Absolutely loved this book! The writing is superbly beautiful, parts so tense my heart was pounding. A little bit of a lull in the middle (most books have this) but a great ending. I've been thinking about it for weeks since finishing it.

I didn’t completely dislike this, it just felt a little underdeveloped. Like there was another layer of storytelling that should have been there, but was missing.

For me, the likeability of a main character is not always paramount to a good story, but in this case it really would’ve made all the difference. Instead of rooting for the MC because you liked him (you really didn’t), you were rooting for him because of the circumstances he finds himself in. Honestly, as the reader, I couldn’t have cared less if he made it out of this situation alive.

I kept seeing comparisons, so I expected this to be a little bit like The Martian (except inside a whale), and to a small extent it was. But much more than that, it was about a son seeking reconciliation with his dead father and finding catharsis while trapped in the belly of a whale. The pairing of daddy issues and whale facts was strange and a bit off-putting. Overall, the book left me wanting more of the scientifically-accurate sea thriller that was promised, and less of the family drama.

And as long as we’re using the Martian as a blueprint for this kind of story, it’s notable to mention that the main difference between the two lies in their tone. Where the Martian uses humor and lightheartedness to offset the dire circumstances and seriousness of the predicament (not to mention all the scientific jargon), Whalefall fully embraces the bleak and sad tone, and offsets a serious situation with flashbacks to another serious and bleak situation: the estrangement and subsequent death of the MC’s father. In my opinion, this book could have really benefited from having more humor and a less depressing tone. I wish it leaned in to some of playful lightheartedness the Martian did, despite its serious subject matter. I think doing so would’ve gone a long way to endear the MC to the reader—*ahem make him more likeable*—and give the reader some stakes in the outcome.

I can’t say I would recommend this for everyone, but I think it could be enjoyable for the right person at the right time. It was well written, and had an almost cinematic quality to it that I think many readers would enjoy. I will not be surprised when this is adapted for the screen.

I tried very hard with this one.

I think it’s an incredibly ambitious concept but the slow burn and the constantly changing timelines really ruined the story for me. Apart from that, I failed to feel any emotion from what should have been a deeply affecting drama.

I know many have loved Whalefall and I’m sure it’s simply that I was not the right reader for it.

I am immensely grateful to Atria Books and NetGalley for my copy. All opinions are my own.

4 star read. What happens when you're swallowed by a whale and you only have one hour of air to survive? What an intense, unusual read. It was a story about family. About father and son. The challenges of both roles. It invoked a claustrophobic feeling. I was right there with the character. My breathing became shallow. The pain was intense. I was scared to be experiencing what he was. For me, all I had to do was stop reading/listening to get away. The character? He was stuck. It was horrible what he went through. This has the makings of a great horror film.

#NETGALLEY. #WHALEFALL #DANIEL KRAUS

This is an incredible book from start to finish. Jay is a compelling character and the story moves at the most perfect pace for the kind of narration it is, taut and urgent. Excited to read more from this author.

Whalefall has an exciting premise and combined with some interesting backstory and character building makes for a solid story overall. I think unfortunately for me when you read the comparison to books like "The Martian" you get an unrealistic expectation of what this book is. Sure, there is quite a lot of scientific information here but the pace is considerably slower and you do not get those constant "MacGyver" moments. This is not a fun story either. It's sad and stark and brutal.

I did really like how the story gives a sense of scale inside the whale and you feel the claustrophobia and helplessness of the situation weighing heavy on Jay throughout. It feels like very real desperation and you experience the conflicting emotions of the instinctual fight for survival and the willingness to just lay down, close your eyes, and let it all be over. While the confluence of events that lead to Jay ending up in the belly of a whale seem pretty unrealistic, once you accept it has happened the struggle inside feels authentic. There is nowhere to go and the cramped confines and limited resources as Jay's disposal fuel the despair.

As far as the structure of the book goes, I think the constant flashbacks to Jay's life, mostly concerned with the complicated relationship he has with his father, really bog down the pace and take you out of the action and drama unfolding. These interludes often serve to setup the next escape attempt, but ultimately I think it takes the foot off the gas a little too much for a story like this. It feels less like a pulse-pounding countdown from 60 minutes of air than I think it should.

In the end there is lots to like here and while I wish the pace were ramped up a little bit, it still moves quick and has lots of action and surprises in store. For a story about someone swallowed by a whale and fighting for his life to escape, there is surprisingly deep character development and while that was not what I expected and hoped for necessarily based on the premise, it works pretty well.

This book started out as a slow burn for me, especially for about the first 30 percent of the book. Once passed that mark it was unlike any other book I had read, Once the main character ends up in the whale’s stomach it gets very descriptive and the author did a great job of making you able to envision what he was going through. Very intense and disturbing at times but every bit worth the read!

Amazing. A beautiful, tense, wonderful, loving, terrifying story. It is what it is: a story of a man swallowed by a whale, and about a father-son relationship, and dealing with death. Gripping, readable, meaningful, deep as the ocean.

🐋 This book was much more profound than I could have ever expected. I anticipated a crazy scary read about a teenage boy swallowed by a whale. I did not anticipate the emotional depth I experienced in the backstory about the boy and his father.

🐋 This book is so claustrophobic! I honestly felt like I was holding my breath during the whale scenes, and then finally breathing again during the backstory chapters.

🐋 The relationship between the boy and his now deceased father was insightful and genuine, but also heartbreaking and tragic. They had a complicated relationship, which added a lot of depth to the story.

🐋 The present-day chapters (when the boy is in the whale) are labeled with the amount of air he has left in his tank. It was unbelievably stressful watching that number drop with each turn of the page! Such a simple, yet effective way to draw the reader into the story and amplify fear.

🐋 Some of the whale scenes get a bit gory, but it was realistic, not gratuitous.

🐋 Interestingly, while I hoped the boy would rescue himself from the belly of the whale, I actually started feeling sympathy for the whale as well.

🐋 Look at that cover!!! It is amazing!

🐋 This book isn’t just about a boy being swallowed by a whale. It is also about relationships – the ones we have with other humans and the ones we have with nature and other living creatures. I really enjoyed it.

Thank you @NetGalley and @atriabooks @mtvbooks for an eARC of this book, which I have reviewed honestly and voluntarily.

This year seems to be the one where all my anticipated reads are actually not good at all. In fact, this one became a hate read.

This book is sold as “scuba diver gets eaten by whale” but we are given “guy does everything he’s not supposed to do and finds out the consequences” but you’re also just super bored while reading it at least until he finally gets stuck in the mouth of a sperm whale. Honestly just skip to around 30% to when he finally gets swallowed to get to the good stuff. It’s much like taking a ride on the Magic School Bus through the indigestion system of a whale.

To begin though, I have so many problems with this book

Why is the main character speaking in third person? It was so disorienting how we are omniscient. The writing is also clipped which I noticed seems to be a popular style in horror novels but to me just reminds me of “why waste time say lot word when few word do trick.” Like literally “Eyeball pain.” was considered a full complete sentence.

The back and forth between past and present every other page (bc the chapters are only 3 pages long) was unneeded and just dumped so much useless information about the dad. We get it, he was the best guy to others and you’re not. We didn’t need example after example written in soliloquy of him. And the way his entire family chooses to ignore his trauma and disrespect his boundaries just to guilt him over and over again really made this an annoying read. None of the characters were likable at all.

The fact that it’s set after 2020 and we bring up the pandemic for a whole added subtext like really I’m trying to escape reality where that didn’t happen LOL there was no reason to throw that in there. The dude is here to get eaten by a whale I don’t care about a pandemi lovato that wasn’t even explained just assumed that we all know. Future generations reading this will be like “what does this have to do with whales or the story?” and my answer is “I have no fcking clue.”

So funny enough, I’m very familiar with Monterey Bay and Carmel, California as that’s where my family would often go for vacations! I have never known anyone to spot as many animals as this guy did in his one dive. First a freaking MOLA MOLA while diving right off the beach? Then he spots a giant squid (at regular depths mind you). Then gets eaten by the sperm whale that’s obviously it’s competitor. Also orcas show up? No way all that happened in the same dive. The bay is known for its whale watching bc of the underwater canyon said to rival the Grand Canyons depth but youre not gonna see every single rare sea animal.

Also the whole point of him traveling down there is for his fathers remains from 2 years ago. He wants to find the bones of a human which only last 3 to 6 months. The book is named “whale fall” which is what happens when a whale carcass falls to the bottom of the ocean and creates almost its own ecosystem of food. Those last up to a decade bc it’s a giant freaking body! It makes NO SENSE why you would think ur dad, a regular human, would just be right on the floor of the ocean. Next to a chasm. Deeper than the grand canyon. *yeah okay gif*

The rules of scuba diving that this guys father instilled in him and that we are forced to learn are just thrown out the window. I’ve never known someone so unprepared for something they over prepared for. He forgets his gloves when he will be using his hands 90% of the time. (This is actually common tho). He doesn’t have a diving knife?? That’s literally a necessity for any scuba diver. He let his hands go just to readjust his mask when he could’ve held out till he reached a place he could hold on with his feet. Like was there no research put into this? For someone who was supposedly drilled on the in and outs of diving, he honestly deserved to die cause my god.

Like I said, once you reach almost halfway, you take a journey through the digestive system of a whale. This is where the horror/splatter punk comes to play finally. With grotesque descriptions of choking on vomit, to burning in stomach acid, to being stuck in the stomach like a body bag suit was enough to even make me wiggle with claustrophobia. So the descriptions and talent for the grotesque are there, it’s the plot that is lacking in weight and plausibility.

When he finally gets in the stomach though, he literally does nothing. The entire time, nothing. “If I lay here. If I just lay here.” Stabs the whale once and then just turns into a worm. Useless. Somehow still describing the events happening outside the whale in perfect clarity though. It’s like he’s Bran Stark watching through the eyes of the raven, I mean whale.

A fellow reviewer described this book as “daddy issues inside a whale” and I couldn’t agree more.

Don’t waste your time with this novel. The concept is intriguing but the execution leaves much to be desired. Wait till someone else tries their hand at it and we will be all the more better for it

This was claustrophobic, wild, and so entertaining. I really felt this whole book. You were rooting for our MC to make it the whole time. I can't wait to read more from the author.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of the book in exchange for a honest review.

A solid thriller similar to Andy Weir's The Martian. The experience was surreal and executed well. I wanted a bit more detail from the family relationships and father figure backstory. The novel barrels through with a quick paced read but ends a little too quickly.

I thought this was going to be silly but it wasn’t at all and I loved it! It was really well written and my only downside is that it wasn’t super fast paced. It took me forever to read but the short chapters and writing style keep you hooked.

Thanks to NetGalley and MTV Books for the advanced copy of this book. I was so intrigued when I read the description of this book...so unusual...a story about being eaten by a whale! Of course it's much more than that as you discover the complicated relationship between father and son. I highly enjoyed that aspect of the book and I did enjoy the literal ride through the whale to keep reading. Of course it all seems highly ridiculous however the underlying themes of family relationships vs a survival story does compensate for that!

This book is such an adventure. The concept of this story just hooks you from the start. it’s really a few stories within one main story. It’s a tale about a son, Jay and his late father, Mitt. I love the way the story unfolds with present and then looking back at past events. Jay has committed himself to recovering his dad’s remains off the coast of Monterey Bay. Seems like a lost cause but he is determined to try to locate them. AS Jay embarks on his adventure with each step of the way there is flash backs to moment in his life with people close to him. The story is engaging, thrilling, and told beautifully. There is grief, sadness and healing all within the story. Many thanks to Atria Books, MYV Books and NetGalley for the digital review copy of this novel. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.

A phenomenally fresh and thrilling account of a young man who’s dealing with the ghost of his father and the threat of a gigantic beast. Kraus’s style is breathtaking and captivating, propelling the story forward.

Maybe it’s because I’ve read T.J. Newman’s book Falling recently, but I think this book had very similar vibes! The plots are different, but the feelings are along the same lines. That claustrophobic, underwater fear in face of almost certain death. If that sounds like a book for you, I think you’ll love this!

It was so good to read a book where there was dad drama and not mom drama!! I feel like so many books I’ve picked up lately have to do with a hard relationship with their mother and I’m just not into that right now. I liked that this main character’s grief was over his father, who was most definitely not a saint. Everything with being trapped inside the whale was great, but I really enjoyed the deeper sides of this book where we got a good look at some hard parental relationships.

I will say this is one of those books where the main character keeps getting gruesomely injured but still surviving! Sometimes that gets a little hard to keep reading, at least for me. When your main character is on the brink of death for a lot of the book, that takes a bit of a toll on me.

But this is definitely a book I couldn’t put down! I finished the whole book over a weekend. Thank you NetGalley and Atria for the copy in exchange for my honest review.

The nitty-gritty: A heartbreakingly beautiful story with an unrelenting sense of danger, Whalefall surprised me in every possible way.

I knew I was going to love Whalefall, but I did not know it would end up being one of my favorite books of 2023 so far. Folks, this book is going to be hard to beat. Daniel Kraus has taken an outlandish set-up—a teenaged boy is swallowed by a sperm whale while looking for his dead father’s remains—and turned it into a thrilling and emotional tale of survival and self reflection. If this story interests you in the slightest, you absolutely must read Whalefall. It’s a brilliant piece of storytelling that should not be missed.

Jay Gardiner is seventeen when he decides to strap on his scuba diving equipment and look for his father’s remains. It’s been a year since Mitt Gardiner jumped off a fishing boat and drowned himself, and Jay’s remorse at the way he treated his dad at the end has finally caught up to him. Jay wants to do something good for his family, and bringing back Mitt’s skull might smooth things over with his mother and sisters. Monastery Beach in Monterey isn’t the safest place to dive, but Jay’s been training his whole life, since Mitt took it upon himself to teach his son everything he knows about the ocean.

Jay manages to sneak past the Coast Guard and make his dive, but with only about an hour and a half of air in his tank, he needs to find something, fast. And then, the unthinkable happens—Jay is swept into the mouth of a sperm whale. With a dwindling air supply, an unpredictable whale, and a host of unexpected injuries, Jay looks back at his unconventional life and the many lessons his father forced upon him. Mitt gave his son a wealth of knowledge about the sea and the creatures who live there, and now it’s up to Jay to dig deep and use that knowledge to find a way out of the belly of the whale.

There isn’t a single thing wrong with this book. The pacing is perfect, the writing is outstanding, and the suspense is off the charts. The chapters are very short, sometimes only a page or two, and alternate between Jay’s present—as he’s diving and then when he’s swallowed by the whale—and the past, jumping back to various points in his childhood, growing up under the stern tutelage of his father. You might think these flashbacks would slow down the pace, after all Jay is fighting for his life inside a whale. But surprisingly, the flashbacks only enhance the rest of the story, because the emotional elements are just as important as the frantic, nail-biting action. Kraus labels each chapter in the present with Jay’s current air supply, starting with a full tank (3000 PSI) and eventually dwindling to 0. Just seeing those numbers decrease was so stressful! There’s a palpable sense of danger throughout the story, and you won’t find out what happens to Jay until the last page.

The idea of being swallowed by a whale may sound like fantasy, but Kraus has done his homework. The story is loaded with scientific details about whale biology, from the size and color of the whale’s teeth to the spongy feel and terrible smell of the inside of its stomach. Readers who get queasy over detailed descriptions of blood and other bodily fluids take note: you will feel as if you too are inside the whale’s stomach, and it’s not a pleasant feeling! This was such a visceral reading experience, and Kraus backs everything up with lots of research (he notes all his sources at the end of the book). The ocean is full of both wonders and horrors, and Jay experiences both of those during his incredible journey. The author also goes into great detail about diving equipment, which might be too much for some readers, but I thought it added authenticity to the story. Jay has been absorbing everything his father taught him for years, so it makes sense that he’s a skilled diver and knows his equipment inside and out.

I love books that use every detail in the story. In other words, when the author mentions an object in the beginning (for example the mesh bag Jay brings to collect his father’s remains), that item plays an important part later in the story. There is literally nothing wasted in Whalefall. One of my favorite parts of the book is when Jay finds a squid beak inside the whale (look it up, it’s scary!) Jay names it “Beaky,” and it turns out to be extremely important to Jay’s survival. (Also, Beaky reminded me of Wilson, Tom Hanks’ volleyball in Cast Away—if you’ve seen the movie you know what I mean!)

But now we come to the crux of the story, the emotionally charged relationship between Jay and Mitt. I absolutely loved the way Kraus slowly builds the tension between the two. Mitt isn’t an easy father to love, and he expects Jay to be as enamored with the ocean as he is. Finally, when Jay turns fifteen, he can’t take it anymore, so he leaves home to crash with some friends. It’s about this time that Mitt gets his cancer diagnosis, and Jay refuses to talk to his dad, even when his mother and sisters beg him to. And then it’s too late, because he’s dead. Kraus perfectly captures the complex emotions between the two, as well as Jay’s remorse when he realizes he’s made a mistake. When Jay is swallowed by the sperm whale, he sees the whale as his father:

I loved the parallels the author draws between Mitt and the whale. In Jay’s damaged state (he’s badly injured when the whale swallows him), he hears a voice talking to him, telling him what to do to survive. Is the voice of the whale? Or his father? Or is he simply imagining it? Ultimately it doesn’t matter, because the voice is exactly what Jay needs to help him. 

Finally, the title of the book takes on new meaning near the end of the story, bringing everything full circle. If you loved The Martian, you'll find a similar vibe here as Jay has to use the resources at hand to find a way out. I’m not sure what else I can say to convince you to read this book, but if you want a reading experience unlike any other, I hope you’ll give this outstanding book a try.

Big thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy.

The premise of the book sounded super interesting and a bit terrifying. Unfortunately though, I struggled to connect with this story. I don't think that I've read a book quite like this one before. While I was expecting horror and terror behind every day, this book is more about a son coming to terms and understanding of the relationship that he has with his father. This is well told through a journey of survival, but just wasn't the book for me. I'm definitely in the minority on this one.
With all of that said, I do have a hardcover copy of this book for my bookshelf because I love the cover.

Couldn't put this one down! Whalefall is a father/son relationship drama combined with a seemingly well-researched scientific thriller.. My lungs hurt while reading the "inside the whale" story. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.