To get an interview with heroic climber Charles McVeigh, Cecily Wong is going to have to summit the eighth highest mountain in the world with him. She desperately needs the story, but she's gotten into trouble on far easier climbs than this one. Then a member of their party dies under odd circumstances. And another dies. Accidents happen high in the mountains, especially in the "death zone," but Cecily is starting to fear her fellow climbers, not just the dangerous terrain. This book is absolutely chilling, both because the mountain itself is so dangerous and the characters seem to have secrets they'd go to great lengths to protect. According to the notes at the end, the author has actually climbed the mountain herself. I imagine that's why the setting is so vivid.

Thank you, NetGalley, for this book

I am terrified of mountains. I don’t ski, I don’t go to Colorado, and I have no desire to climb anything. But I’m a mountain-setting junkie. I cannot believe people pay money to climb. But I’m also in awe of those people because what they do pushes the limits of their entire existence. They are absolutely badass. I read Into Thin Air ages ago and couldn’t put it down. So, when a fiction book with a similar setting comes along, I’m in. And this book was excellent.

From Goodreads: Journalist Cecily Wong is in over her head. She’s come to Manaslu, the eighth-highest peak in the world, to interview internationally famous mountaineer Charles McVeigh on the last leg of a record-breaking series of summits. She’s given up everything for this story–her boyfriend, her life savings, the peace she’s made with her climbing failures in the past–but it’s a career-making opportunity. It could finally put her life back on track.

But when one climber dies in what everyone else assumes is a freak accident, she fears their expedition is in danger. And by the time a second climber dies, it’s too late to turn back. 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.

What I loved most about this book is that the author is a climber herself, so the climbing aspect of the book is authentic. Not only does she nail that, the tension the mountain presents is matched by the horrifying deaths that occur along the way. Of course, climbing deaths occur, but the ones in the book seem suspicious. Cecily makes for a great amateur sleuth. Not only is she trying to uncover the mysteries of these deaths, but she’s also trying to scale Manaslu. This book was great. I listened to a good chunk of it and was hooked from the get-go.

This was a great book! It was really well written. i enjoyed the character development and the plot had me guessing the whole time.

Cecily Wong, a sports magazine journalist has got only one chance of a life time to secure for an exclusive interview with Charles McVeigh,famous expert mountain climber that could help save her career or the other. First, she must prove herself worthy for Charles by climbing Mount Manaslu,the eighth highest mountain in the world. But there are two problems.Problem number one,she's only a novice climber with previous mountain climbing failures. Problem number two: there's a killer on the mountain!.

As someone who rarely reads a thriller,who knows nothing about mountain climbing, i find the detailed descriptions and guides on the mountain climbing in this story to be fascinating and interesting as they all felt so realistic!. I felt like i am a part of the climbing expedition team myself!.Then, i found out that it is because the author is an expert mountain climber herself. Even the panoramic details of the mountain and its surroundings felt so realistic and accurate because the author has also climbed Mount Manaslu herself. So in this area (realistic and accurate descriptions of the mountain and guide in mountain climbing, including the politics and the conflicts involved in the industry/sport), i believe the author has nailed it perfectly well.

Then half way through,as i move along with the story,i find the pacing to be moving so slowly and dragging. I was also anticipating for something 'thrilling' or 'exciting' to happen. But it didn't. Nothing much happened. Until..until one of the expedition members was found dead! The dead body found in the freezing cold lake nearby the mountain and the last person to have seen and talked with the person was Cecily herself!. (hint: it was a male climber).Ok and then my heart started racing again and my curiousity intensified. But that was it.

Later on, the story dragged on again and again with nothing much happening. And then suddenly poof! another dead body was found again. This time, it was found to be hanging on one of the fixed ropes used for the climbing at the base camp (this time they already halfway through to summiting the mountain).And then the story gets interesting a little with the conflicts and accusations going on between the expedition members themselves. For one thing, it was about who killed the second mountain climber? (hint: this time it's a woman climber) as she was last seen being sexually harassed by one of the male expedition members by no one other than Cecily herself. And then of course, there comes the denial and arguments started ensuing later on. And then there's a sudden theft going on at the base camp where everyone's is robbed! and more accusations and denials follow.

So, basically the mountain climbing expedition is one hell of a ride for Cecily as she has to face all these dramas and conflicts going on at the camp while at the same time facing her own inner fears of mountain climbing due to her previous failures (ok this is the other part that i liked) and there's actually a secret behind her fears which explains why she's behaving so unconfident with herself and doubtful of her own capabilities. That's the other thing that i love about this story, about how Cecily overcame her own fears and traumas stemmed from her dark past and failures.

The other thing that the story lacks is that it is a little predictable!. I can somehow guessed who the culprits are. And then there came a twist, to turn things around the other way (but still, i guessed it right too!)
Not to mention, something did not make sense in the final part. But the ending somehow has a good twist and interesting turn of event which caught me of guard (and a little irritated at the same time) as i did not expect the story to turn that way.

Overall, to me this story is still an interesting story despite its lacking in a few areas (though to some this story appears to be more like a mountain climbing manual/guide than an actual thriller! which i have got to agree but it is also that manual is what interests me in continuing on with the story in the first place because it's so realistic!) and the perfect descriptions of the majestic beauty of the place sold me. I even googled on those places!.

I rated this story a 4🌟 out of 5!.

A fast- paced, thrilling read, which held my interest from the get-go! I learned a lot about alpining, and it was clear that the author had first-hand experience. I definitely recommend, and suggest as a winter read for the cold-weather vibes!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for my review copy.

This was an okay read. It kept me engaged but fell flat to intrigue me. I was hoping for more excitement.
Cecily Wong, an adventure travel journalist has been given the opportunity to an exclusive interview with Charles McVeigh, one of the most accomplished mountain climbers in the world. For that interview to happen, she must climb Mount Manaslu with Charles.

Mount Manaslu in Nepal is the eighth highest mountain in the world and wonderful setting for a freezing, snowy and dangerous adventure.

Training for months and putting all her savings into this once in a lifetime interviews. Cecily vows to let nothing get in the way of her dream interview even rumors of previous death that might not been accidental.
the author did a great job of explaining the various techniques and exercises involved having her own experience with mountaineering.

I received an eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I really enjoyed this book. I recently watched a documentary on Alpinist and Ice mountain climbing and it was fascinating. Take that scenario and combine it with my favorite isolated location with a killer on the loose and I am so happy. This book lured you in so easily, I really loved many of the characters. As more things were revealed I still was not able to predict how it would unravel. It was suspenseful and tense and unpredictable which I love. The icy environment was perfect for the plot of this book. I read this book pretty quickly and could not put it down. Thank You NetGalley and Anchor for providing a digital copy of the the book for an honest review.

Breathless - Amy McCulloch
A "high-altitude" thriller that will take your breath away! Cecily Wong is on her most dangerous climb yet, miles above sea level. But the elements are nothing compared to one chilling truth: There's a killer ON the mountain!
This brief synopsis grabbed me right away. Breathless was such an action-packed, on the edge of your seat, doom is on the horizon, survival story that I read it fairly quickly and was not disappointed.

Amy McCulloch’s book Breathless was both thrilling and informative. Books with plots involving elite mountaineering are typically written by men with male main characters. In this case, however, McCulloch is an elite climber who came up with the idea about writing a book about climbing Manaslu after summiting the mountain herself. I really appreciated her own knowledge and background, which enabled her to realistically portray the risks of climbing mountains above 8000 meters. I also give her credit for creating a multi-faceted female main character, Cecily Wong, a journalist who has never successfully summited a mountain of this size, but will have to in order to interview Charles McVeigh, a climbing superstar who is completing his final climb of all of the mountains above 8000 meters in one year without oxygen or lines. We feel breathless from fear like Cecily when mysterious deaths begin to occur and it appears that there may be a serial killer on the mountain. It’s no longer a matter of climbing up the mountain but find a way to get down. I would love to read more climbing thrillers from this author.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for providing me with a complimentary copy of this book. Any opinions expressed in this review are wholly my own.

Wow, wow, wow! I just finished reading Breathless by Amy McCulloch and I am amazed! What a great, exciting, nail biting read!

Journalist Cecily Wong has the story of a lifetime, interviewing famous alpine mountaineer Charles McVeigh. There is a caveat. He will only give her the interview if she summits Mt. Manaslu, the eighth highest peak in the world. Cecily's history as a climber is basically one of failure. She's never summited a peak, and there is a horrible incident on a past climb that gives her a fear she must fight every moment to overcome. Every moment on the mountain could mean death, and then there is another threat. First one, then others, die on the climb, but Cecily suspects they were murdered. Only no one believes her. And someone wants to stop her from spreading these rumors. She now not only has to fear the mountain itself, but a threat from an unknown person.

Other reviewers here can give you more details about the plot, but what I want to talk about is how Cecily's writing made me feel like I was right there on the mountain with her. More than twenty years ago I read Jon Kracauer's book, "Into Thin Air", which both thrilled and horrified me. But as much as I enjoyed it, never did I feel the immediacy of the pain and hardships, and even the comradery, that reading "Breathless" gave me. The attention to minute details was so authentic and gave such a sense of place, that after I finished reading the book I thought, "How did she do that?"

Amy McCulloch, like her book's protagonist, is a Chinese/Anglo Brit, and former book editor and children's book author. This is her first book for the adult market, and how she will surpass this freshman effort, I don't know! And I got my answer to how she was able to get such detail in her story. She herself has scaled Mt. Manaslu in Nepal. I knew she had to be either the most skilled interviewer in the world to have gotten these details from a climber, or have actually made the climb herself, and it is the later.

I used to be very interested in in adventure journalism, which is Cecily Wong's profession in Breathless. I read the monthly Adventure magazine, which I don't even think exists anymore, and lived vicariously through other's adventures. When I lived in India in the late 1980s I was one frigid morning perched on a position to see the sun rise over Nepal's highest peaks, and marvel from afar at their rugged impenetrability. Today I am more of a couch potato with wonky knees, and Breathless is the closest thing I will come to scaling one of the world's highest peaks, but goodness if I don't now feel like I have a real taste for what it's like!

I can't sing the praises of of this book enough, my favorite read so far this year. I would give it ten stars if I could!

Thank you NetGalley for a copy of this book.
I thought the environment was well-described, and the author paints a perfect picture for the audience. The book keeps you guessing and is quite the page-turner!

Journalist Cecily Wong has been given the opportunity of a lifetime. IF she can successfully climb Manaslu, the eighth-highest peak in the world, she gets an exclusive interview with Charles McVeigh, an internationally famous mountaineer as he completes his record-breaking summit tour. Cecily has put her career and finances all-in for this opportunity. As she prepares herself for the climb, she gets to know her fellow team and those on other teams. Just before they leave for base camp, a member of another team is found dead.

Cecily tries to keep herself focused on climbing but she is hears whispers in the camp about lies and secrets. She wakes up to fighting and strange people appearing in camp at night with no sign of them during the day. As the pressure mounts and she gets closer to reaching the peak, more bodies are found and it gets harder to separate the lies from the truth. Who is the murderer on the mountain and will anyone survive the summit?

Overall a fast-paced thriller. I appreciated the authenticity of climbing, the gear, team description, and the endurance and focus it takes to reach a goal at such a high altitude. Although the plot stalled a bit for me near the middle, it picked up and finished strong. Recommended for fans of murder-mystery thrillers.

Thank you to Amy McCulloch, NetGalley, and Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group or an advanced eBook in exchange for my honest review.

This suspenseful debut started a little slow but I was rewarded with a remarkably believable tale. This is an excellent debut!

I’m competitive (within reason) but not an adrenaline junkie. I admire anyone who even attempts to climb a mountain. I like the warmth and comfort of home. I’m happy to sit back and read about the excruciating adventures of others. But if it was a dream of mine to climb a mountain, being a journalist or photographer would make the experience even better.

Cecily is a journalist and novice mountain climber who was invited to climb in exchange for an interview. But there are several obstacles. The interview won’t take place until they reach their destination and she won’t be reimbursed for her expenses unless her boss approves the article. It takes every penny she can scrape together but she’s determined. So when several team members are killed in terrible accidents, she has no choice but to continue.

BOOK QUOTE: “A story is not worth your life”

Thank you to Amy McCulloch and Knopf Doubleday for providing this ARC through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

#Breathless #netgalley #amymcculloch #knopfdoubledaypublishing #anchor #giftedbook #giftedARC #honestreview #bookreviewer #crimeandcocktailsbookcrew
#mysteryandthrills #readwithme #bookaddict #thrilleraddict #thrillersofinstagram #bookstagrammer #lovebooks #bookreviewersofinstagram #lovetoreadbooks#cantstopreading #fortheloveofbooks #bookrecommendations #readingintherockies #mustread #justfinishedreading #thrillerfiction #coloradoreader

Thank you so much to met galley for sending me a copy of this book. I really like this book because even if you didnt know who Amy was you would know that they are super knowledgeable about mountaineering. Its a great book with realistic depictions!

Review published on Goodreads, 7 May 2022:

Even though I, myself, am a huge wimp, I love books about people struggling to survive in formiddable climates and impossible situations. Fiction or non-, I'm in. Because I also really enjoy the mystery/thriller genre, BREATHLESS sounded like the perfect read for me. Its premise is undeniably appealing and I especially appreciate the fact that it's written by an experienced alpinist who has actually summited the mountain on which the book is set. Yay for authenticity!

First, let me say that this book did keep me turning pages. It's exciting, fast-paced, and compelling, so I wanted to find out what was going to happen next. Even when I was rolling my eyes at everything else, I was still whipping through the book. It kept me entertained on a long plane ride. Unfortunately, though, it features a cast of very cliché, one-dimensional characters. Cecily is likable enough, but she's bland and forgettable. Also, although she goes through a life-changing experience on the mountain, I didn't see much growth or development in her character. Plot-wise, the story seems incredibly far-fetched. It's also predictable. I saw the killer coming from a mile away and didn't find any of the plot twists surprising. McCulloch's lackluster prose doesn't help matters. It vascillates between blah, melodramatic, and cheesy, which just gets irritating. In spite of all this, the story did grip me enough to keep me reading, so that's saying something. I just wish the writing, plotting, and character-building had been better.

I feel like the blurb in the summary about being on the highest peak is a good example of how anxiety-inducing this book is! Sitting on the edge of your seat material. Very much enjoyed the writing.

If you like climbing, hiking and mountains this story is for you.

For me this story absolutely bored me to death with all the mountain climbing details. I don’t want to climb a mountain or know anything about climbing so over 50% of the story was a waste of time.

I wanted to know more about the line on the cover, the thriller aspect of a killer. The thrill was short lived and not even that great with a mediocre ending that still left me with questions.

I did have to switch to audio for the last 100 pages to force myself to finish this story.
This is my honest review of my arc copy. Thank you NetGalley for offering me this book.

The author is quite good at description. I found the beginning to be slow going, but the book picked up as it went on. It has its heart pounding moments, but overall, it felt more like a YA novel. The character development was a bit lacking and the main character annoyed me. The setting is lovely, but using a cliffhanger sentence at the end of each chapter was a bit over the top. Overall, it was ok.

A killer stalks the mountain and there is nowhere to hide in the high atmosphere death zone. An adventure journalist has the opportunity of a lifetime to make the final climb on a renowned alpinist’s record-breaking journey to climb to the summit without aid all fourteen peaks above 8,000 feet, but the catch is she must make the summit with him. New to the author and new to this small niche of extreme location thrillers, I took little convincing to pick it up and give it a go.

Chinese-British journalist and novice climber, Cecily Wong finds herself out of her depth, but motivated to achieve her promised exclusive interview of a heroic and possibly the most skilled mountain climber in the world. Charles McVeigh is the real deal climbing without rope lines or aid of oxygen at altitudes where hypoxia is real and death is a near companion. He’s made some famous rescues in his time and now he is on the fourteenth climb in the last year. Inexplicably, he chose Cecily to grant his one and only interview. There are more experienced adventure journalists who have successfully made their climbs and Cecily’s only claim to fame is failing to summit not once, but twice.

She was asking herself why he chose her especially when her doubts are enhanced once she gets to base camp and the rigors of adjusting to the altitude and prepping for the climb amongst an odd assortment of team members and other teams. Then the murders begin and she wants off that deadly Himalayan mountain.

Breathless is a standalone book that isn’t one of those pulse-pounding, dashing thrillers from cover to cover. There are pay off moments along the way especially once Cecily and the others are up on Mt. Manaslu and the killer is amongst them. A lot of the book though is the build-up. Cecily is introduced and it is obvious she is not a put together person and there is great doubt on her part and the readers as to her ability to achieve what she has set out to do. Her editor made it clear this is her one and only chance with that magazine or any other, her boyfriend dropped her, and she’s spent her last dime getting to the Himalayas on this climbing expedition.

Besides, Cecily’s character and intro-ing the rest of the cast, there is the deep intro to high altitude mountain climbing. The author knows her stuff (she has done the climb being described, in point of fact) and fills this book with her knowledge and experience. I had watched specials on some of the Mt. Everest climbs and have an armchair interest in this sort of adventuring so I was not put off by the immersion in mountain climbing.

That said, this was a thriller so I did get impatient for the thriller-ing to get going. I wasn’t particularly taken with Cecily or any of the other characters and I worked out who was behind it all, how, and even why to some extent literally before the first murder. This did remove some of the tension in the suspense part. However, the author snuck in a clever twist in the last build to the climax moment. I suspected just before the reveal, but it did tangle with my suppositions and restored the suspense element I felt was lacking.

What was done well, along with that twist, was the steady tightening of the tension and atmospheric feeling caused by the preparations and then the climb itself. I was on that mountain with Cecily and the others and I was breathless and riveted as they moved from base camp up to camp four and the summit.

There wasn’t a gradual denouement and I confess I was left scratching my head a bit when it came to the antagonist character. And, sorry, about the vagueness since I don’t want to spoiler.

All in all, this was a solid read so long as expectations are for a slow build, highly detailed on the backdrop and setting, and fairly easily predicted mystery. Readers who want something unique in setting and the added adventure of the backdrop and situation that gives something of a trapped group murder mystery must add this to the reading list.

Maybe one of my favorite books of the year so far.
A couple of years ago, my husband and I watched a documentary about Mt. Everest. I became obsessed. I watched several more documentaries, the movie version of “Into Thin Air,” and fell in several Wikipedia holes. I don’t know why I found it so fascinating, but these people, risking their lives (literally, google dead bodies on Everest and tell me it doesn’t give you chills) just for the sake of scaling a tall mountain. The funny thing is, I am in NO way a hiking a mountain type of girl. My hiking abilities tap out somewhere between The Great Smoky Mountains and an easy trail in the Red River Gorge. But, it still fascinated me.
Enter “Breathless,” one of my BOTM picks for May. I devoured it. Its all of the mountain climbing drama, plus a murder-mystery-thriller rolled in to one. I can’t say enough how much I enjoyed reading this book. The characters were rich, the narrator just a tinge unreliable (can we believe what she’s saying? Is it the altitude?), and the mystery kept me guessing at every plot turn. What I really loved though was that although the people were certainly sketch, the mountain was the true antagonist in this story. The author made Manaslu a character all on its own, and I was 100% here for it.
5/5 stars - @lucywrazor4