Wow. This was quite a ride. A whale of a tale, you could say.

Whalefall does a superb job of creating a unique thriller blended with a story of grief, as 17-year-old Jay fights to survive in the belly of a whale while simultaneously processing the complicated loss of his estranged father, hoping to escape the suffocating grip of both. It’s moving, it’s action-packed, it’s weird, it’s scientifically accurate (as the author notes in the afterward, as scientifically accurate as it can be, given how much remains unknown about both sperm whales and oceanic life in the deep seas), it’s poetic, it’s original, it’s… just really good.

I’ll definitely look forward to reading this one again in the future.

Thank you Daniel Kraus, Atria, MTV Books, and NetGalley for providing this ARC for review consideration. All opinions expressed are my own.

I wanted to love this. The cover is one of my favorites of all time and the idea of getting swallowed by a whale, while not unique in history, is unique in current literature. I really did love the parts in the whale. They were fascinating and exciting. The book is so much more than that. It examines Jay’s relationship with his father and there are insights along the way. While I do think this added a lot of depth to the story, the writing style was very choppy and at times unclear. I know it was purposeful, and I tried to get to used to it, but I just wasn’t a fan.

In the end, I still didn’t feel like I knew Jay very well. It wasn’t hard to root for him because who wouldn’t you root for when they end up in a situation like that (in a very believable way, too), but I just wish I’d felt more of a connection to him and his predicament.

I did like most of it, but my enjoyment ebbed and flowed depending on what was happening. I give the whale parts all the stars. You can tell it was very thoroughly researched. But the rest brought it down for me.

I do still recommend giving it a read. It is thoroughly unique. And this might be one of my favorite book title/story connections. Once you get through the book, you’ll realize how beautiful the title really is.

Thank you Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read this story in advance to its release.

I was very excited to read this book because of all the great things I had heard about it. The story line was heart felt and kept the reader wanting more, but I feel it was a little overhyped. I do believe this is a wonderful story for readers who enjoy classic literature because of the way it’s written. The style of writing mirrors a classic novel where as it’s not a simple straightforward read, you do have to somewhat think about what you’re reading. I don’t believe it hindered the story at all, it was just a unique writing style.

I enjoyed this story and would recommend it to others.

I saw this book being recommended everywhere and had to check it out for myself. It was a masterpiece in my eyes. With short chapters, it was a quick read with a buildup that made it almost impossible to put the book down. This isn’t just a book about being swallowed by a sperm whale. This is a book about dysfunctional family dynamics, mainly the inability for a father and son to show their love in a way the other can grasp or understand. The ending is both destruction and beauty and written poetically. I will be buying this book when it comes out and recommending to everyone. I already can’t wait to read it a second time. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for a free digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Wonderful! Passionately written and just felt like someone laid their heart on the page. Wonderful! Passionately written and just felt like someone laid their heart on the page. Wonderful! Passionately written and just felt like someone laid their heart on the page.

This is definitely one of my favorite reads of the year so far, it’s fast paced and makes something unimaginable somehow become imaginable. Just as important, if not more important as being swallowed by a whale, are the complex relationships between children and parents; fathers and sons, mothers and siblings. Additionally, the mixed emotions of losing a loved one are explored, and our relationship with nature. I loved the way that John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row was weaved throughout the story as well. It was a great read, highly recommend.

When Jay goes scuba diving to try and find his father's remains, he is swallowed by a sperm whale. Jay has only the resources before him to try and escape, all while running out of air.

I devoured this book, mostly because of the thrilling nature, and partly because of the short chapters. (Thanks for that Daniel Kraus!) I'm not usually a fan of third person, present tense, but I became so absorbed in the story, the structure soon became invisible to me.

And weirdly, I enjoyed reading the acknowledgments. I love knowing the work that goes into a book like this with so much scientific elements as a factor.

I highly, highly recommend.

Thank you Atria and MTV Books for this fantastic reading experience!
If you do anything at all this year, read this book! What a ride - I am floored, wowed, flabbergasted! I typically wouldn't choose to read anything having to do with the ocean because I truly have Thalassophobia (fear of deep and dark bodies of water). But having this type of phobia only made this story that much more compelling and thrilling. Jay, a young man dealing with the suicide of his father (as well as the disaster of their relationship), decides to take one more scuba diving trip down in the ocean waters off of Monterey. He grew up scuba diving with his dad and definitely knows his way around the ocean. However, this time, his experience is an absolute nightmare when he is swallowed by a huge sperm whale - and he only has about an hour of oxygen left. And no, this isn't the experience Pinocchio's father had inside the whale.

You don't even need Thalassophobia to feel the intense emotions and heart-pounding energy. It is powerfully descriptive, The story transports you back and forth from Jay's time in the whale to his memories with his dad. And it works perfectly as everything he remembers helps him figure out what to do next. If you have ever wondered what it would be like to scuba dive in the ocean, Kraus will educate you. He did an insane amount of research, giving the reader a very detailed account of exactly how being swallowed by a whale could be.

Jay's experience (and the reader's as well) is metaphysical, a battle of the mind as well as the body. His emotions and pain, as well as his panic and fear, all combine to add to the anxiety I'm sure Kraus intended. And thankfully it delivers on all levels. Don't let this one pass you by!

I have always loved the ocean and how terrifying it can be. This book had all aspects of being terrifying, however fell a little flat. It felt more like a research paper than a horror novel.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC. What a wild ride of Jay’s story of dealing with his father’s death and also being trapped inside a sperm whale. I was unsure of this novel but started hearing interesting reviews so I was intrigued for sure. This quick read was heart pounding but also heartbreaking at times. A amazing story of survival.

Wow... this unique premise really drew me in. A scuba diver gets swallowed by a whale and has only an hour to escape. With comps to The Martian and 127 Hours, I was ready. And I did like this story, told in alternating timelines of the infamous scuba dive, and stories from throughout this young man's life.

What I didn't really love was two things: the writing style and the overall seriousness. The first thing made the book much more of a slog to get through. It was incredibly jumpy and almost literary, which felt really odd in a plot-driven thriller-type book. It didn't really fit with the story in my opinion, and caused me to have to put the book down earlier than I'd planned while reading.

The seriousness is definitely exception v. reality, as I was really hoping for a humorous take on the wild premise (like The Martian), rather than SCIENCE and SURVIVAL only. Just know that it's not funny at all going in.

Oh, my — after the real life tragedy of the Titanic submersible and recently reading T.J. Newman’s Drowning (the rescue of a submerged airliner), just reading the opening blurb of Daniel Kraus’ “Whalefall” puts shivers down my spine. And rightfully, so. This time Jay, the diver, isn’t blessed with the 3 days biblical Jonah had, he has only an hour of oxygen left and the protagonist pretty much has just himself, not an armada of assembling rescuers above, to escape the first stomach of a whale.

Like Newman’s “Drowning”, there’s a lot of technical jargon to be appreciated by real life divers. It’s not overwhelming — enough for a non-diver/reader to be educated about all the things (other than being swallowed by a whale) that can also go wrong.

Jay is an seventeen year old who’s mean, uncaring, and bully of a dad, Mitt, was a local Monterey diving legend and who died from suicide after being diagnosed with mesothelioma (a result of diving without wetsuits in the polluted coastal waters from cannery runoffs). Jay is diving alone, full of anger towards his dead father, and against the common sense advice to always have a dive buddy. A lot of what his father taught him is constantly reverberating in his mind.

This is an incredibly tense and suspenseful narrative. The chapter numbers are replaced by the amount of oxygen left in Jay’s tanks, and that ratchets up tension even more. If you want a good scare and a reason to never scuba dive in the ocean, this is your book. 5 stars!

Thank you to Atria, MTV Books and Simon & Schuster Publishing and NetGalley for a free advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review!

Literary Pet Peeve Checklist:
Green Eyes (only 2% of the real world, yet it seems like 90% of all fictional females): NO It’s mentioned that Dad had weird gold eyes, but no other eye colors, human or not, are called out.
Horticultural Faux Pas (plants out of season or growing zones, like daffodils in autumn or bougainvillea in Alaska): NO Not expected since the story takes place in the ocean, although much of what Jay sees at first can be considered a sea garden.

I want to thank the publisher and Netgalley for this e-arc. I requested this after seeing the cover!! Love it!!

When I started reading it, I went into it pretty blind. I didn't read the synopsis before reading it and thought it would be more Horror because of the cover. I wasn't expecting to read such an emotional book. I loved the short chapters and the pacing of the book. I usually don't fly through books this fast. I wanted to know what was going to happen to the main character, Jay.

I loved how this story is so much more than Jay looking for the bones of his father. Highly recommend.

4.5/5 Stars

Thank you to NetGalley for the advance reader copy of this book. Loved this one by Krause. It reminded me a little of TJ Newman's books. So real, yet just a story. 5 stars

Thrilling, intense and surprisingly heart-warming? Whalefall is the kind of aquatic horror I live for. My full review is included in the link to the podcast I cohost with Mary Beth McAndrews of Dread Central.

Ebook received for free through NetGalley

Oh my goodness!?!? I came across this book with the awesome cover art and its title made me think of the more traditional whale fall. This was not it. But it was amazing, incredible, and I had the ability to read it in one day. Epic!

Whalefall
By Daniel Kraus

This story had all the feels. I loved the anticipation I felt.. A man, gets swallowed by a whale? That alone made me want to dive in. Thanks Netgalley for a review copy.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a copy of this book!

What a crazy ride! The ocean is so intimidating to me, so when you combine that with the claustrophobia of being trapped inside a whale—it’s terrifying!! I spent the entire book trying to figure out how (or if) Jay was going to survive! I loved the descriptions and details used, especially in the beginning of the novel. These painted a great picture for me and I felt like I was diving alongside Jay looking at all the wildlife.

At times, the structure of the novel was a bit choppy for me, but the short chapters also made it a very quick and thrilling read. The timelines were also confusing to follow at first because they jump around, but I quickly adapted to this as well.

I can tell there was obviously a great deal of time spent researching everything that went into this novel, which I definitely appreciate! Overall, I enjoyed this book and I would recommend!

Thanks to NetGalley and MTV Books for sending me an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.
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Whalefall tells a survival horror story that, while unique, falls victim to some familiar conflicts and choppy writing.

The good: The concept is fairly well-executed overall and the choppy writing style can serve to better show the emotional state of our terrified, frantic protagonist. There’s some very disturbing sections of gore and injury that made me uncomfortable (in a good way), even as someone with a generally high tolerance for that type of thing. Things remain fairly engaging throughout too, and any unfamiliar diving or marine concepts get explained in an easy to understand way.

The not so good: To put it simply, our protagonist is annoying. He’s impulsive, frustrating, and has an internal monologue about his experiences and his life that come off more like hollow cliches about what a teenager thinks like than the thoughts of any actual person. Most of this backstory and monologue is focused on his (bad) relationship with his deceased father—very short chapters pivot suddenly back and forth in time to explain their personal history, but these sections rarely feel natural. I also felt like there wasn’t a lot of nuance in the admittedly complex connection the two shared, the conflict *should* be full of dissonance and contradictions of feelings, without getting into spoilers, but the emotions are all more generic than I’d like, even when the author attempts to make things run deeper. The writing style is probably my biggest gripe though: It’s so hard to feel engaged to a story when every sentence is short and choppy, lacking the description I was hoping to see. This is compounded by the short chapters, making the experience pretty uneven.

I was hoping for more from Whalefall, but it’s still not a bad novel. It tells a serviceable survival story, and while I didn’t love it, I’d still recommend it to fans of the genre.

3.5/5.

Scientifically accurate and stands as a terrifying story of a diver being swallowed by a sperm whale. Jay, feeling guilty about his father's suicide and his refusal to visit before, attempts a dive to find his father's remains. An accidental encounter with a giant squid puts Jay in real jeopardy when a hungry sperm whale swallows the squid. Jay is dragged along and has one hour to find a way out before he runs out of oxygen.

Jay's descent into the whale is entangled with a descent into his complicated feelings about his father, a local diving legend. Coming to terms with his father and his feelings is an important to Jay's survival as is finding a way out of the whale. Kraus uses the alien, claustrophobic environment of the deep sea to mirror how unprocessed trauma and grief have trapped Jay. His real physical danger is reflected in the flashbacks to his childhood, which show the emotional cost of having a father like his.

It is out in August but is already one of the best books of the year. Recommended for fans of Jaws and deep sea terror and survivor stories as well as fans of complicated family stories and those about death and grief.