Slasher meets psychological horror.

<b>Overview:</b> After a year of trying to heal from her fiancé's death, Hannah is nearing her wits end. Suffering with constant nightmares that are now bleeding into her day-to-day life, she is hesitant when her friend Tess invites her to join herself and some mutual friends at an exclusive spiritual retreat. But what should be a time of healing and self-reflection turns into a bloodbath as Hannah's friends start getting picked off one-by-one. Is it a serial killer, or is a local spirit hunting down visitors in the dark?

I loved every moment of this novel. The mystery of the killer's identity was well played out through every moment, constantly having hints and misdirection's dropped throughout, so you are never fully sure who did it. And the unreliable narrator of Hannah is a perfect medium, as she slides deeper into questioning her reality with each eerie moment.

The pacing is fast and planned beautifully, with tension escalating as the desperation to find the killer grows. I loved the creative deaths, while it does take a bit of time to progress to them (the wait is wonderfully used to bring to question Hannah's reliability as narrator), they reminded me of my favourite gore/slasher movies. If you like <i>Scream</i> or <i>Final Destination</i> this is the book for you.

While <i>Breathe In, Bleed Out</i> is the first book of Brian McAuley's that I've read, I will definitely be reading more of his works going forward.

<b>Publishing: September 2, 2025</b>

Thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for the opportunity to read this book for an honest review.

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Hannah is a medical intern that lost her fiancée in a terrible accident while hiking on a snowy mountain. While she tries to deal with her grief, in her own way, her best friend invites her to a holistic retreat that seems a little too-good-to-be-true type of thing. Hannah accepts the invitation, and embarks her trip with a couple of other friends she hasn’t seen in a while.

Everyone’s having fun; a little yoga over here, some weird herbs over there. Until one by one her friends start disappearing, and Hannah thinks the strange man she’s been seeing with a pickaxe is the one responsible.

“This place is not what you think it is”

~~~

HOLY plot twists. The actual murderer? Never saw that coming. The actual truth behind her boyfriend’s death and the moments before it happened? Never saw THAT coming either.
I’m proud to say I’ll probably never step into a retreat in my life because of this book. SPECIALLY not in the middle of nowhere with a sketchy guru.

a bingeable classic slasher that will keep you on your toes. the holistic wellness retreat setting was incredible to me because i also will never buy into the woo-woo (apologies in advance to the woo-wooers.) it was fun and kind of campy and a little silly / scooby-doo vibes but all in all i had a good time. definitely a lot going on but written well.

thank you to netgalley & poisoned pen press for this eARC!

This book had a really interesting premise, well written characters, very spooky atmosphere. Some of the final act felt a little forced, some aspects were not believable, and one thread seemed to go nowhere. Overall, this was an enjoyable read and one I would recommend for people in search of a fun, creepy, gory summer slasher with some emotional heft.

5 ⭐️

What a freaking ride this was!! This is my first time reading anything by this author and now I have to pick up more. I don’t read many slashers but this one had me hooked from the very beginning and constantly guessing the who and why. ADDICTING! I’ll be thinking about this book for a long time!

This was a fun slasher! To be fair, I haven’t read many (any?) slasher books, just a horror fan in general. It was a little thriller, a little gory, a little cheesy, and a lot of fun. I was worried I had the mystery figured out, but I didn’t. A fun summer read.

This murder fest was a wild ride from start to finish. The murders were all pretty creative and the added bonus of an adult scooby doo type mystery behind the murderer really kept me invested in the developing plot. I really liked the fast pace writing style and I never felt like the book lagged.

This book was written for those times when you can't decide if you want to watch a 2000s horror movie or read a book.

I blindly went into this book, judging it by its cover 100%, and I'm glad I did. This is one of those times where it fully paid off because I just found a book that I read in just two sittings (which is fast for me). The characters are thought out but not over-developed. Are they relatable? I don't even know, but I do know that they're realistic.

The entire story kept me hooked and guessing from chapter one. I did not, at all, see any of the ending coming. The entire book arguably plays out like a 2000s horror movie with an ending reminiscent of something from the 80s. The imagery was enough to picture the location, the yurts, the hike. This story is not my usual read, but still deserves 4.5 stars; half a star deducted for leaving some unanswered questions which I would have loved to see mentioned (even in conversation) in the final chapter.

Thank you, Netgalley and Poisoned Pen Press, for the ARC opportunity. This honest review has been left voluntarily.

The thriller/horror genre is one I’ve really found myself drawn to as of late. Being absorbed into an exciting, fast-paced world was perfect and exactly what I was looking for. I couldn’t wait to have this same thrill happen with Breathe In, Bleed Out, and well… unfortunately it didn’t.

This slasher struggled with what it wanted to be. Half the time when I was reading it, I was questioning whether McAuley was aiming for a camp vibe or wanting to be a little more serious with it. There would be these lines that were so over the top it felt like the author was leaning towards camp, but then none of that would return for chapters. As a reader trying to figure this out, it really pulled me out of the story time and time again.

In a slasher, I never expect to like the characters. I don’t want to either! I don’t want to get attached just to watch them die a horrible death! Yet, all of these characters here were so bland that it took me to a new level of not caring enough, something I didn’t know was possible. If I’m not even hoping that one of them dies a brutal death, I think that is just too far on the other side of the pendulum.

There was a simplicity to the writing that didn’t work for me. I never felt the fear or the horror, never even shock, and I think that is due to the writing doing more showing instead of telling. Everything is just happening, but not in a way that the reader feels they can experience it. I think the deaths were some of the best-written parts of the book, but even then, there still felt like there was a wall up.

When it came to the ending, I stopped three pages from finishing it because it felt like there was just such a disconnect from everything. The lack of build-up to that and the amount of red herrings that were thrown in within ten pages of revealing the killer. It was infuriating, and when I finally finished it, I was thrilled to be done.

Maybe as a low-budget film this would have worked, but as a novel it wasn’t thrilling by any stretch of the means. This simply just didn’t work for me.

Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review.

"Breath In, Bleed Out" — Breaths in Potential but Bleeds out execution.

I like my slashers like I like my B-horror movies: bloody, chaotic, and a little bit unhinged. But even a good splatter-fest needs writing that is well researched and less cringe-fest.
Breath In, Bleed Out delivers some decent slasher moments—there’s some bloody, creative scenes, and a few tension built moments. But unfortunately, that’s where the thrills ended for me.
The dialogue was often clunky, and the “research” was lacking. No white person has ever seriously called other white people “colonizers” in a non-ironic way, and if they have, they definitely weren't doing it in a rural holistic yoga retreat/slasher setting.
There was potential here, but it got lost somewhere between the body count and the clichés. If you're looking for gore and don't mind a plot stitched together like a bad Frankenstein monster, go for it. But if you're hoping for sharp writing to match the sharp slashing weapons, this one's a miss.

Characters: 4/5
Story/Plot: 4/5
Writing: 5/5
Overall: 4.5/5 Rounded up

Breathe In, Bleed Out was an amazing campy thriller ride! It was fast paced and kept me guessing. The very first chapter gripped me and it never let go.

The story follows Hannah, and her group of friends as they go to a spiritual retreat to experience restoration and rejuvenation. For Hannah, who recently lost her finance in a tragic accident, it's just what the doctor ordered. However, restoration and peace are not what they find, as they start to get picked off one by one almost immediately.

The characters felt like caricatures of stereotypes in a way, but honestly for this sort of book it worked, and made it feel like a classic slasher flick. I had a dislike for some characters, but that was only because they were made to be disliked. Hannah, while depressed and deeply haunted by her trauma, was wildly unreliable as a narrator and I loved that, as it kept me guessing.

This was the perfect thing to read in the summer, as the writing was able to portray the vibes perfectly. It was easy to read and I will definitely be picking up this author's other works!




Thank you to Netgalley and to Poison Pen Press for providing me with an ARC!

Quick paced and keeps you guessing. Navigating her way through her ptsd Hannah ends up on a spiritual retreat with her friends. With 2 missing bodies are starting to pile up. Is she the killer or is it someone else?

This was a fun, fast-paced slasher set at a creepy wellness retreat in the middle of the desert. After a traumatic loss, Hannah joins her friends at a healing center run by a mysterious guru, but the good vibes don’t last long. People start disappearing, and things quickly spiral into bloody chaos.

The kills are brutal, the twist caught me off guard, and there’s just enough dark humor to balance out the horror. It doesn’t go super deep emotionally, and some of the characters felt a bit surface-level, but it kept me turning pages. If you’re into slashers with a bit of culty wellness weirdness, this one’s worth a read.

Healing hurts—and sometimes it kills.


I went into Breathe In, Bleed Out expecting your standard wellness-retreat-goes-wrong story, and while that foundation is definitely there, Brian McAuley takes it somewhere darker, weirder, and far more satisfying than I anticipated.

The novel centers on Hannah, who’s still deep in the fog of grief after the tragic death of her fiancé, Ben. In an attempt to heal—and maybe to reconnect with the world she’s shut out—she agrees to go on a wellness retreat in Joshua Tree with her closest friends to reconnect, especially with her best friend Tessa. The retreat is led by the absurdly-named Guru Pax (yes, he is a white man and yes, the eye-roll is earned), and at first it seems like your typical spiritual detox. Yoga, raw diet, disconnecting from screens, self-actualization—until things start going sideways.

As the days pass, the retreat gets increasingly unnerving. Friends begin to disappear. The desert closes in. The line between enlightenment and exploitation blurs. McAuley keeps the tension simmering under the surface before letting it boil over in some wild and genuinely unexpected ways.

This book was fun. Suspenseful, twisty, and impossible to put down. I tore through it, constantly second-guessing who I could trust and what was actually going on behind the good vibes and incense smoke.

Also—this surprised me—I usually hesitate with books that center women but are written by men. There’s often a kind of inauthenticity or a weird sheen of male projection that gives me the ick. But McAuley wrote Hannah and her relationships (especially with Tessa) with a kind of grounded respect and realism that I really appreciated. It felt human, not performative. Like this guy actually likes women and sees them as people (revolutionary, I know).

If you're into psychological thrillers with a satirical bite, emotional weight, and a healthy distrust of white dudes selling enlightenment for $3,000 a weekend—Breathe In, Bleed Out is for you.

I am a big fan of horror movies/books, especially classic slashers, so i was really excited when i came across this book.
It turned out to be a fast-paced, entertaining read packed with fun, bloody slasher scenes that delivered exactly what I was hoping for. The main characters were a bit annoying and predictable but not enough to ruin the experience.
I saw the twist coming pretty early on and wish the story had taken a more unexpected turn.
Still, if you’re in the mood for a classic slasher-style horror book, this one is definitely worth checking out.

Thank you NetGalley for the free eArc!

I attached the link directly to my Instagram review of this amazing book! It was a 5 Star read for me for sure!

So fun! I'm a horror/slasher fan in book and movie form, I loved the way this book felt. I could see it as a movie, the hippie, new age, retreat gone wrong. I was actually unsure of the villain for most of the book, that's not usually the case. I will definitely read other books by Brian McAuley!

Received as an ARC for Netgalley:

Brian McAuley does it again! Another winner of a slasher novel. This one moves at a real whipcrack pace, with the dialogue, and plot really feeling like it flows exceptionally well.

This book is a balancing act because McAuley understands that there are some techniques used in these wellness clinics that can actually help, but a lot of times it's wrapped up in predatory cultural appropriation. A similar balancing act happens with the characters who are quite often very unlikable but by the end of their journeys feel well drawn.

The slasher elements are done SO WELL and this NEEDS to be a movie tomorrow!

"Breathe In, Bleed Out" by Brian McAuley is such a fun, fast-paced, addictive, and bloody good read—the perfect summer slasher!

After the traumatic loss of her fiancé during a wilderness trip together, FMC Hannah, is having an extremely hard time managing day-to-day life and her job as a medical intern. Plagued with worsening nightmares and hallucinations of her dead fiancé, Hannah slides into prescription drug abuse. After nearly being responsible for the death of a patient due to being under the influence at work, Hannah is put on indefinite leave. In desperate need of a reset, the timing is perfect when Hannah and her friends are invited to a remote healing retreat. Once the group arrives at the spiritual healing retreat in Joshua Tree, it doesn't take long for the friends to be picked off one by one in brutal fashion.

Right off the bat with the first chapter, I found myself completely hooked. It was easy to get sucked into the drama amongst Hannah and her friend group, and also the "whodunit" aspect of the story. Everytime that I thought I was sure who the killer was or what was going on, there would be another twist. With each death, I found myself more and more engrossed in reading—wondering who was behind the massacre. I highly recommend this book and personally can't wait for the physical release so I can add it to my collection!

A huge thank you to NetGalley and Poisoned Pen Press for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

The book had a slow start for me, as it seemed like it wasn't horror at all for quite a bit in the beginning and was more about a mental journey.  Honestly, that is the only negative I can say, just that the horror part of the plot should have started earlier on.  But, when it did finally get to that, it was really good!  It was a pretty short read for a novel and definitely had some Scream themes going on, even though the setting/plot was very different than Scream.  Towards the end, you really do feel like you know what is happening, but then you are proven wrong.  Great read. I would definitely pick up another by this author!