a perfect summer slasher! if your into your typical nostalgic teen type slashers this is the book for you! had everything I wanted from a slasher, from gory kills to plot twists

Breathe In, Bleed Out was a perfect read that I devoured in 48 hours. It kept me guessing up until the very end. I loved rich kid LA vibes and it made love to hate some of the characters.

I cannot wait for more work to roll out from McAuley! I will definitely read!

First off - thank you NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for this ARC!

Oh my GOD. I loved this!! This was the first book I read by this author and won’t be the last! I devoured this and it was hard to put down to stop reading when I had to.

Hannah and her friends set off for a “retreat weekend” to rejuvenate their lives and friendships after Hannah sadly loses her fiance in an accident that no one knows the details to. But the details of this “retreat” are sketchy af and are soon figured out to not be all they seem to be. And one by one, Hannah’s friends start disappearing.

This was SUCH a great slasher book! I definitely did not figure out who the slasher was (even though I just knew in my head who it was 🤣) and the ending was a great one. Absolutely a 5 star read for me.

thanks #netgalley! the first half of the book was a bit slow and quite sad. it felt more like a tragic comedy and a bit less slasher. but the second half was a WILD ride. McAuley created a CRAZY twist that really captured me!

This is my second book by this author and I can confidently say, he does slashers well. A wellness retreat turns into a mess of murder.
A quick and fun read.

This book was so much fun to read! I really felt like the author's love of slasher films and horror in general was so evident throughout the book and I loved it!

This story has everything anyone who ever enjoyed Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream and all the other traditional slasher horror films would enjoy. You've got your unlikable pack of immature friends going on trip to a remote location- the jocky/bro type, the wannabe yogi L.A. girl, the love interest, the witchy best friend, and of the course, the final girl with loads of trauma. Don't forget the suspicious, mysterious guru and his very unorthodox techniques. All tied up with a good old-fashioned legend of a local cannibalistic miner. It's a recipe for disaster, it's messy (and by messy I mean gorrryy), it's tragic, and it's...fun. This gave me such a summertime slasher movie vibe, it made me feel nostaglic to be honest! (what does that really say about me....) I also think the author handled the main character's PTSD really well despite the fact this wasn't a "serious" story. The cover is also perfect and I love it!

Read this if you love slasher films and the horror genre in general, it's predictable, but isn't that what we all love about slashers? Don't read this if you don't like people's faces getting cut off and whatnot. ( :

Our protagonist is a valley girl doctor-in-training with PTSD after her fiancé died on a hiking trip they took together the year before. She's addicted to benzos and almost killed a patient after getting a little too high at work. Her escape from her shitty life and possibly losing her job comes in the form of a spiritual retreat in the desert with her college friends: a Wiccan Instagram influencer, a professional DJ, a new age yoga instructor, and a frat bro. It's just them, a white "guru", and his Native American assistant out in the desert with no cell service when things start going very wrong...

I struggled with this book. An early falsehood threw me out of the story within the first few pages, and I kept noticing little mistakes like that throughout the whole book. (Fun fact, like all New World vultures, the California Condor does not have a voice box and can only hiss and grunt.) Eventually I realized I'm not supposed to care about any of these stereotypical LA assholes, I'm supposed to watch them be murdered with with an ice pick. My main source of entertainment became trying to figure out who the killer was and if there something supernatural was happening or not. It's also clear from nearly the start that Hannah has not been completely honest about the events surrounding her fiancé's death, and I enjoyed speculating about the real story.

Unfortunately, I found the answers for two of the three questions to be really disappointing. I felt the final reveals jumped the shark and I found myself going "that's SO lame" for the last several page turns. I also thought at least one of the kills was extremely silly, but I'm not an experienced slasher fan so who knows, maybe other people would love it.

The worst part to me is that the book concludes with an author's note, and it's really good! It's a beautiful ode to the horror genre and it makes me feel worse about my low score. And like, I had to drop the audiobook of Curse of the Reaper because it was too damn scary for me to handle at the time. I know McAuley is a good author! I just couldn't connect with or enjoy this one.

Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for giving me an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Wow!! Very few books give you the feeling that you are watching a movie, but this one definitely does. I felt like I was in a straight up slasher film the entire time.

This is incredibly well done, and even though the twist makes perfect sense, I was still so shocked when it was revealed.

I received Breathe In, Bleed Out as in eARC in exchange of my honest review. Thank you to the author and NetGalley!

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an ARC.

This one didn't work for me. I like the idea of the slasher genre being in book form, but I just didn't like this book. I struggled with the characters and Writing style. I didn't enjoy the pacing of the story and I didn't like how any of the characters were written. I loved the idea, but felt let down by the execution.

An incredible slasher that hooks you from the beginning and doesn't let up until the very end! With well-rounded characters, "Breathe In Bleed Out" is a must-read for horror/ thriller lovers that enjoy a good "whodunit"! It's been a long time since a book kept me guessing up until the very end! It's such a fun read, and I'm looking forward to reading more from Brian McAuley!

Breathe In, Bleed Out by Brian McAuley
3 stars ⭐⭐⭐

🔪 Slasher
🔪 Wellness Retreat
🔪 Cults
🔪 Whodunit Trope
🔪 Unrealiable MC

Okay, I don’t love slasher books. It’s not my horror go-to, but the premise of this book is great. I loveeeee a wellness retreat horror.

Hannah has had a hard time. After the death of her fiancé and years of numbing the pain with wine and pharmaceuticals, her next option is to check into an in-person patient program. Until her long-neglected best friend calls her with a suggestion: a week-long, exclusive retreat, just her and all her friends in the Joshua Tree Desert for a full detox. But they aren’t alone in the desert. Something or someone is ready to make them breathe in and bleed out.

The first half of this book sat better with me than the last half. The beginning throws you right into the action, preparing you for what has happened and what is to come. This entire book is very fast-paced, and while you may be irritated with the MC at times, you have the feeling she may survive it all. She’s been through worse after all. This novel is very gory, and this particular gore is an ick for me, but I managed to get through it (no spoilers). The character development remains surface-level, and instead, there is a heavy emphasis on plot. There are a lot of flashbacks intended to explain why Hannah is the way she is, but it’s more just explaining her trauma and issues with her ex, and we get little character development for him. If you’re a fan of Freida McFadden, but want it slasher-style, this is the book for you.

Thank you, Netgalley and Poisoned Pen Press, for the ARC e-book.

This slasher was a cheeky, fun read that gives Scream vibes in a "wellness" space. Whether you are a wellness guru yourself or a skeptic of the highest order, this is a great read.

Hannah has had a really rough year... and after a mistake at work opens her schedule completely, she joins her friends at an isolated wellness retreat in Joshua Tree. She's there to work on her trauma and reconnect with the friends she's been pushing away, but when they start to go missing? Quintessential slasher vibes to follow.

The story is fun, gory, dramatic, and a mystery you desperately want to solve before the end.

"Breathe In, Bleed Out" releases on September 2nd. ⛏️ Definitely pick it up for one final summer scare.

✨️Big thanks to Brian McAuley, NetGalley, and Poisoned Pen Press for an eARC of this soon to be slasher classic.

A worthy addition to the slasher horror genre! If you enjoy the blood soaked violence and wry humor of the Scream franchise, this should be high on your TBR list. Hannah has already survived one tragedy that she is still trying to deal with when her friends decide to take her on a wellness retreat in the desert to aid in her recovery. Let’s see if she can survive the weekend! This is filled with creative kills while lampooning the wellness industry. This was a fun and wild ride, I look forward to every release from Brian McAuley!

I absolutely love this type of plot where one by one people are picked off and I really enjoyed the fact that as a reader you’re being messed around with emotions. I was questioning myself throughout and everyone was suspicious at times.

I struggled to connect with the main character and actually all of them, they all were very childish to me considering they are meant to be late 20’s, I felt like they were teens. I would have enjoyed it a bit more if they were actually teens as that’s how I imagined their behaviours.

I didn’t enjoy the reveal at the end. I kind of saw it coming just before it happened and I wasn’t wowed, I feel like it was very random and didn’t add up.

However, this is such a fast paced read and I was gripped at all times and definitely don’t regret giving it a go

Breathe In, Bleed Out is such a fun slasher story! Set at an exclusive wellness retreat in Joshua Tree, main character Hannah isn’t big into spiritualism, but she’s dealing with some pretty intense trauma surrounding the death of her fiancé so she decides to give it a go. But it’s not long before blood is spilled.

This book really shines in the descriptions of the creative kills and in the crafting of the remote desert setting. Brian McAuley also has an incredibly readable writing style—if you’re in a slump then his books are the perfect antidote.

The one downside for me was that I didn’t love the reveal of who the killer was, but I often feel a little underwhelmed with that element of slashers and murder mysteries and it’s not actually that big a part of the story. Overall, this book was great fun and I look forward to reading whatever McAuley writes next!

Thanks net-galley for the ARC! This was the perfect read to get me out of a little rut. It was quick and fun - not necessarily great literature - but it did what it needed to do! I wanted more on most of the characters (Grady, Luna, Miles) but enjoyed what I got about them!

In the extremely gripping opening, Hannah is dragging the corpse of her fiance down a snowy mountain. A year later, she's looking to heal from his gnarly death. But the wellness retreat her friends book isn't what it seems, and a pickax wielding killer is offing them between sun salutations and sound baths. This slasher is fun, fast-paced, and cinematic.

There’s something about the slasher genre in book form that just hits different - and McAuley approached it with care and a true love for the medium. I think they take some well-used tropes within the genre and do something new with them (particularly thinking about the family dynamic) which I think gives the book a breath of fresh air, compared to other counterparts in the bookshelf.

4.5 ⭐️

This was such a rollercoaster! I went from being confused to thinking Hannah was an unreliable narrator to be baffled by the ending. I really didn’t see it coming.

This was such a fun take on a modern day adult slasher book! It was really well written and had be laughing and scratching my head several times throughout.

Unpopular opinion, but this book is very middle of the road. I didn't like any of the characters besides Kimi, who's not even a part of the main friend group. When reading slashers, I really want memorable killings and at least one main character to root for, which this book doesn't fulfill. I really started to get tired of hearing about the trauma and secrecy surrounding Hannah's fiancé's death. While some of the deaths were well written, a couple were only a couple sentences long. It reads like a low-budget slasher that you would see on a TV channel at 1am. On a positive note, I did really enjoy the setting and the Waylon Barlow backstory, and it was a very quick and easy read.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!