However, the path to the peak is full of avalanches, vertigo, secrets, doubt, extreme weather, and suspicion of a murderer?

Also on the hike are a filmmaker, sponsor, Doug the leader, and lots of Sherpas that take care of the setting up the campsite and preparing the meals. Charles discovered Cecily after her blog post from her last climb that was a failure. Has Cecily prepared and trained enough for the adventure of Manaslu Mountain in Nepal. Is she ready for the conditions? Can she overcome the mistrust, anxiety and stress during the climb?

Throughout the book are several blog entries by Cecily and I thought that was fun to read. The picturesque descriptions of the climb are fabulous. The pace is very slow but I do think it is fitting since it takes time to climb the mountain so you don't get attitude sickness. I enjoyed the writing and since I enjoy hiking I enjoyed all the details. There are several twists and turns that will give you the heebie-jeebies and I couldn't wait to see how it ended. I thought the secrets, suspicion, wonder, doubt, anticipation mixed with the suspense of why people seem to die every time Charles climbs was intriguing and engaging. I would have trouble sleeping and eating too if if the night before the climb starts someone died. Everyone has secrets. Does she have the courage and determination to finish? Remember to always breathe or you will be breathless!

Thank you Netgalley and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for the opportunity to read and give an honest review of this book.

4 stars for this atmospheric, pulse-pounding thriller!

This was a solid thriller filled with suspense, thrills, lies and deceit! It was very atmospheric and perfect for adrenaline junkies or fans of the sort. I was intrigued till the very end in attempts to figure out whom was the source of all the mystery and deception.

I really enjoyed that this thriller didn't really die down - it truly entertained till the very last page.

This one was a DNF for me. I got through over half of the book but I wasn't interested in knowing what came next.

Cecily had all the pieces of a protagonist I'd usually care for but I couldn't connect with her plight or get excited for her adventure. If anything, I found it strange that someone who hadn't successfully mountain climbed before was even on the trip or was a journalist covering such things. Despite the plot points all being there, I just didn't care and once I hit the midpoint I knew it wasn't for me. A thriller is never easy to put down but unfortunately this one was. I did flip to the end to find everything unwrapped as I guessed it was.

I am sorry to leave such a negative review because others seem to have liked it but it just really wasn't for me. Maybe if you're new to the genre or enjoy mountaineering, this could be a good one for you but honestly I'm not recommending this one.

Note: I received a free electronic edition of this book via NetGalley in exchange for the honest review above. I would like to thank them, the publisher, and the author for the opportunity to do so.

As much as I love mysteries and thrillers, I wasn't sure about this book because I have zero interest in mountain climbing. However, I was immediately sucked into the story and interested in the characters. While I had a funny feeling that I might know who the villain was pretty quickly, the writing made me keep second guessing myself. So, even though I wasn't surprised, I definitely enjoyed the book through to the end!

"Stranded on a mountain in one of the most remote regions of the world, she'll have to battle more than the elements in a harrowing fight for survival against a killer who is picking them off one by one." This summarizes up the plot of this story perfectly! It is spine tingling and eventful to say the least. Cecily, a journalist has gone to the eighth-highest peak in the world, to interview an internationally famous mountaineer. She has sacrificed everything for this opportunity as everything is growing ominously wrong. Death all around her, will she be next or will she prevail? This one will keep you "breathless"! Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book!

This one fell a little flat for me. I can appreciate the authors mountain climbing experience and trying to bring those experiences to life but the book was 80 % mountaineering methods and 20% thriller. I wanted more substance to the mystery and the characters.

Thank you to NetGalley and Anchor Books for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you for the opportunity to read this Netgalley ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Wow!!! I devoured this book in one sitting. Just read it....you will love it.

This book captured my imagination. I'm too old, too scared, too out of shape, to ever climb a mountain. I required porters just to scale the side of the volcano in Rwanda in search of mountain gorillas. That was an amazing experience, but realistically, the only way I'm getting to the top of a mountain is if I'm hauled like pack.

Anyway, it was amazing to read about the journey to the summit in a story wrapped around a terrifying mystery. The double twist was completely unexpected, and I felt it was earned. The characters were well-developed and their struggles felt real. I felt like I was right there on the mountain with them.

I highly recommend.

Obviously incredibly well researched—with the addition of the author having made the climb described in the book in real life—McCulloch paints a vivid picture of both the challenges and moments of serenity that occur while tackling one of the infamous "eight-thousander" summits. There was one plot point I found to be too much of a coincidence to be easily plausible, but everything else was well written enough to overcome that one hiccup. Overall, an exciting, atmospheric read.

If I'd ever even considered mountain climbing, this book would have left me too terrified to try it. Climbing so high that I have to carry oxygen just to survive seems like the height (pardon the pun) of madness. Throwing in a killer on top of all that danger was clever - so many ways to make deaths appear accidental, and with so few people who could possibly get up to find any clues. The story bogged down a bit because of all the climbing detail. Cecily's indecisiveness was also tedious at points.

I absolutely loved this story. It is set on a mountain and a lot of the climbers have secrets in their past to overcome. The thrill and danger of the mountain climb is the perfect setting. The title is perfect for the book and has so many meanings. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves a suspense novel with a beautiful setting.

“You never know when a mountain will turn on you. It’s not just your own life you put at risk up there.”

“There were even more ways to die on the mountain than she had imagined.”

How would you like to be a vulnerable mountain climber on a precarious peak with not only natural dangers to worry about, but a murderer?!

That’s where Cecily finds herself in Breathless.

But who is it and why won’t anyone take her seriously? Is it just altitude sickness affecting her judgment?


The Plot

Cecily, a journalist and inexperienced climber, has joined Charles McVeigh’s climbing team. If she summits the mountain with McVeigh she earns herself an exclusive interview which will finally kickstart her career.

McVeigh is doing the impossible— “climbing the only fourteen mountains in the world that stood taller than eight thousand meters without using supplementary oxygen, alpine style— and all within a single year.”

Manaslu, in Nepal, is his final summit.

But both mysterious deaths and harrowing rescues follow in McVeigh’s wake and Cecily sniffs out a darker story at play.

Can she figure it out before she’s next?


Interesting Background

As I was reading this one I was struck by the mountaineering jargon and the detailed descriptions of what was happening. In these situations I like to figure out what credibility the author has to teach me things about the subject matter.

Author Amy McCulloch climbed Mt Manaslu (the 8th highest mountain in the world) in 2019 and became the youngest Canadian woman to do it.

This book relates closely to a lot of her experiences. You can read more about that in this article.

Reading this book made me really curious about mountaineering and what it’s like to climb these dangerous peaks. I started looking for a documentary that would give me some more visuals to what she describes in the book.

I came across a Netflix documentary called 14 Peaks: Nothing is Impossible. It’s the story of Nims Purja who decided to climb all 14 mountains over 8000 meters in 7 months.

Sound familiar?!

[Well actually he did it in 6 months, 6 days and broke 6 mountaineering world records! He even climbed a mountain hungover.]

And it turns out, McCulloch was climbing with Nims when she summited Manaslu (before he started his project).

14 Peaks is really interesting and does give a lot of good information and depiction of life on the mountain. And just like Charles McVeigh’s project, Nims did rescue a couple people on his expeditions!

I do wish the documentary would have showed more about how guides ‘fix ropes’ and what the food, equipment, and tents were like, how you actually climb, etc but it was a perfect pairing to watch after reading Breathless! Would recommend.


Comments/Recommendation

As for the actual book, I thought it was pretty good.

It was a little reminiscent of Vertical Limit or Cliffhanger, but it had its own flavor and mystery and I like that the author had firsthand experience to write from.

It gets a little technical and since it pretty much all takes place on the mountain there are parts that feel a little slow or repetitive.

But there was definitely suspense up until the very end.

I’m not sure if I really liked the main character or not, but I’m somewhat biased against journalists in real life so that could be it. Regardless, I was still invested in finding out if there was a killer and if there was, who it was!

And I always appreciate a book that inspires me to google things.


One thing I pondered as I tried to figure this one out was— Okay, yes, a dangerous mountain is the perfect place to kill people and get away with it because people would just assume the person fell and there would be no investigation… but seems like an expensive method of killing and why would you put yourself in danger to also kill?

But then I thought about it some more and for one- people who would kill like this probably don’t have much fear and would be drawn to thrill-seeking type endeavors like mountain climbing. And two- if a person already liked to mountain climb and then realized they also liked to kill people then I guess it is more of a happy (ha!) coincidence that they suddenly had a perfect killing ground and alibi. That makes more sense than someone being a killer and then trying to find the best place to do it and saying- Yeah, I’ll just go on up to Mount Manaslu quick and see who’s around.

So if there is a mountain climbing serial killer, I’ve decided I can accept these terms.


There were a few paragraphs that annoyed me a little bit. I’m guessing because I was just coming off of reading Two Nights in Lisbon that was chock full of these references.

And after reading the afore-linked article, it sounds like these were written from personal experiences:

“She’d seen the way that men on other teams looked at her. Like they were assessing which one of them was going to lay claim to her.”

“That wasn’t in any mountaineering manual. That’s because they’re written for men, by men.”

“‘I think he’s a typical privileged public-school boy and a bit of a creep.’”

“They always think they want an adventurous girl, and yet when it comes down to it they want someone to come home to who will be wowed by their adventures.”

I’m a little bit tired of the whole ‘toxic masculinity’ dialogue. I get that there are some real douchebags out there but I don’t really enjoy reading books where the female characters are preoccupied with looking for it and assessing it in every area of their life.

I will grant McCulloch that being a woman on a mountain largely full of men would be a particularly vulnerable position and women should not have to worry about their safety in that regard.

Anyway.

If you have no interest in a mountain climbing thriller, you won’t enjoy this. But if that doesn’t describe you, I would recommend giving this book a try! I thought it was both suspenseful and interesting!


Fun Facts

Here are some things I found out in my googling.

- In order to climb mountains you have to pay for a permit. A permit to climb Mt Everest costs $11,000.

- Permits plus other Nepalese fees can make climbing Mt Everest cost $40-50,000 on average and even up to $100,000+! In comparison, to climb Manalsu it runs around $8000-13,000.

- Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were the first recorded ascenders of Mount Everest in 1953.

- Manaslu is the fifth most dangerous mountain in the world.

- For every 3 people who make it to the top of Annapurna (one of the 14) 1 dies.

- Western guides make $50,000 each climbing season but Sherpas only make $4000. (Part of Nims Purja’s intent with his documentary was to use an all Nepalese team and shine light on the amazing Sherpas that so many climbers rely on and the lack of fair compensation)

- Hallucinations while climbing mountains are more common than you think. Here’s an interesting article talking about these episodes.

- Nims Purja’s climb to Everest on the documentary was crazy to see how many people try to climb Everest every year. After he made the summit he turned around and took the picture below that went viral. I can’t imagine having to wait in line like this while perched on a mountain in the Death Zone!



If you like reading books with journalists, try:

- What’s Left Unsaid by Emily Bleeker
- The Last Letter from Your Lover by Jojo Moyes
- A Desperate Place by Jennifer Greer


**Received an ARC via NetGalley**

3.5 stars
It took me some time to get into this book but I do love mountain climbing stories. Mix that with a murder and mystery and it's a great combo. The climax of this book is pretty stellar. Very tense and edge of your seat stuff.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of this book! Absolutely loved it! The setting was incredible, I was hooked until the last page!