“Getting to the summit is a great achievement. But the mountain will always be there. Getting back down alive is the priority.”
We here at What We Reading have never been particularly thrill-seeking in the real world but, since launching this site, we’ve found ourselves drawn more and more to stories set against the most extreme backdrops. Which brings us nicely to our latest book review. Breathless is a 2022 thriller from Amy McCulloch. McCulloch is a former editorial director at Penguin Random House Children’s Books and is acclaimed for her children’s and young adult books.
Breathless marks her first novel, and takes inspiration from her own experiences becoming the youngest Canadian woman to climb Mt Manaslu in Nepal. So, did this high-altitude thriller live up to the hype? Check out our Breathless book review to find out!
Date Published: 2022
Author: Amy McCulloch
Genre: Thriller, Mystery
Pages: 343
Goodreads Rating: 3.65/5
Premise
In Breathless, readers follow journalist Cecily Wong. After her blog on failing to climb Mt Snowdon goes viral, she is offered an opportunity that promises to launch her career: an exclusive interview with the legendary mountaineer Charles McVeigh. Charles is attempting to scale the fourteen highest mountains in the world in a year without oxygen or using the fixed line of ropes but tells Cecily he will only give her an interview is reaches the summit of his final mountain: Manaslu.
Cecily arrives in Nepal and meets her team of fellow climbers, but it doesn’t take long for things to go arry across the eighth-highest mountain in the world. Equipment is destroyed, rumours begin to swirl, eerie messages are left and a series of tragic accidents begin to follow Cecily as she summits. There’s a murderer on this mountain, and Cecily has to confront terrors in both her past and present if she has any hope of surviving.
What Worked
Off the bat, Breathless is a thriller that has a lot of stakes in play. The combination of a classic mystery-whodunnit with a potentially deadly climb makes for an incredibly enthralling read where there is always something to be wary of. And whilst we know absolutely nothing about mountaineering, McCulloch does an excellent job in explaining not only the mechanics of climbing but also the rituals, traditions and mindsets that go into scaling the biggest summits.
On that subject, the way in which McCulloch brings to life the feeling of being on the mountain is also a big plus of Breathless. From the Nepalese culture at the foot of the mountain, the different sections of the climb, all the way to the sensation of being higher than anyone else in the world, they all combine to make Manaslu feel like much more than just a setting.
There are a lot of similarities between Breathless and Allie Reynolds’ Shiver, but Breathless’ structure feels a lot neater than that book. Overall, the pacing across the book is pretty good; the developments are delivered at a natural pace, the characters react appropriately for the most part and there was never a point where the murder-mystery storyline took over from the climb.
What Didn’t
Warning: Potential spoilers ahead!
We’ve just praised the pacing of the book, now we’re going to criticise it. The pacing is solid throughout Breathless, but a final couple of sequences or so felt rushed as anything. We get that logistically it’s hard to have a final girl circuit set across the death zone of a mountain, but the way in which Cecily reaches the summit uncovers everything that has gone down and then closes out the final chapters was slightly disorientating.
On Cecily, there were a couple of gripes we had with her as a main character. We get that she has to be someone a reader can root for, and her past traumas coming into play the higher she climbed was a nice dynamic. With that being said, she is the quintessential ‘nice to a fault’ character that just makes her boring after a while. We actually lost count of the number of times she takes the moralistic or empathetic position in a situation. It wouldn’t be so much of an issue, aside from the fact she is literally the only person on the mountain that seems capable of it.
Verdict
Some one-dimensional characters and a slightly predictable final series of twists aside, Breathless is a high-stakes, high-altitude ride. From the bustling streets of Kathmandu to the summit of Manaslu, Amy McCulloch does a wonderful job of whisking readers into the heart of the mountaineering world. The fact that she is able to weave together a gripping whodunnit alongside this is a real testament to her writing skills and experiences across the world.
We won’t say it was the punchiest book we’ve ever read, but, for an enthralling page-turner that transports you to one of the most dazzling and alien environments on planet Earth, Breathless should be your next read!
Our Rating: 3.5/5
Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
