Excellent! A fun locked room read that I thoroughly enjoyed. SAT diving isn't something I was very familiar with so it was fun to learn about the trade while following along with a suspenseful thriller. I have some questions about the ending but I overall throughly enjoyed the story.

The first 60% of the book flew by. I was absolutely entranced by the descriptions of the ocean beds...the giant monsters beneath the ocean are terrifying. Then the descriptions of being enclosed in such a small space made me feel things! The last 40% was a bit slower, the last few hours of decompression- but still great.

Character development was excellent. A huge bombshell dropped around 75% and it was heart wrenching.

My only beef with this story was mainly the ending. I feel like there was a huge lead up to something huge but I felt a bit let down. Maybe I just need to process it a bit more!

Overall I would definitely read more from this author!!

I love books that center around a niche job or location that I don't know anything about and I have to learn more both through the book and I am also interested or curious enough about it to look it up on my own. In this case the topic is saturation diving. This was the true interesting part of the book, not necessarily the mystery or the actual "chamber" itself. We get a brief orientation to sat diving as well as an introduction to the characters on board the vessel and then the rest of the ExTREMELY locked room mystery is pretty slow burn. This was a scenario where I could not imagine being trapped with the bodies of my comrades. After all the fuss of the mystery I felt that the explanation of how the crew was dying and who the culprit was ended up being a bit flimsy in my opinion. But I will say - I was entertained and I learned some new things so I do recommend!

3.5 ⭐️rounded up. I love Will Dean’s books. I enjoyed this book for the most part. He did a fantastic job of explaining the logistics of the deep sea diving job and making you feel like you were there. There were suspenseful and short chapters that ended on cliffhangers and made you want to keep reading. The downside for me was he didn’t do a very good job of developing the male characters enough to distinguish them from one another. I was halfway through the book and still wasn’t sure who was who. Also the ending was very confusing to me. It was sort of abrupt and left me feeling like I had no idea what actually happened. What was the motivation? Overall I would recommend if you like closed space thrillers and would recommend watching the documentary Last Breath if you enjoyed this.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria books for the Advanced readers copy of this book!

As someone that has claustrophobia, i expected to feel more trapped than I did. Although there was moments of feeling like that, this book was way too much of a slow burn to me. A lot of moments were spent on who done it and just wasting time. This was just not for me.

This book has a fabulous setting for a claustrophobic, intense and stress inducing locked room mystery - the strange world of saturation divers who stay in a special pod on the ocean floor (usually around oil rigs - here the North Sea of the Scottish Coast) for weeks to work construction under extreme conditions. The journey home takes longer than the journey back from the International Space Station because the pressure change has to be done in subtle increments.
Few women work in this world but Ellen thrives in those harsh conditions so we see her shuttled into the pod with five other saturation divers but something is wrong on this dive, the first death occurs right on the first day but still there is no quick return to the surface. The tension ramps up and up and more deaths occur
I had no idea about the world of saturation diving and this was fascinating to me in addition to the intriguing mystery !
If you have already read this book please let me know what you thought of the ending - my husband and I both read it this week and our view of the ending differs !

The Chamber by Will Dean  is a psychological thriller/horror story about saturation divers.

First, let me thank NetGalley, the publisher Atria/Emily Bestler Booksand of course the author, for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
 

My Synopsis:    (No major reveals, but if concerned, skip to My Opinions)
Six saturation divers are aboard the Deep Tropaz, a Diving Support Vessel, in the North Sea, east of Aberdeen.  They are locked inside a hyperbaric chamber at the bottom of the vessel, so that they can descend to the seabed below to perform routine tasks on the pipelines.

The six divers are Ellen Brooke, Mike Elliot, Gary Pritchard (Jumbo), Joe Atikins (André), Leo Babic (Spock), and Javad Assar (Tea-Bag). They are all experienced divers, and most have worked with each other in the past.

The crew outside the chamber includes Lennox (the Captain), Halvor Magusson (Dive Controller - the divers supervisor), Duncan (the Night Super), and Gonzales (the medic).

When the divers find one of their members dead, questions abound, and they will have to perform procedures not normally their responsibility.  It's not like they can have a medical examiner, or the police step in and take over.  The remaining divers cannot even leave the chamber before it is slowly brought to the surface.  To prevent the bends, and most assuredly death, it will be four days of decompression before they can breathe fresh air.

When another member is found with no pulse, the remaining divers are hard pressed not to panic.  They must put their suspicions, paranoia and tiredness aside, and just hope to survive until they are released.



My Opinions:
A locked-room mystery if ever there was!  It was a very atmospheric and claustrophobic read, since the entire story took place in a small diving vessel.  

While entertaining, the book seemed very slow-moving.  It seemed really long....really, really long -  never-ending long.  Perhaps that is why it didn't seem really "suspenseful" to me.  When you plod along, you are not on the edge of your seat, you are instead waiting for something/anything to happen...and it doesn't.  The last 8% of the book was good though! Part of the problem was that I really wasn't interested in deep-sea diving/saturation diving. (I saw Will Dean, and I thought -- should be good!)   The other part was that it was very descriptive, with lengthy paragraphs, and although we heard multiple stories from the others, it was basically all from Ellen's perspective. And I started to doubt Ellen, and wondered early on if we had an unreliable narrator.  Most of the characters were interesting, but I really couldn't relate to any of them, so when they died, it didn't bother me.

I did learn a lot about sat divers, and the struggles they endure.  I didn't want to be one before I started this book, and this just proved my point.  The book started out with a glossary of terms and a diagram to help the reader understand the concept of deep-sea diving.  I probably should have stopped there.....but we all know if I start the book, I finish the book.  I don't understand DNF.

Needless to say, you can probably tell that this book wasn't for me.  You may enjoy it (maybe if you are a scuba diver)...and if you read it, I really hope you do enjoy it!   I wanted to....

Prior to reading this book, i wasnt familiar with saturation diving. Will Dean did a great job of explaining it without overexplaining, which made for an interesting and unique plot.
The story is tense and very claustrophobic. The reader is placed right in the middle of the chaos and paranoia that comes with being trapped in a small space (underwater no less) with a killer and no way to call for help or escape.

If you enjoy locked room mysteries, give this a read.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Gripping yet flawed thriller. The setting, a remote Swedish cabin, is beautifully described, immersing me in the chilling atmosphere that Dean masterfully creates. The protagonist's internal struggles and the slow unraveling of the plot kept me engaged, and I appreciated the depth of character development, particularly how the past influences the present.
However, I felt that some parts of the narrative dragged on a bit too long, which made the pacing uneven at times. Additionally, while the twists were intriguing, a few felt predictable, slightly diminishing the overall suspense. Despite these drawbacks, Dean's writing style is compelling, and the emotional weight of the story resonated with me.
Overall, it’s a solid read that offers both tension and introspection, even if it doesn’t quite reach its full potential.

Official rating is 2.5 stars.

While this book ultimately let me down I did love the extreme claustrophobia that it caused. I am not usually a claustrophobic person but I was while reading this book. With that being said though the overall story left me a bit frustrated. I did not care for the ending or the direction it took. Also, with all the stories from the characters that were not relevant, I was taken out of the books atmosphere of suspense.

As always though I am one person. You may love this story so I always recommend that you read it for yourself.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Simon and Schuster for an arc of this book. I received this book in exchange for my honest review. My thoughts are entirely my own.


This book was definitely something. A thriller about saturation divers and the dangers and psychological effects that the professional can have even to the most experienced divers. Elle is a saturation diver who will be on a job for a month until the youngest crew member dies suddenly and then their month long job is turned into four days. Then slowly as fear takes hold and the divers start to turn on the people keeping them safe and on each other. I honestly thought we were about to get a plot similar plot to Will’s last book but I enjoyed this one more. Elle and Andre are the last two standing out of eight and they both go crazy with both getting arrested, or Andre will be when he gets out of the hospital. Elle has dreams that she was the one putting cyanide in peoples drinks and killing people but thinks it’s a figment of her imagination. I think she did it and her mind is trying to cope with it. But you never truly know with Will Dean books.

Thank you very much to NetGalley and Atria books for this advance copy of The Chamber by Will Dean - after really enjoying The Last One last year, I was very excited to check this one out!

I wish I could say this one was as intriguing as his previous works, but I think a specific group of people would enjoy this book. I have a very minimal background in diving from when I used to work as a lifeguard years ago, but without that, I can anticipate a lot of people DNFing this one - the whole first third is very info-dumpy, trying to paint the setting for what these divers are living with. (Also, the ebook and print have a diagram in the front, I found that very helpful that you wouldn’t have if you did this on audio.) This one is the definition of a slow burn, and you kind of know what’s going to happen based on the summary of the plot - we follow the POV of Ellen, so naturally she gives “final girl” energy, but I found a lot of these details to be not necessary, and my biggest disappointment comes from the lack of your typical Will Dean “OMG” factor; this is the third book I’ve read from this author, but nothing really shocked me or surprised me with the ending, and it felt a little boring. Again, if you have no background in diving, I really don’t think you’d enjoy this one, I think there’s a specific target audience for it.

Thank you again to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC in exchange for this honest review. The Chamber is available to purchase today! I look forward to reading more of Will Dean’s future works.

The Chamber ~ Will Dean
This book is a suspenseful locked-room thriller about a group of saturation divers inside a hyperbaric chamber. The suspense builds as one-by-one they are dying and no one knows why. Because rapid decompression would be fatal they must work in shifts to survive the close quarters until they can safely decompress. Exhaustion, suspicion, and paranoia play front and center in this high stakes book along the vein of And Then There Was None. It was well-written and researched. At times I was lost in trying to wrap my head around the visual aspect of their environment, but I think that was a me issue. The plot twists were substantial and you could easily feel the stress the characters were under. Thank you #NetGalley for an early look at this terrific novel.

This book gave me claustrophobia and I liked it.

As a recreational diver, I found the sat diving super interesting. I did go away and watch a few videos about the industry so I could get a better visual for things like the Bell.

Will Dean's The Chamber is a taut and riveting murder mystery that takes readers into the claustrophobic world of saturation diving. Set aboard the Deep Topaz, a state-of-the-art diving support vessel, the novel crafts an intense psychological thriller centered around a high-stakes scenario where isolation and stress breed suspicion and fear.

The story begins with the introduction of Ellen Brooke and her five colleagues, all seasoned saturation divers from various corners of the globe. Their mission is routine yet perilous: a month-long stay aboard the Deep Topaz, living and working in a hyperbaric chamber, a highly controlled environment necessary for deep-sea exploration. However, what begins as a professional assignment quickly spirals into a nightmarish ordeal.

The premise of The Chamber is a masterclass in psychological suspense. The confined setting of the hyperbaric chamber serves as a pressure cooker for the divers, amplifying the sense of isolation and tension. When one diver is found dead in his bunk, the environment transforms from one of routine to a dangerous crucible of paranoia and distrust. The added complication of having to endure four more days of decompression—during which the chamber must remain sealed to avoid fatal decompression sickness—heightens the stakes and intensifies the drama.

Dean’s plotting is meticulous, weaving a complex web of suspense as the divers grapple with the reality of a killer among them. The murder mystery unfolds with a slow burn, as each chapter reveals new layers of the characters' personalities and potential motives. Dean excels in creating a palpable sense of dread and uncertainty, making every interaction and decision fraught with tension. The suspense is expertly sustained through a series of red herrings and unexpected twists, keeping readers on edge as they attempt to piece together the clues.

Character development is a standout feature in The Chamber. Ellen Brooke is a well-drawn protagonist, whose inner strength and determination become increasingly apparent as the mystery unfolds. Her background and experiences provide depth to her character, making her both relatable and compelling. The other divers are also richly developed, each bringing their own histories, fears, and complexities to the narrative. Their interactions and evolving relationships are central to the story, as Dean explores themes of trust, survival, and the impact of extreme stress on human behavior.

The novel's setting is a character in itself, with the claustrophobic confines of the hyperbaric chamber adding a tangible sense of unease. The isolation of the chamber, coupled with the technical aspects of saturation diving, creates a unique and gripping backdrop for the mystery. Dean’s detailed descriptions of the environment and the divers' experiences lend authenticity to the story, immersing readers in the high-stakes world of underwater exploration.

Fans of the murder mystery genre will find much to appreciate in The Chamber. The combination of a confined setting, a ticking clock, and a deeply unsettling sense of paranoia provides a thrilling read. Dean’s skillful blending of character-driven drama and intricate plotting ensures that the novel is both intellectually stimulating and emotionally engaging. The novel’s exploration of psychological tension and the impact of extreme conditions on human behavior adds layers of depth to the mystery, making it a standout entry in the genre.

Will Dean’s The Chamber is a riveting murder mystery that leverages its unique setting and complex character dynamics to deliver a gripping and thought-provoking thriller. With its intense atmosphere, intricate plotting, and rich character development, the novel is a must-read for fans of the genre seeking a suspenseful and immersive experience.

Thank you NetGalley and Atria Books for a copy of "The Chamber" by Will Dean. I will read anything he writes! Always filled with suspense and twists, his writing makes you feel uncomfortable in a way that gives you adrenaline and gives you the need to keep reading. It gives you the urge to have to know what's next. I finished this book very quickly; I literally brought it everywhere with me. I was obsessed. I recommend this book to anyone who loves horror, thriller, suspense, and creepy ocean vibes! I felt claustrophobic the entire time, a very interesting experience that no book has managed to do before.

The amount of times I wanted to fall asleep while reading this book could have tied the number of gold medals USA received during the Paris Olympics.
It did have a few redeeming qualities, however, not much to make me a fan.
All the extra stories the characters kept telling about past excursions made me sleepy. The fact that the people outside the vessel weren't rushing to get these people out of a bad environment pissed me off and the ending was so annoying.
After loving the authors last book I was expecting so much more but sadly left disappointed.

Thank you to the publisher for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

OMG, Will Dean's mind has me feeling incredibly claustrophobic! He's deeply disturbed in all the right ways.

This was probably the most freaky locked room mystery that I've ever read, being that it takes place in a hyperbaric chamber! Six deep sea divers are locked inside, and one by one, they start dying a mysterious death. Is one of the divers a killer, or is it someone from outside of the chamber?

This was such a unique plot, and the author clearly did a lot of research. While I enjoyed this one, there were times when it dragged a bit for me. Throughout the story, the divers would tell stories about their past, and I didn't always find those parts super interesting. I was invested in knowing why everyone was dying, and there was one quite shocking twist that I never expected. The ending was confusing, and I'm not really sure what exactly happened.

Thank you, @netgalley and @atriabooks, for the #gifted e-arc!

Ellen Brooke is a saturation diver, locked in a pressurized chamber with five male divers for a month to work at the bottom of the North Sea when one by one her fellow divers start dying. Ellen is one of few female saturation divers in an industry dominated by men. As her colleagues start to die, Ellen is not sure who she can trust and with a lot of elements beyond her control, Ellen questions everyone and everything around her in this tiny chamber.

This atmosphere Will Dean has created in this book is nothing short of stunning. It's chilling, claustrophobic, and generally creepy. The POV was different than what I'm used to reading, where there was very little dialog, and the book really revolves around Brooke and her internal thoughts. The book kept me guessing until the end and I really enjoyed being thoroughly submerged in the storyline.

Thank you to NetGalley for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria books for an ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest review. This book officially publishes on 8/6/24!

This book absolutely made me feel claustrophobic even though I generally don’t have a fear of tight spaces. The author did a great job of crafting a sense of dread, even though the majority of this novel takes place in a confined space. The setting for this book was absolutely unique to anything else I have read, which I enjoyed. Giving this one three stars because of both pacing and the way the novel wraps up. Although I understood what the author was trying to do in the middle/end of the novel in terms of pacing, to me it felt like a complete 180 from the lightening-fast, gripping chapters from the beginning. That being said, if you are looking for a book with a unique backdrop or a strong sense of dread is what you look for in your thrillers, I would recommend giving this one a read. If you do decide to pick this one up, though, please check any relevant trigger warnings before reading!