Review by sarrie - Breathe In, Bleed Out

sarrie 's review for:

Breathe In, Bleed Out by Brian McAuley

4.0

adventurous dark emotional fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: N/A

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

TL;DR: Very fun with some unique deaths.
Source: NetGalley - Thank you to the publisher!!

Plot: Hannah is trying to recover after the death of her fiancé and agrees to go on a ‘wellness retreat’. All is not well.
Characters: A cast of somewhat tropey characters but not the worst. I enjoyed hating some of these guys.
Setting: This felt unique as they were out in the desert all alone, a first for me.
Thriller/Horror: There wasn’t much as far as thrills here but the horror and kills were fun!

Thoughts:

Okay, so listen. This isn’t my usual genre. Slashers like this aren’t my go too but occasionally I like to mix it up! This was available and I thought, why not? And it was fun! It really was! Hannah is deep in the throes of grief over the deeply traumatic loss of her fiancé when she agrees to go on a wellness retreat with her friends. Things start great! But no one gets any… wellness there.

The characters are your usual cast. We have a real annoying blonde, her fratboy style boyfriend, the boy who always loved Hannah, her best friend, and Hannah herself. In addition to that we have the suspicious Guru Pax and his assistant Kimi. The small cast works great and each death we saw was fun and honestly pretty fitting. I liked seeing them coming and I enjoyed the consistency of the kills.

I do think there were a few plot threads that were left hanging and some things we could have had explained out more but if you’re looking for a short fun time, this is it. There are red herrings, fun chase scenes, the whole thing! I had fun, and if you go in looking just for that, you will too.

Content Warnings