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!

This one will leave you feeling breathless. It is an intense ride about Cecily a reporter that goes on a climb with Charles- a famous climber who has been known to climb without using the supplied ropes. As soon as she arrives at the base camp strange things start happening and one of the climbers does before even starting out. This one is more of an adventure book than a thriller.

Thank you Netgalley for a copy in exchange for an honest review.

I have received this ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Breathless reminded me to never go on a mountain adventure. Ever. Whether it's for climbing, hiking, or even for a vacation. Just say no. There's probably a murderer up on that mountain anyway. Stay home, be safe, and drink some wine.

I'm not even sure how the characters somehow told themselves it was just a freak accident. Staying calm and living their best life on this mountain. Just no. If I was there, I would have freaked out, found an axe from somewhere, chopped down a tree for like an hour or so, and then build a canoe or something. All so I can just slide down the freaking mountain.

Screw being calm when someone dies. There's no way that was just an accident. Sorry, but really not sorry. I do not trust any of you. Enjoy the mountain murderer all by yourselves. Crazy ass suspicious people.

Since I'm not there, I had to quietly bite my tongue with all the decisions being made. Dumb decisions but eventually they were going to realize what was going on, right? Nope. It was way too late for any of them to actually know what was going on and who was behind it all.

In the end, I was shocked who was behind it all but not shocked someone knew before the big reveal. For the longest time, I kept thinking it could have been done by two people. So, yeah, it was definitely terrifying to read and yup - no mountain adventures for me from now on.

I was so excited for this book but ultimately it didn't live up to the blurb. Wasn't an edge of your seat thriller. And I was more interested in reading about the author's own experience climbing Mt. Manaslu in interviews.

Thank you to NetGalley and Amy McCulloch for the opportunity to read this book. As much as I hate to say it...this book is going to be a DNF for me. This weighs heavy on my heart as I believe that it is an honor to receive books from NetGalley. With that said, they also ask for your honest review.

So.....

I could not connect with the characters at all. I thought that most of them were self serving, pretentious and boring (if you will). I thought that the concept of this book was going to knock my socks off because I have never read anything regarding climbing. Uhhhhh...the language in reference to climbing was confusing and not explained; I even looked things up only to be even more confused!
I also thought that it was unrealistic for Cecily to be headed up this mountain with her limited experience with climbing. Honestly, the whole thing just didn't work for me.

I hope that NetGalley and the author will forgive me for this review. Please understand though, that these are only MY OPINIONS...one book that I don't like, does not mean that YOU won't like it! If it interests you, please give it a try. It was just not my cup of tea.

Again, thank you for the opportunity to read and review...I wish I could have liked it.

So here's the thing with this book. The premise is so good, with people unknowingly climbing a mountain with a killer. This sets up so much tension, because no one can just escape on their own. There's natural tension too, with threats of blizzards, avalanches, and slips.

But so much of this book was taken up by explaining mountain climbing and every single step that goes into an expedition. This is set up as a thriller, as it states on the cover, so I think the book should have been more thrilling. The ending itself is really well done and even scary, and I would have liked to see a lot more of that.

Breathless is a thriller that follows journalist Cecily Wong as she attempts to climb the eighth highest mountain in the world. Hikers start disappearing on her ascent. The book was a quick rest
read, but I found Cecily to be a frustrating character.

I read this book awhile back but wanted a hard copy before writing my review. I have that in front of me now… Breathless is a great thriller, it was even chosen as a BOTM choice. The scene is beautiful, eerie, breathtaking, and thrilling in itself and really elevates the story. Cecily is a great main character and you really feel what she feels the entire time. The author does a beautiful job writing the story and I can only compare it to the way Top Gun makes you feel about fighter planes. This was a great book, not my favorite but really enjoyable. I enjoyed the suspense but felt it more of a slow burn than what I was in the mood for which is really on me and not the author! I will be in line to check our her next book!

If you are a fan of adventure based stories, Breathless by Amy McCulloch is a great thriller. In case attempting to summit the world’s 8th highest peak isn’t enough of an adrenaline rush, try doing it with a killer on the loose. McCulloch kept me guessing with the story and the characters and the end for pretty twisty. I loved the mountaineering details weaves into the story—it really made me feel like I was there. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes outdoor adventure stories.

I love the mountains and I've always dreamed of climbing the mountains however this book was such a gripping story! I really loved this unique thriller story.