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A review by savvyrosereads
Breathless by Amy McCulloch
adventurous
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
Cecily Wong is a journalist hoping to get the interview of a lifetime by summiting Manaslu, an eight-thousand-meter peak, alongside potential world-record-breaker Charles McVeigh. But she may uncover a story of a different kind when people start dying on the mountain.
I adore a winter thriller and an And Then There Were None trope, so I was pretty excited for this one. And while I definitely didn’t hate it, I was ultimately and unfortunately a bit disappointed. I’d seen reviews that called this a slow burn, and it definitely was—I expected so much more action and adventure from a book about death-defying mountaineering, but a huge portion of the prose was dedicated to technical explanations of how to climb a mountain—fascinating, but not really the stuff a gripping thriller is made from. And, while I don’t always mind some predictability, I figured out the entire whodunit (and the major secondary twist) extremely early on, which left me with a very small payoff from a very steep trek (see what I did there?)
That said, Breathless was *incredibly* atmospheric (it genuinely made me cold while I was reading it) and it is SUPER cool that the author is an actual mountaineer who has summited Manaslu and other mountains!
Recommended if you like: slow burn thrillers; lots of atmosphere; locked-room-but-in-the-wilderness
CW: Death/murder/injury; grief/PTSD
Cecily Wong is a journalist hoping to get the interview of a lifetime by summiting Manaslu, an eight-thousand-meter peak, alongside potential world-record-breaker Charles McVeigh. But she may uncover a story of a different kind when people start dying on the mountain.
I adore a winter thriller and an And Then There Were None trope, so I was pretty excited for this one. And while I definitely didn’t hate it, I was ultimately and unfortunately a bit disappointed. I’d seen reviews that called this a slow burn, and it definitely was—I expected so much more action and adventure from a book about death-defying mountaineering, but a huge portion of the prose was dedicated to technical explanations of how to climb a mountain—fascinating, but not really the stuff a gripping thriller is made from. And, while I don’t always mind some predictability, I figured out the entire whodunit (and the major secondary twist) extremely early on, which left me with a very small payoff from a very steep trek (see what I did there?)
That said, Breathless was *incredibly* atmospheric (it genuinely made me cold while I was reading it) and it is SUPER cool that the author is an actual mountaineer who has summited Manaslu and other mountains!
Recommended if you like: slow burn thrillers; lots of atmosphere; locked-room-but-in-the-wilderness
CW: Death/murder/injury; grief/PTSD
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder and Death