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3.6 AVERAGE
3.6 AVERAGE
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Breathless by Amy McCulloch is an epic, adventurous thriller about a struggling journalist who gets the once of a lifetime interview with a famous mountaineer. The only catch is she has to climb & summit a mountain with him to get the interview.
This thriller let me breathless reading the adventure rooted in survival, add in a murderer & I was completely enraptured in this story.
I’ve done indoor climbing for a couple years so I feel like I have a healthy respect & love for any climbing, but combine outdoor & this level of it & it is mind- blowing. This set an intense landscape & vigorous schedule that was just perfect to create a mountain of a mystery novel:
This book has short chapters, which I always love & kept me on my toes throughout. Breathless is extremely well-written & I gave this 5 out of 5 stars!
To Amy McCulloch, congrats on sending this book. (That’s a little climbing humor! I’m a nerd, forgive me.)
To be honest, I have read quite a few mysteries in my life. I love trying to solve all the missing pieces, figure out the clues amidst the fear & tension & hopefully eventually put the puzzle together that creates such wonderful mysteries & thrillers. But after you’ve read a lot of mysteries & thrillers, they can start to blend together. Or at least for me they do, I have chronic pain & a chronically foggy brain so this could just be a me thing. My point of this ramble is to say that this book stands out! This is a book I will remember because it’s so unique in both the location & the reasoning for them being there. Climbing one of the biggest mountains in the world in order to interview a world-renowned mountaineer is not something that will blend with other mysteries.
I was completely transfixed with this mysterious adventure thriller. The anticipation of the dangerous climb was entertaining in itself & then you add in a killer & I devoured this in 2 days. I would recommend this to anyone who loves mysteries, adventures, the outdoors &/or just wonderfully entertaining reads!
Breathless by Amy McCulloch comes out May 3, 2022!
Massive thanks to NetGalley & Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.for giving me the opportunity to read an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Trigger warnings: This book mentions &/or contains death, mountain accident, gore, violence, murder & avalanche.
Extra things I loved:
-“Be bothered.” I love that quote & the message behind it. It’s so smart.
This thriller let me breathless reading the adventure rooted in survival, add in a murderer & I was completely enraptured in this story.
I’ve done indoor climbing for a couple years so I feel like I have a healthy respect & love for any climbing, but combine outdoor & this level of it & it is mind- blowing. This set an intense landscape & vigorous schedule that was just perfect to create a mountain of a mystery novel:
This book has short chapters, which I always love & kept me on my toes throughout. Breathless is extremely well-written & I gave this 5 out of 5 stars!
To Amy McCulloch, congrats on sending this book. (That’s a little climbing humor! I’m a nerd, forgive me.)
To be honest, I have read quite a few mysteries in my life. I love trying to solve all the missing pieces, figure out the clues amidst the fear & tension & hopefully eventually put the puzzle together that creates such wonderful mysteries & thrillers. But after you’ve read a lot of mysteries & thrillers, they can start to blend together. Or at least for me they do, I have chronic pain & a chronically foggy brain so this could just be a me thing. My point of this ramble is to say that this book stands out! This is a book I will remember because it’s so unique in both the location & the reasoning for them being there. Climbing one of the biggest mountains in the world in order to interview a world-renowned mountaineer is not something that will blend with other mysteries.
I was completely transfixed with this mysterious adventure thriller. The anticipation of the dangerous climb was entertaining in itself & then you add in a killer & I devoured this in 2 days. I would recommend this to anyone who loves mysteries, adventures, the outdoors &/or just wonderfully entertaining reads!
Breathless by Amy McCulloch comes out May 3, 2022!
Massive thanks to NetGalley & Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.for giving me the opportunity to read an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Trigger warnings: This book mentions &/or contains death, mountain accident, gore, violence, murder & avalanche.
Extra things I loved:
-“Be bothered.” I love that quote & the message behind it. It’s so smart.
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
this felt more like a book about overcoming people’s expectations of you and challenging yourself than a thriller and then the last like 30/40 pages happened. still good vibes though
adventurous
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Wow! What a wild wild ride. In short, I loved it. I've been looking forward to Breathless since it was announced as one of the April 2022 Book of the Month picks, and I can happily say that it did not disappoint. First of all, it was incredibly atmospheric. I've never read a book that was set on a mountain before, so the entire experience felt so new and different to me. I also liked the physical challenges the setting presented, and that so much of the danger wasn't connected to the killer but rather to their environment. I didn't know that that was something I was missing in my Thrillers until I saw it in this book, and I hope to read more Thrillers where our characters have to interact with their environment so heavily. It was also so informative. Being a complete amateur to the sport, I can't say if the information was accurate of even if it was general knowledge and I'm just easily impressed, but I got the impression that the author is either a mountaineer herself or did a ton of research for this novel. Either way, it made me feel like the sport is seriously underhyped, having now been made aware of all its challenges. Furthermore, it was immersive. This is unique for Thrillers that more so focus on shocking and unsettling you rather than making you feel like you were there and part of the story. Every time Cecily felt scared or empowered by the progress she had made, I felt like it was me. I don't know how to explain it, but it was super inspiring in that regard. Then there was the unique collection of personalities. Breathless followed five strangers with differing personalities, in one of the most dangerous places in the world. Seeing how they all got along and reacted to pressure was interesting and added a lot of grit and intrigue to the book. Finally, it read super fast. Maybe it's because there was always something happening or because everything was so new to me, but I flew through this book in two days flat (and it's not a particularly short book, either!).
What I didn't like was how predictable it was in terms of the murder. I figured out who did it fairly quickly, so I only had to wait to find out the motivations. Then when we found out why this person was doing it, I was so incredibly underwhelmed. It wasn't even that the reason was bad, it just didn't make all that much sense. It felt so random and far-fetched in the greater sense of the story, and I hate how that affected my overall experience. I feel like if the author explained the motivations better, so maybe dropping hints of unusual behavior that was swept under the rug in their past, or that the person came down with HACE (High Altitude Cerebral Edema, which was mentioned several times throughout the course of the novel), in stead of just throwing it out there, it would have come over better. In stead of that, I was just left thinking that there were about a billion different ways the author could have handled it better.
That being said, I still thought it was a great read overall. Easily one of my favorite Thrillers of all time, and a must-read if the concept appeals to you!
What I didn't like was how predictable it was in terms of the murder. I figured out who did it fairly quickly, so I only had to wait to find out the motivations. Then when we found out why this person was doing it, I was so incredibly underwhelmed. It wasn't even that the reason was bad, it just didn't make all that much sense. It felt so random and far-fetched in the greater sense of the story, and I hate how that affected my overall experience. I feel like if the author explained the motivations better, so maybe dropping hints of unusual behavior that was swept under the rug in their past, or that the person came down with HACE (High Altitude Cerebral Edema, which was mentioned several times throughout the course of the novel), in stead of just throwing it out there, it would have come over better. In stead of that, I was just left thinking that there were about a billion different ways the author could have handled it better.
That being said, I still thought it was a great read overall. Easily one of my favorite Thrillers of all time, and a must-read if the concept appeals to you!
As a fan of both mountaineering books and thrillers, I loved this. It felt like it was written specifically for me.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No