I'm thankful I wasn't on a plane or anticipating any plane rides while reading this--because WOW, what a wild ride.

I loved Newman's debut, FALLING, and DROWNING does not miss. This is exactly the fast-paced, chilling, heart-pounding kind of read I needed right now. I literally finished it in 3 short sittings because I needed to know what happens next. Newman has an excellent way of ending most chapters on a cliffhanger of some sort--which, while this annoys me with some other novels, works very well here. Each chapter ending seemed to promise yet another wrench in the plans of the survivors or those trying to rescue them, and I simply needed to keep reading to know what would happen next. My only small criticism is that perhaps some of the technology/engineering discussions were a bit over my head, or sometimes slowed down the momentum of the novel. However, that really didn't diminish my reading experience and Newman is definitely on my "to watch" list. Looking forward to whatever horrible plane disaster she may cook up next, as I will be reading it safely from my couch :)

This is a heart pounding read that I finished in one setting. I couldn't put it down. Right after takeoff, flight1421 crashed into the Pacific Ocean. The engines explode during the evacuation. Several passenger choose to stay aboard the flight. They have a fairly large air pocket as the boat sinks to the bottom. Can these 12 passengers be rescued? And, is there enough time to save them. The elite diving team is head by the wife of one of the passengers. Her daughter is one of the 12. This book is not to be missed.

I really loved this book as much as Falling. I really enjoyed the characters and the plot. It was a bit detailed at some points hence the four stars but it was still enjoyable. I would definitely recommend this.

This book was INTENSE! Right from the start the action kicks off and I couldn't put it down. I had to wait a bit to read this one because I had a flight the day after I got approved for the ARC, and although I'm a relatively calm flyer, this was pushing the limit for that. But overall I really loved the story! I loved the short chapters and the fact that you got a few different people's POVs. I'd absolutely love to see this become a movie, because I could picture it so well in my head the whole time. Really my only complaint is that I felt like at times it got a tiny bit too technical when it was describing things like how the p[ane works or how certain things worked in their plan to save them, so it took me out of the story a little bit just while I tried to fully understand it. I definitely want to read Falling now as well, but maybe once my heart rate has gone back to normal after this!

“That was all life was. Shifting the balance, every day, to make room for joy and grace in whatever circumstances you’ve got before your time runs out.”



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Six minutes after it takes off from Honolulu, commercial airliner Flight 1421 crashes into the Pacific Ocean. What ensues is a story of grit, courage and most of all, survival.



As the hours tick along, the plane sinks to the bottom of the ocean, nosediving into an underwater cliff. It is a matter of minutes and seconds before they sink into the abyss.

Miraculously enough, there are 12 passengers trapped inside the plane, thinking of hoe they can make it out alive, helping each other and faced with their choices and chances as they count the hours and wait for the rescue team to end their ordeal.



@tjnewman in her newest book, shows the reader what the magnitude of destiny really means, and how we are faced with the fragility of life and it’s previous moments in unlikely ways. Through these characters, a story of hope, survival and grace emerges. On how the human spirit triumphs even the most daunting obstacles and how the resilience of us as people always sees us through our time on earth. This is a moving portrayal of what it means to be alive, but also about the power of connection, togetherness and above all, humanity.

Loved reading every bit of this - an edge-of-the-seat thriller with its heart in the right place.



A must-read if you love @manifest like I do ✈️

Another heart stopping read from Newman. How does she do it? The knowledge she has about planes and flying and how the airlines work is the secret to her incredibly realistic, terrifying novels. You never have any doubt that it could happen t9 you.

While her first book, Falling, took place mostly in the air, this one takes place in the ocean. If you are not a fan of flying or have a fear of water, this is absolutely not the book for you. But if you can handle it, I urge you to pick this one up and go on the journey.

4.25-4.5 ⭐️ Exactly what I want in a summer thriller. Fast-paced,, quick chapters and a plot that immediately drew me in. T..J. Newman is fast becoming an auto buy author. I will absolutely read her next novel.
Drowning is the story of the aftermath of a plane that crashes within minutes of takeoff. The characters we spend the most time with are Will and his daughter Shannon who are trapped inside the plane underwater.. Above water, is Chris, Shannon’s mom and Will’s ex-wife. Chris works with the Navy , Cost Guard and her diving team to save the crew and passengers trapped underwater. Newman is able to balance the tension of this dangerous situation with the personal stories of the passengers. She writes thrillers with emotional substance that holds the story together. I cared about Shannon and Will’s survival. As with her previous novel, Newman made me appreciate the skills of the flight attendants and pilots. Kept me engaged and felt very real and plausible.
Great book! Absolutely recommend to anyone who wants a book to escape real life. Perfect vacation read.

Thank you to Net Galley and Simon& Schuster for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Well…maybe don’t pick this up given the current situation of the Titan and don’t pick it up if you’re about to fly

Great summer, popcorn read but 100% do not do the audiobook

Enjoyed more than Falling

So fun! I highly recommend this to anyone looking for a tense, fast-paced thriller. I couldn't put it down!

This was a quick, interesting read that keeps you at the edge of your seat as you fly through this, needing to know if the passengers make it out of the submerged plane. This is an excellent read that leaves your hair standing on end and somewhat reluctant to fly. Newman pens a novel as interesting as Falling, her debut novel and uses her background as a flight attendant, to have the most impact on the reader. At times, the information did become a bit heavy which meant that you needed to reread to understand but this did not happen too often and therefore did not affect the otherwise fast pace of this book.

I have added TJ Newman to my auto-buy authors, even though this does make flying that bit more scary

Pick this up if you are a fan of Clive Cussler type adventure novels, you will not regret it!

Thank you to Netgalley and Avid Reader Press for the opportunity to read this

When I saw that T J Newman was releasing another thriller book based on a plane, I knew I had to pick it up. I read Falling by her last year and very much enjoyed the anxiety it gave me – I’m not the best with flights – so I wanted to have those same feelings again with this one. Because I don’t read synopses for thriller books to avoid being potentially spoiled, I didn’t actually know this was about a plane that sank to the bottom of the ocean. Guess what? I’M TERRIFIED OF OPEN WATER.

I felt such tension throughout this entire book. From the very first page you know there’s no hope for the plane and that it’s going to crash into the water, and you know the rescue teams are going to struggle to reach the survivors. I was holding my breath the entire time as I tried to conserve air alongside the trapped passengers.

I liked how Newman utilised various points of view in this one. If she had only focused on the one main character, I think it would have been a very, very short book because this character, Will, only had about five hours of air left before he suffocated. Newman also chose to focus on Will’s wife, Chris, as she tried to help in any way she could from the surface.

There are some truly horrific moments in this book, which is exactly what I seek out in survival thrillers. A couple of these scenes in particular will stick with me for years to come. Did I mention I hate the ocean?

Overall, I highly recommend Drowning by T. J. Newman to anyone looking for a heart-pumping thriller that will keep you up late into the night. I literally stayed awake until 4am reading this, partly because I couldn’t sleep during the UK heatwave but also because I was so concerned about the characters.

I love disaster movies and this book was like reading one. I really enjoyed the writing and the characters in the book but I found the technical aspects of the story to be boring. This knocked my rating down from a 4. I need to go back and read her debut novel now.

I was super lucky to read an ARC copy thanks to @netgalley
Everyone needs to get their hands on the latest novel by @tj_author one word WOW
If your looking for a thrilling story line that keeps you holding on to the edge of your seat until the end you need to read this!!! I loved it, what an emotional story as the events play out and you find out a little more about the passengers onboard. You have to remind your self to keep breathing!!!

Oh my goodness. I loved this book. My worst fear is being stuck on a plane . So much going on , and then the ending., thats what made the book for me.

Drowning proves conclusively that the success of author T.J. Newman's riveting debut, Falling, was not a fluke. Her sophomore effort, Drowning, is equally terrifying, absorbing, and emotionally satisfying. In fact, her characters and their plights are even more sympathetic, and the story more heartbreaking but, ultimately, life-affirming.

Newman considers her post-college stint at Changing Hands bookstore in Tempe, Arizona, her first step toward becoming a bestselling novelist. No one knew that she was laboring as a bookseller by day and writing in her bedroom at night, contemplating how to accomplish her goal of becoming a published writer. At her mother's suggestion, she segued into and loved flying, and her ten-year career as a flight attendant supplied the inspiration for falling.

Newman says she knew that the follow-up to her staggeringly successful first novel had to be “bigger. In every aspect, it had to be bigger. Bigger heart, bigger action, bigger stakes.” It is. Searching through her trove of story ideas amassed during her flying days, she recalled yet another red-eye flight from Hawaii to Los Angeles. The flight path from Hawaii to the mainland is the longest in the world with no suitable alternate route. During that flight, she looked out the porthole window in the door of the forward galley “at nothing. There's nothing out there for hours and miles in every direction. It is nothing but a pitch black void. Nothing but water.” She pondered, “What if something happened? What if we went down? How would they find us out here? How would they come get us? How would they save us? How would we save ourselves?” And she is captivated by how ordinary people react when they find themselves in a heightened situation. “I think we all discover parts of ourselves that we didn't now were there when we're in hot water and I'm fascinated by that.”

“In aviation, the emergency landing of an aircraft on water is called a ditching,” according to Drowning's brief prologue. Thinking back to that vast nothingness except water, Newman contemplated the worst case scenario: the pilot announces “prepare to ditch” and the plane crashes into the ocean before sinking with passengers and crew members trapped inside. And it comes to rest teetering on the edge of an underwater cliff. From there, Newman “reverse engineered” the story by understanding how that circumstance might actually occur. But found it “really tricky” to figure out how to make the fictional plane crash because, theoretically, the events in the book should not play out due to safety mechanisms and protocols. But her research revealed that they could.

So, for instance, a pilot should never have a “dead stick,” meaning no hydraulic fluid and no hydraulic power. Planes have “three hydraulic lines. Two layers of redundancy in case of a system failure.” Those backup systems should ensure that the loss of an engine does not eliminate the pilot's ability to navigate the aircraft and, if necessary, either return to the airport where the flight originated (in this case, Honolulu) or land at an alternate location (which, in Drowning would be either Kahului Airport on Maui or Kona Airport on Hawaii). But because the plane will not continue gaining altitude and the pilot literally cannot turn the plane around, there is only one place for it to land: southwest of Moloka'i in the narrow channel between that small, largely uninhabited island and the nearby island of Lana'i where trade winds blow every day. The shelf is known as Penguin Bank.

Newman establishes Flight 1421's predicament in a straight-forward, unembellished style that makes the sheer terror the passengers and crew are experiencing palpable and believable. She demonstrates various characters' response to crisis. For some, their worst traits come to light while others unexpectedly become heroes. Newman wisely recognized that the spectacle of the disaster could not sustain the story unless her readers became invested in the well-being of the twelve people trapped in the plane. So, with the plane sinking to the bottom of the sea and readers fully engrossed in the action, she winds the story back three hours and examines the history of her main characters, engineer Will Kent, his estranged wife Chris, and their eleven-year-old daughter, Shannon. Their oldest daughter, Annie, died tragically six years ago in a maddeningly preventable accident. Losing her has caused her parents, especially Will, to become overprotective of Shannon. For that reason, Will is going to fly with Shannon to San Francisco where she will attend summer camp, and immediately return to Hawaii. Shannon is appropriately mortified. Annie's bedroom has remained as she left it, symbolic of the stasis in her parents' relationship that has led to their pending divorce. They have spent the years since Annie's death wracked with guilt and pain, believing that if “they dealt with their marriage or changed the house or cleaned out Annie's room, they'd be moving forward. Which would mean they'd be leaving Annie behind.”

Will and Shannon survive the crash, as does another young girl traveling alone, eight-year-old Maia Taylor. ALong with Will, female pilot Kit shoulders responsibility for ensuring that everyone trapped in the fuselage gets out alive. Through flight attendants Molly and Kaholo Newman again emphasizes that “flight attendants are first and foremost safety and security professionals. Full stop.” An elderly couple traveling together, Ruth and Ira Belkin, and Ryan Wang, whose new bride is killed on impact, are particularly memorable. As the oxygen supply dwindles, Will and Kit take the lead in communicating with military personnel charged with organizing a mass rescue operation (MRO) from the USS Theodore Roosevelt, a 101,000-ton Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. Under normal circumstances, Chris's blatant conflict of interest and lack of objectivity would preclude her from becoming part of the rescue operation. However, Chris and her colleagues are civilian contractors hired to perform routine hull maintenance on the ship. When she learns that Will and Shannon's flight has crashed, she refuses to be sidelined while possible rescue strategies are debated. None of the military personnel have ever undertaken such a rescue operation and Chris possesses invaluable special expertise. No one is more motivated than she to see the MRO succeed. After all, it is her family that is trapped some two hundred feet below the water's surface.

Newman notes that one thing the rigorous training provided to flight attendants does not address is how to respond if a plane sinks to the bottom of the ocean with survivors of the crash inside, so she was required to conduct extensive research to make that aspect of the story credible, as well. For one thing, she had to change her mindset because normal aviation protocols are no longer applicable. She says the plane is no longer an aircraft — it has, as a practical matter, been transformed into a “submarine.” Her depiction of the trial-and-error attempts to rescue the trapped survivors is heart-stoppingly tense, fraught with uncertainty, and completely engrossing. Those scenes are indeed emotionally wrenching because Newman has, by that point in the story, deftly convinced readers to care deeply about the survivors' fate.

Drowning is a propulsive, unpredictable thriller. Newman's narrative is tautly crafted with no surplusage and moves at a steady pace, with shocking developments delivered at expertly timed junctures that compel the story forward. Newman never loses control of the speed at which the tale unfolds, restraining it from becoming frantic. Rather, critical story developments occur at realistic intervals, giving readers a chance to brace themselves for the next complication, reason to hope, or heartbreaking loss. And, of course, losses are an expected and credible part of the story.

Newman made a conscious effort to incorporate more details about the passengers in her second novel than she did in Falling, largely because she realized that most of her readers are actual or potential passengers themselves and, accordingly, put themselves in the characters' places and are most interested in the trajectories of their stories. The approach is highly effective. At its core, though, Drowning is the story of a family. With Will and Shannon in peril, Chris will stop at nothing to save them, including risking her own life. Like Will, she is convinced that she will not survive if Shannon does not. Her feelings for Will are complicated, as are his for her. Like the aircraft's cabin, when the story opens, their marriage is teetering on a cliff and rapidly running out of oxygen. Both characters are fully formed, flawed, and empathetic, and Shannon, who continues to mourn her big sister, is particularly endearing. Newman never allows her story to lapse into melodrama or her characters to become cloying, demonstrating that she is equally adept at creating compelling characters and inventing terrifying situations in which to place those characters.

Drowning cements Newman's stance as a first-rate writer. She says she is working on her third novel and her goal is to amp the dramatic tension up even further, which is hard to imagine. Drowning is the best of two genres – a horrifyingly realistic thriller to which anyone who has ever been a passenger in an airplane can readily relate and an emotionally rich exploration of the impact of grief, isolation, guilt, and an inability to effectively communicate on a marriage, a family, and, most importantly, a surviving sibling. It is sure to be on not only every bestseller list, but every list of the best books of 2023.

“Will Kent and opened his eyes just in time to see the engine explode.”

So begins my own person nightmare. Oh! And also TJ Newman’s newest book.

Guys, saying I’m a nervous flier is probably an understatement because there were parts of this book where I was actually shaking. Which is honestly just a credit to @tj_author’s visceral, high adrenaline writing.

Reading Drowning is a lot like having an action movie injected directly into your veins. In the best possible way.

Pulse pounding action, family drama, and genuinely nightmare inducing terror. What else do you want from a summer blockbuster?

I was so excited to receive an ARC of this book, it sounded fast paced and intense.

I binged this in one sitting mostly as I had to turn the pages, it was intense and nail-biting. I loved the writing, but ultimately it lacked the intensity throughout and felt like it had some pacing issues. It had the breath holding moments, but then would just slow down and that made it feel choppy.

I did like the ending a lot, even though it was predictable I don't think it was meant to be the opposite? It was heart-warming.

I'll check out this author's next book!

Drowning is a gripping thriller about a commercial jetliner that crashes into the ocean, leaving twelve passengers trapped inside. The story follows an elite rescue team led by professional diver Chris Kent, who must work with her soon-to-be ex-husband to save their daughter and the passengers before it's too late. With heart-stopping suspense, Drowning is a story of a family's fight for survival against impossible odds.

I DNFed this early on as I simply wasn't in the mood nor connecting to the story, which is me issue and not books issue. Therefore I can't give proper review or rating as of this time. Maybe I'll pick it back up in the future if the right mood strikes.

**Thank you, NetGalley and Avid Reader Press, for sending me this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.**

This book takes no time to get the tension and suspense going. Starting from the first chapter, we're met with increasingly tough challenges and wild circumstances that seem impossible to get out of alive.

There's something about aviation thrillers that I love. Combine a plane crash with the claustrophobic, terrifying depths of the ocean, and you've got a recipe for a novel I was eager to read. And T.J. Newman does plane thrillers well. Her first novel, "Falling," gave me a newfound respect for flight attendants. "Drowning" cements her as a pro at crafting page-turners.

While this novel's suspense is A+, I wasn't overly enthralled by the characters. They were OK and had some fun moments, but I didn't feel myself connecting that much with any of them. I do have to give props to Newman for writing no-nonsense female characters in traditionally male roles, though, and for allowing them (and most of the male characters) to have vulnerability too.

But if you, like me, were looking for a book that's hard to put down, you won't be disappointed. "Falling" would be great to read on the beach... or maybe on a flight if you're masochistic.

Apparently, "Falling" is going to be adapted into a film, and I can't think of a better novel I've read all year that would be great for the big screen. I'll be looking forward to it!

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC for an honest reveiw. Having read and enjoyed Falling by the same author I was super excited to have a chance to read this one and it did not disappoint. While some people may be a bit disappointed or bogged down with the 'science' talk and explanations encounted within, I not only appreciated it but found it necessary as well, otherwise I think I would be rolling my eyes like a B sci-fi movie. Newman makes the characters come 'alive' so quickly and intensely that the reader is as invested in their survival as they are. Chris is amazing--her no nonsense way of cutting through both the red tape and the goverment 'bull s***' at the same time was impressive. Mama bear at her finest. Each character had a trait that tugged at my emotions, good or bad. An intense, quick, wild read. Hope there will be more from this author alng the same lines as this one and Falling for sure.