I absolutely love this book and I’m really hoping there will be more of the same. Amy McCulloch pulls you in to the story and you feel like you’re up on the mountain with the characters of the book. I love the book so much I’ve actually gone out and bought myself a hardback copy of this after reading it has a free copy from NetGallery. Thank you introducing me to Amy’s work I can’t wait for her next book.

Thank you to Net GalIey and Michael Joseph for an arc copy in exchange for an honest review.

I know absolutely nothing about rock climbing and so found this book interesting. It was really atmospheric, giving a feel of what it could be like in such cold temperatures up a mountain.

The characters were OK. A bit hard to remember who was who but it all tied together in the end.

What I didn't like was how irresponsible the main character was. I can understand how it can happen here in the UK because you do hear quite often about people who have under prepared and need to be rescued. However I found it quite unrealistic that someone as novice as her would actually be allowed on an organised expedition with such experienced other climbers. I may be wrong though as I am definitely not a mountaineer.

I really enjoyed the thriller aspect. It made an exciting change of scenery compared to other books.

Overall I found it engaging and at times exciting. I also enjoyed all the climbing terminology and the backdrop of the landscape.

I absolutely loved the fact the bleak weather and location was almost a person in the book. I can’t really put into words other than to say the book left me breathless, Loved the story and I loved the way it read so easily. Just brilliant.

This is a stunning debut from Amy McCulloch. Her passion and knowledge of extreme climbing have made for a truly thrilling read. I was easily drawn in to the storyline, written in such a way that I was desperate to know what happened next. The descriptive text created such atmospheric and immersive read. Overall, this was a thrilling read and one that I highly recommend. Many thanks to Penguin Michael Joseph UK and NetGalley for the review copy.

Loved this book! The cold, isolated setting is one of my favourites for a thriller. It held a cast of characters that held my attention and a plot that kept me invested. Well written and easy to read, I raced through the pages and look forward to more of this authors titles in the future

Reporter Cecily is going after the story everyone in the climbing world wants - an exclusive with the famous Alpinist Charles McVeigh, conditional on her successfully sumitting his latest Himalayan conquest. What should be the adventure of a Lifetime turns to terror as somebody on the mountain is a murderer.

I really enjoyed this book, I have no knowledge of climbing but the technical details did not overshadow the story, and the setting made for a tense atmosphere - no huge twists in the story but the ending in particular did grip me.

I felt like this book's potential was there, but it fell flat for me.

I loved the cover, the blub which promised a lot of tension, thrills and excitement, sounds right up my alley, right? Wrong. Sadly, the book did not deliver.

The climb was far from exciting and extreme, more tepid and tedious in descriptions.
The environmental descriptions seemed to have more thought put into them, rather than the plot/storyline.

The characters and character developments left much to desire.

Thank you, NetGalley for the ARC!

WOW! This debut novel was incredible! This book is so well written and utterly gripping. Every page fully absorbs you, taking you through so many twists and turns. This book will have you on the edge of your seat!

A huge thank you to NetGalley and publishers for an early eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Breathless by Amy McCulloch

Adventure journalist Cecily Wong needs a break and she also needs to put the past behind her. To do that she must confront her fears and the golden opportunity comes when legendary mountaineer Charles McVeigh offers her an exclusive interview. If, that is, she can reach the summit of Manaslu in Nepal, the eighth highest mountain in the world. It is a monumental task but Cecily and the other teams on Manaslu will have more than the elements, the lethal terrain and the lack of oxygen to contend with. There is uneasiness among those on the mountain, Cecily hears things she cannot explain, there are memories of fallen climbers, and soon there are deaths.

I have always been drawn to thrillers set in cold, wintry and inhospitable places. There is something about the battle to survive against all that the environment can muster against you. Having said all that, I’m not physically drawn to them at all and mountains terrify me! But the same cannot be said for Amy McCulloch, a fine writer who knows what she writes about. This is an author who has summited Mount Manaslu. She actually did it. How amazing is that?! And all of that personal experience and endeavour makes Breathless more real and convincing than ever.

You really can feel the effort and inherent danger of this climb. Cecily Wong and her fellow climbers are not ‘normal’ people. There is something truly epic about them, whatever their failings and arguments, and that something special really shines out in this novel, even while we see their flaws. Few of the climbers, if any, are without their personal battles. There is much to prove on the lawless precipices and crevasses of Manaslu.

The descriptions of actually how to scale a mountain such as this are fascinating, with the repeated climbs to camps for acclimatisation and so on, as well as the detail of specific parts of the climb, particularly sheer walls of ice and rock. This mountain has claimed many lives and, reading this, you can understand why. And that’s even without the thriller element! But this is a great place to get away with murder.

The thriller itself is an exciting read and very atmospheric. This feels like a haunted mountain and that adds to its tension and air of dread. I liked Cecily, our journalist heroine who must overcome some personal, traumatising hurdles to find the story that will save her career. It is true that the story is a bit predictable (I worked it out early on). Nevertheless, this is an entertaining thriller that really captures the sheer effort of the ascent. I was none the wiser by the end why anyone would want to put themselves through it but I was left in awe of this author who did just that.

For a debut novel, it was really quite good and a very different setting, for a murder mystery, even if it was a little bit far fetched at times. Having said that I did get fully immersed in the story, and wanted to keep reading it. I think the location added to the anticipation on my part, it's something I'd never personally want to do - extreme climbing under very difficult and dangerous conditions. I enjoyed it.

This was a fun read where journalist Cecily wanted to deliver an article to the editor of a magazine, and for which she had been training for months to climb mountains. But things happened during the climb that made her realize she was ill prepared. The beginning was exciting in its premise and preparations but slowly the grip on the tension was not maintained. The descriptions were great even when the pace was slightly slow. Overall, it was a good read.

Cecily Wong is a journalist and she gets the chance to write the story that everyone wants to get in the world of mountineering. She sets off on the hardest adverture of her life to ensure that she gets the story she has been promised. She has to climb to the peak of the mountain with a famous mountineer, if she succeeds then he will give her the big story everyone wants.
If she fails to complete it then she will lose her job and everything she has worked so hard for.
As she sets off on her adventure things start to go wrong, people are dying from what seems to be accidents from all the dangers they are facing. But Cecily is not convinved that they are just accidents, she starts to think there is someone else on the mountain with them, someone more sinister who wants to hurt them. She believes there is a murderer on the mountain!
This story has incredible detail about how mountineering and about all the dangers they face every single day. I was gripped because of this, the whole thing felt so real. The knowledge that has gone into this story is really what made it great. I wanted to know more all the time and couldn't wait to find out what happened.

Wow! It is shocking that this is only Amy McCulloch's debut novel. The thriller is high-stakes and addictive. It is so atmospheric, readers will feel the icy mountainous setting. What happens when you join a dangerous climb and find a note saying there's a murderer on the mountain? The story is claustrophobic and keeps readers guessing. Highly recommended!

Cecily Wong is chasing the story of a lifetime, if she cannot secure it then her career will be over. She will get to interview infamous mountaineer and legend Charles McVeigh if she manages to summit Manaslu alongside him. Cecily’s career so far has been based on writing about failing to reach the different peaks she has tried, so the pressure is on, no summit, no story. As her training begins, Cecily starts to hear rumours from Charles’ previous expeditions and then she is witness to a very suspicious death. Cecily starts to wonder if there are other dangers on the mountain she will have to face.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, it felt like a traditional thriller in one sense but told in a very modern and believable style. The setting of the remote mountain and Cecily’s reliance on the small group of people around her heightens everything. There is no where to escape to and the tension is palpable as her life is continuously in danger, either from what she is trying to accomplish or the killer she thinks might be out there.
McCulloch maintains an excellent pace throughout and there were time when I felt myself holding my breath. The descriptions are very cinematic, I could easily imagine this being turned into a movie or TV series. I also really enjoyed the technical details about climbing, it was interesting to learn what is truly involved in carrying out one of these dangerous expeditions.
Breathless is a fantastic read, the tension is thrilling and I struggled to put this one down.

Cecily Wong is trying to follow her ex-boyfriend, James, in forging a career as an adventure travel journalist after he introduced her to mountaineering, however her only claim to fame so far is a viral blog called “Failure to Rise”, about her failure to summit Kilimanjaro or complete the Three Peaks Challenge. Prolific climber, Charles McVeigh, is something of a legend in the climbing world and his mission to summit the fourteen highest mountains in the world in under a year with no oxygen and no ropes is the talk of the mountaineering world. And that’s without mentioning the daring rescues he has undertaken along the way so far. When he invites Cecily to join his select team to summit Manaslu alongside him, with the catch being that she only gets an exclusive if she too conquers the mountain, it’s the opportunity of a lifetime to cement her career, but a risky proposition given the cost to fund the trip and danger involved. And with a hostile expedition leader, a rumour of a suspicious death on Everest and an early death at base camp, Cecily soon has more to worry about than just the mountain itself and is on on high-alert for a very real killer in her midst..

This novel has a fantastic premise at its heart with a killer stalking their victims in the above 8000 metres “death zone” of the Himalayan mountains and in a largely self-regulated territory where it is impossible to conduct a search, let alone an investigation. Kudos to Amy McCullough for making the potential explicitly clear but unfortunately I didn’t feel she capitalised on this with the novel lacking any credible sense of menace prior to the final push and even the deaths failing to inject meaningful tension. Right from the off however the reader does get a sense of the pressure on Cecily’s shoulders including her own self-doubt, team mates that see her as the weak link and the low expectations of her parents. Given that her training for tackling the eighth highest mountain was supposedly putting in the miles on Box Hill in Surrey (!), and the fact that she doesn’t really ever stop to consider why she might have been hand-selected for Charles’s team, I did find her disappointingly naive.

McCullough is excellent on the technical know-how of climbing and mountain colour and her writing obviously comes from a place of authenticity, however I do think there was too much exposition for the non-specialist reader. I didn’t think a thriller set on one of the world’s highest mountains could possibly be dull but between all the “clipping in” etc, it felt laboured, not helped by the fact that the mystery element is poorly disguised. There is a very obvious red herring in the mix and only ever two serious contenders for the killer but after nearly eighty percent of build-up to the big summit push I found the denouement improbable and rushed and the ending disappointing. I wasn’t convinced by the character development of Cecily either and found the supporting cast one-dimensional.

WOW, WOW WOW. for a debut novel just WOW. Completely amazing work. This book is really, really well written, completely absorbing, and utterly gripping, so many twist and turns and throughly emersive, do not miss this book is you love a physiological thriller. Amazing great job.

Wow! Just wow! How is this a debut novel? How will a written review do this justice? Is this on the TBR? If it’s not, it absolutely needs to be. I don’t know where to start with this one.

I have been transported to the cold, icy setting of this one. I love how the author has really given us a feel of the atmosphere during this book. It actually feels as though you are there with the elegant writing and beautiful descriptions.

I love the mix of characters in this book, they literally make this book even better. McCulloch has managed to to make my heart pound and really made me feel breathless as I’ve read this.

This is completely unique to anything I’ve read previously. I have loved the creepy and claustrophobic feels I have been given. This is a book that has absorbed me and held me captive from the beginning.

This a great read, chilling and addictive. This is completely unpredictable and perfect for lovers of the genre. One I will definitely be recommending, I have no doubt this will be a 2022 best seller.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I always think that a good sign that a thriller is great is if I forget to breathe for a few seconds cos I'm so tense, and I definitely found myself gasping for air reading this one! Also had to reach for a blanket on more than one occasion cos I truly felt I was on that mountain with Cecily.

Honestly, what a great suspenseful read - gripping and absolutely terrifying. Big thumbs up!

Reading Breathless by Amy McCulluch has taught me more than I even knew I wanted to know about climbing the world’s tallest mountains. Clearly meticulously researched, this chilly thriller was fascinating.

I love a wintery thriller and this one definitely ticks that box. The more I read, the more convinced I became that climbing mountains really isn’t for me (though after my own experience of climbing Snowdon, I think I was already pretty certain 😂).

I found the book quite tense in places, something that was helped by the claustrophobic nature of the setting and the palpable lack of oxygen at such altitude. And though I found the pace to be quite slow at times, I did, on the whole, find it to be an enjoyable read.

With thanks to Michael Joseph for gifting me a digital copy to review.

I received this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest, independent review.

Despite failing at climbing a mountain before, journalist Cecily has been invited to climb one of the world's tallest mountains...and deadliest. On the first day of the climb, things start to go wrong, then she finds a note pinned to her tent: there's a murderer on the mountain.

I'm not sure about this book. There has been a lot of positive reviews, but I struggled.

The different settings appealed to me: I do not think there are many thrillers set on a mountain! However, my lack of experience in this area meant I struggled from thereon.

I struggled with the mountain terminology as a non-climber, so could not keep up and picture what the characters were doing. Despite this, the author did have great explanations so has clearly researched the subject area or is well experienced as a climber herself.

The book is written in the third person, so I struggled to connect with the characters. I also found the book a bit too slow-paced to be thrilling or exciting for me. While the buildup was slow, the climax then seemed to be rushed.

Those who have experienced mountaineering may enjoy it, but unfortunately, it is not one for me.