I found this book to be a disappointment overall. I kept waiting for the expected twist(s) I know Will Dean can deliver, but they just never came. To me, this book was kind of lazy. It was like he decided that having these six divers in the ultimate locked-room mystery would be enough titillation to sustain the entirety of the book. That just didn't work. It was a unique concept, but at some point I needed more in order to keep it going.

It's hard to say too much more without giving away spoilers, but I will say that this book kind of uses a very overused and frustrating trope; however, it did it in such a confusing way that I'm left still scratching my head by the book's end. This is just one overarching example of how the plot felt very muddled and lazy to me. Lastly, Dean is obviously trying to do some kind of riff off of Macbeth. I'm a huge Macbeth lover, but this fell very flat. It was more like a quick little head nod to the play instead of going all the way in like it could have, which I think would have produced a much more engaging story overall.

On the positive side, I will say that the book gets very, very intense for a few chapters toward the end. For me, though, this was far too little too late. The ultimate locked room factor with the diving chamber is an inventive take, but that alone was not enough to sustain me as a reader.

The Chamber by Will Dean is a locked-room thriller that takes place in a hyperbaric chamber with six experienced saturation divers. When they start dying one by one, they start pointing fingers at each other. There's plenty of paranoia and blame here. This was a good story, but I wasn't really interested in the characters' back stories. I still enjoyed the read though, and I definitely recommend Dean's previous book The Last One. Thanks to NetGalley for the free digital copy. All opinions are my own.

My Honest Review
The Chamber
By Will Dean

Talk about unsettling next level claustrophobia this intense deep sea diving in a submersible follows Brooke and five others. This mysterious thriller of whodunnit really leaves you on the edge of your seat. Dean really paints a vivid picture all the while using lamaze breathing exercises and fingering pointing in this locked room thriller. I really enjoyed this unhinged story.

📚Expected Release August 6, 2024📚
Thank you Atria Books, NetGalley, & the brilliant author Will Dean. I’m super appreciative for the opportunity.📚

I was provided with an advanced copy of this book by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This book details the experience of Sat Divers hundreds of meters below the sea and the challenges they face to complete their dive. The content of this book was entirely new to me and Dean does a great job of explaining the mechanics and intricacies from a diver's perspective. This book starts off a little slow while you learn all you need to know to understand the depths (literally) this book is about to bring you to. You will reformulate what you think you have pieced together with every turn of the page. It was impossible to put down.

The Chamber was a unique, atmospheric thriller that shook me to my core. It felt like the author reached inside my brain, plucked out my worst fears and put them all into a book 😅. I had full body sweats just thinking about the living conditions and terrors these divers had to endure.

I really struggled with the fact that this was a single POV locked room thriller. However, this was definitely a “me” problem, and perhaps that type of book just isn’t my vibe 🤷🏻‍♀️. Personally, I would’ve loved to see the introduction of an outside POV, such as the detective investigating the case.

With that being said, I loved learning about saturation diving. I found it to be an interesting profession, and it was clear that the author went to great lengths to ensure it was accurately represented.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Atria Books for the opportunity to read this ARC!

✨Diving
✨Locked room thrillers
✨Nightmare scenarios

Six divers are about to be locked in a pressurized chamber and be lowered down into the North Sea to work for a month. There are 6 divers. When the first one dies, there are questions, but then it happens again!

The Chamber is a unique take on the "locked room" thriller. It is reminiscent of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None.

As a reader, I felt like I was trapped in that chamber with the divers! I was feeling claustrophobic, and unsettled Will Dean keeps the suspense and tension going from the first chapter. The pace is fast and the tension continues to mount as the countdown to decompression continues.

Will Dean has become one of my "go to" writers to read. This thriller was great! I really enjoyed it. I am still thinking about the ending! I would highly recommend this book!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for an ARC of this book!

Well, thank you, Will Dean, for teaching me about the esoteric world of saturation diving and then promptly making me proclaim, “Nope. Never. Find a different profession.”

After last year’s “The Last One,” in which Dean transformed a cruise ship into a haunted house, this time we’re in a claustrophobic hyperbaric chamber (with early 2000s technology). Five men and one woman are trying to rebalance the gases in their bodies so they don’t get the bends (decompression sickness). If they leave too early, they die painfully. But something/someone is killing them off one by one inside the chamber in this clever high stakes locked room mystery.

The tale is told in a first person POV via Ellen, also a videographer, but an experienced saturation diver.

The space is cramped but needs to be antiseptic. In a month, bacteria can grow rapidly in the humid conditions, affecting feet and ears. “Serious infections take hold with terrifying rapidity. Germs spread. They multiply and mutate. A team of six can be wiped out in hours in these confined, airless chambers.” This is a novel filled with tactile sensory images — keep imagining the small space the characters are in, but also the multiple bodily changes.

The first person dies fairly early in what should be a monthlong job. A decision is made to depressurize the survivors to retrieve the body, but that will take four days. Four long days of decay and tension in a cramped space. And then another diver dies. Coincidence or murder? By the next incident, it’s obvious that some sort of evil is among them. Will Dean does another terrific job of scaring the life out of the reader. His saturation diving world is an unusual and very dangerous environment and the author does an incredible job of building suspense. 4 stars!

Literary Pet Peeve Checklist:
Green Eyes (only 2% of the real world, yet it seems like 90% of all fictional females): YES The first character named, Mike Elliot, has green eyes.
Horticultural Faux Pas (plants out of season or growing zones, like daffodils in autumn or bougainvillea in Alaska): NO Everything is water.

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy!

Rounding up from 4.5 stars

Wow! Usually if I take a break from reading a book it's because it's not captivating me and it's easy to put down. I took a break from this book because I was making myself dizzy from holding my breath so much. I had to stop reading it the first night because I knew I'd have nightmares! Books don't have that effect on me. If you've seen a certain episode of Friends, you'll know what I mean when I saw I wanted to put the book in the freezer!

Mr. Dean did such an amazing job at conveying the stress and fear and paranoia of the characters confined in the chamber. I have never felt the feelings of characters in a book this strongly.

If you are claustrophobic or have a fear of being held underwater, this book might not be for you. On the other hand, it is a great fast paced psychological thriller that keeps you guessing and popping in surprises until the very end.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Pub date August 6, 2024

In hindsight, just because I love this author doesn’t mean I should have picked up this book. I know it about myself that things like underwater chambers are not of interest to me. Unfortunately, I decided to try this anyway since Will Dean’s writing is some of my favorite.

The storyline itself and the characters just did not resonate with me. I thought it was well written and I didn’t guess the ending though I did find it to be anticlimactic and unsatisfying.

The idea of being trapped in a hyperbaric chamber in the middle of the North Sea with your fellow divers dropping like flies one by one is so terrifying. Especially when it takes 5 days to decompress the chamber before you can get out.

As much as I loved the premise, I didn’t love the execution. There was truly so much time spent explaining all of the details and jargon of saturation diving which is not a topic I particularly find interesting. The description of the dive was pretty cool though. I didn’t feel invested in any of the characters to really care who was dying.

I could’ve looked past that if it had an interesting, satisfying twist or even a twist that made sense. I’m still confused on what actually happened at the end.

It’s not a bad book. I loved Will Deans last book The Last One but this one just wasn’t for me. I still plan on reading anything else he puts out.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC!

Fantastic. I read Will Dean’s The Last One so fast and saw this one and knew I needed to read it. It was amazing. I’m a Will Dean fan now!

The Chamber is a a very different type of story than the author's last wild, adrenaline fueled thriller, The Last One, and it took some time for me to get into the flow with this one. In the 2nd half, the story gained traction, the tension ramped up, and from there I flew thru the pages as questions and wild guesses began piling up and driving me forward toward another crazy Will Dean style ending.

Claustrophobia, anxiety, tension, dread, and trust-no-one suspicion. You'll feel it all in this tale of saturation divers locked in a hyperbaric chamber together as one by one mysterious illness sets in, and they're trapped together until decompression is complete. Increasingly strange questions and requests from the outside cultivate paranoia not just with the characters but also the reader, and nobody is above suspicion.

There's a lot of technical information about diving, the hyperbaric chamber, and being in a high-pressure environment. I found the details interesting up to a point, but there were moments I felt overwhelmed by the constant flow of info and felt it distracted me from being fully immersed in the mystery.

Overall, this was a fresh spin on the locked room mystery with a truly unique setting, a nightmarish scenario, and relentless, slow building pressure. Readers who enjoy the inclusion of technical information to give a greater sense of realism to their mystery will enjoy The Chamber.

Thank you to Atria/Emily Bestler Books and Netgalley for providing me a copy to read and review.

Ellen Brooke and her five colleagues are saturation divers and they are just beginning a new assignment in the North Sea. They are closer than kin, locked together in a hyperbaric chamber for the duration of the job. The chamber cannot be opened without the divers suffering rapid decompression and death. No problem, it's Brooke's happy place, where she feels most at home. That is, until one of her fellow divers drops dead. With no idea what happened and no way to escape, the divers must be hyper vigilant and do their best to make it back to the world above.

This is a new, original twist on the classic locked room mystery. I found the premise fascinating, and learned a ton about saturation divers and their world. This book steadily ratchets up the tension and suspense until the reader is left breathless. I couldn't reach the conclusion fast enough, because I felt so claustrophobic while reading it. I didn't care for the ending, which caused me to deduct a star from my rating, but I do think it may work well for other readers. Thank you to Netgalley and Atria/Emily Bestler Books for the review copy.

Loved this. Dean is amazing at out of the box stories. I’ve loved everything I’ve read from him! This had be absolutely gripped and nervous!

The Chamber by Will Dean presents an intriguing setup for a locked room mystery, which is a concept I absolutely adore. The scenario of six saturation divers trapped in a hyperbaric chamber with a killer among them has all the makings of a gripping thriller. While the book is certainly well written and features some twists, it ultimately didn’t resonate with me as much as I had hoped.

The tension and claustrophobia of the chamber are effectively conveyed. I appreciate the glossary at the beginning that helps readers navigate the specialized terminology and components of the chamber, a testament to the author’s thorough research. However, the story does get bogged down by several side/ character stories that felt more like distractions than additions to the suspense.

While the central premise is fascinating, the execution didn’t quite live up to its potential, making it a 3 star read for me.

Thank you to the author, Netgalley and Atria/Emily Bestler Books for a copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

Based off the synopsis I should have known this wouldn't be for me, but I age it a shot. I struggled to feel attached to any of the characters and there was a lot of chamber technical jargon that lost me. The writing was good, and the ending was mildly enjoyable. I will say that it would translate well as a movie on a streaming platform.

Saturation divers work in one of the most intense environment: locked inside a hyperbaric chamber for weeks at at time. They have to be mentally and physically strong to surive the hot, humid and cramped environment. When six experienced sat divers go on a job together, things quickly become tense when one of them mysteriously dies. They now have to wait for four days to decompress before they can get out. When another team member dies with no obvious answers, remaining calm and sane remains paramount to their survival.

Will Dean is truly a MASTER of his craft and that craft is psychological thrillers. While reading this story, I could feel the desperation, panic, claustrophobia, and suffocation of all the characters. I wanted to flip the pages so fast to find out what happened next and to rush along the torturously slow decompression. What I love about this story is it kept me guessing and I wasn’t sure I could trust anyone the entire time. If you love a suspenseful read, this one is a MUST.

Thank you so much to Netgalley, Will Dean and Atria books for the ARC of this book. All thoughts and opinions in my review are honest, voluntary and my own.

I should’ve known that a book about deep sea diving wouldn’t be for me. I had a hard time getting into this book due to all the technical jargon as well as the characters being a bunch of ex military guys. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, just not something I care for as a character backstory. The writing was well done and I didn’t guess the ending… though I did find it anticlimactic. I think this is one of those books I could see as a movie I’d watch with my fiancé but not something I’d personally choose.

Talk about an atmospheric nightmare!!! I don’t like the idea of being in a confined space and this book definitely takes you on a journey!

The story is from the POV of Ellen Brooks who is a saturation diver, and she takes on an assignment with 5 other men to go deep into the sea for one month. The problem starts when one of them ends up dead. Was it an unfortunate accident or was this intentional. Imagine being in a cramped room with 4 other people and you’re not 100% sure if one of them might be responsible for the death of one of your colleagues and you have nowhere to go because you can’t just get pulled back up to the surface because otherwise you will die to the pressure changes.

The story is very detailed in the things that the crew must do each time they eat and shower in order to ensure that bacteria doesn’t grow in what is a very humid space. As the story goes on, we learn a little bit of the past from each of the crew members and you can tell as time goes by that they are starting to mentally break. They must rely on each other to stay safe but at the same time they wonder if they can trust each other.

The author uses a lot of deep diving terminology so that got confusing at times for me however, he does provide a glossary at the beginning of the book that can help.
Overall, I liked the storyline and the atmosphere it took place in. I would have appreciated less of the terminology used and to have it “dumbed down” for me a bit but the story itself was good.

Thank you Netgalley and Atria Books. All opinions are my own.

Mystery and Drama tucked in The Chamber!

My heart was racing and my breathing shallow as I read this novel about six divers in a hyperbaric chamber heading down to the bottom of the ocean floor for a long stay in tight, claustrophobic conditions.
They all know what they are doing and how to avoid panic, right?
AND then.... One diver suddenly is dead, then another.
WHY and from what?
Could it be a leak in the chamber, creating poison? Could it be an outside source? Could it be one of their own who has finally "cracked"?

This is a dramatic, intense story that will truly make you wish you had some oxygen as you open this book!
Thank you to @NetGalley and to @Atria Books for this incredible ARC and allowing me to read and review. WOW!