Breathe In, Bleed Out by Brian McAuley

Healing hurts—and sometimes it kills.

I went into Breathe In, Bleed Out expecting your standard wellness-retreat-goes-wrong story, and while that foundation is definitely there, Brian McAuley takes it somewhere darker, weirder, and far more satisfying than I anticipated.

The novel centers on Hannah, who’s still deep in the fog of grief after the tragic death of her fiancé, Ben. In an attempt to heal—and maybe to reconnect with the world she’s shut out—she agrees to go on a wellness retreat in Joshua Tree with her closest friends to reconnect, especially with her best friend Tessa. The retreat is led by the absurdly-named Guru Pax (yes, he is a white man and yes, the eye-roll is earned), and at first it seems like your typical spiritual detox. Yoga, raw diet, disconnecting from screens, self-actualization—until things start going sideways.

As the days pass, the retreat gets increasingly unnerving. Friends begin to disappear. The desert closes in. The line between enlightenment and exploitation blurs. McAuley keeps the tension simmering under the surface before letting it boil over in some wild and genuinely unexpected ways.

This book was fun. Suspenseful, twisty, and impossible to put down. I tore through it, constantly second-guessing who I could trust and what was actually going on behind the good vibes and incense smoke.

Also—this surprised me—I usually hesitate with books that center women but are written by men. There’s often a kind of inauthenticity or a weird sheen of male projection that gives me the ick. But McAuley wrote Hannah and her relationships (especially with Tessa) with a kind of grounded respect and realism that I really appreciated. It felt human, not performative. Like this guy actually likes women and sees them as people (revolutionary, I know).

If you're into psychological thrillers with a satirical bite, emotional weight, and a healthy distrust of white dudes selling enlightenment for $3,000 a weekend—Breathe In, Bleed Out is for you.