[Book Review] Breathless by Dean Koontz

Breathless by Dean Koontz is a suspenseful tale of mystery, enchantment, and the wonders of the unknown.

This is another book that you may want to save until a day off that you can dedicate just to reading this cover to cover. With the way that this one it written, you won’t want to put it down!

Let’s dive into my review!

My Thoughts on Breathless by Dean Koontz

Breathless was such an interesting tale! The overall plot itself was so wonderfully executed! I won’t dive in too much there, as this is definitely one that you will enjoy learning more about on your own when you read it!

At first, it seemed like there was a lot going on and I got a little nervous.

This was mainly because of the format- there were a few different story lines that we jumped between with each chapter. We had a retired military man and his greyhound, a veterinarian with a painful past, a homeless man who is on a quest, and a brother going to visit his twin.

I was so thrilled to see that each story line really stood up on their own. It was almost like they were all their own novellas that were merged into one. And then, when you learn how some things are tied together… Mind. Blown.

This is such a rare find for me as there is usually at least one story line that I don’t care about. But I was so invested in each of these characters and their stories!

The writing was so easy to read and it was quite beautiful as well! (Check out My Favorite Passages section below to see what I mean!) It all flowed really well and everything was explained or described perfectly. I especially loved the chapters where one character started to fall apart; those were so powerful.

Like some of my all time favorite mysteries, this story left the reader to wonder! Not everything was tied up in a neat little bow at the end.

However, the things that were left unexplained just added to my overall love of this tale! I think it would have cheapened the enchantment if everything had been fully explained.

My Favorite Passages from Breathless

Standing beside the immense hound, seeking what his companion saw, Grady studied the field, which gently descended southward to another vastness of forest. Nothing moved . . . until something did.

Not long ago, he had decided to unchain himself and to be what he truly was. A monster. Not yet a monster fully realized, but certainly now a monster in the making.

What you know with your heart is the only thing you really ever know. 

Henry Rouvroy picked up shotgun shattered fragments of his face from the bathroom floor and dropped the pieces of broken mirror into a heavy-duty plastic trash bag.

Neither words nor time healed anyone. Only living healed, if it healed at all, living as you were meant to live, as best you could with your learned habits and confused intentions, living through time and finally beyond time, where neither therapist nor surgeons were any longer needed to smooth away the pain or cut it out.

Each man or woman was a mansion in a condition between grandness and disrepair, and even in a grand place, sometimes a room existed in which no one but the resident would ever be welcome. Cammy’s heart contained more than one forbidden room, contained an entire wing of doors locked with bolts of guilt or grief, or both. Grady sensed that she denied even herself the power to open them, to let in the light.

“People think power makes them big, but it brings out their inner bratty child and makes them small.”

“If we aren’t here for one another, why are we here?”

My Final Thoughts on Breathless

This book was just so much fun to read. It had a great plot, wonderfully suspenseful pacing that kept me totally hooked, and such interesting characters. There were fantastical elements and mysterious elements that popped up throughout the tale.

I loved every second of it and I will definitely be rereading this one at some point!

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Thanks for reading!
I’m so annoyed that it took me THIS long to finally get to a Koontz novel. I cannot wait to read more soon! If you have read some of his work, what are some titles that you would recommend?