I read this book in 1 day. I'm terrified of the water and being in cramped spaces, so this whole book made it hard to breathe.

6 saturation divers are locked in a hyperbaric chamber. After the first day, members of the team begin dying. Is it something sinister? Or is it just contamination?

This book was scary and fast paced, something I come to expect from Will Dean books.

Will Dean! This wasn't as good as his first book but I enjoyed it nonetheless. I recommend for spooky season!

The Chamber by Will Dean is an exciting, intense, locked room thriller! In a unique setting, a hyperbaric chamber used by deep sea “saturation divers,” mysterious mini-disasters occur, and the six divers in the chamber experience harrowing moments, psychological strain, and complicated emotions added on to the intensity of their life-or-death work.
When their fellow divers begin to die mysteriously, the intensity accelerates as those who remain must try to figure out how and why things are going so terribly wrong.
Dean’s prose is wonderfully descriptive, especially of the beauty of the deep sea, “space inverted.” Details about living far underwater, daily life in a cramped chamber and the technical details of saturation diving and life as an aquanaut are fascinating.
Be advised there are graphic details and imagery of some of the unpleasant outcomes of injury and death in this situation. The allusions to Shakespeare’s works throughout the book are especially meaningful.
No spoilers here, this is an edge-of-your-seat, stay up and read all night thriller!
The main character, Ellen Brooks, is a smart, tough, but sympathetic character who mentally juggles pragmatism of her high-risk chosen occupation with her emotions about missing her husband and kids back on land. The rest of the characters are nicely fleshed out and believable, making this novel character driven as well as action driven.
This is such unique locked room suspense. Grab this and get ready for an incredibly intense thriller!

Thank you to Atria/Emily Bestler Books and NetGalley for the ARC. This is my honest review.

It started off well--I was intrigued by the locked room mystery concept and learned about saturation diving which I knew nothing about previously. But it really slowed down after the first several chapters and I kept getting bored/distracted.

Sadly, I didn't enjoy this. I was originally so excited to read this but ended up overhyping this in my head. I was very underwhelmed throughout the entire book :( I think the author wanted to fit way too much into this book that it took away from the plot. I'm familiar with the topic especially diving, but it still felt like it was so slow and certain events were just randomly thrown in to make it more exciting. The ending was very anti-climatic and I felt like nothing really ended up happening.

I do see a lot of other readers loving this book, so while it may not have been for me, you might enjoy this book. I do want to give the author another chance, because I've heard great things about his previous thriller, The Last One.

I love this author and again his newest book The Chamber did not disappoint. I did feel that the start of this book was somewhat slow and a little much with the details- I felt slightly confused and hoped the remaining of the book was not as technical. I pushed through and did enjoy the story and really liked the characters. I do think this one is my least favorite book of his so far, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it.

Will Dean, you’ve done it again. You’ve had us holding our breath, literally underwater.

Well researched, fast paced, edge of your seat waiting to see what happened and who did it.

This is my second read by Dean, and it was everything I expected after reading The Last One.

Solid 4.5 stars!

Thank you NetGalley and Atria/Emily Bestler Books for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Classic Will Dean! I loved his last book (the one on a cruise ship) and was not disappointed with this, though the two books are very different. I feel like I got a lot of knowledge about what these divers did yet it was really interesting. It was a little long for a book in the mysteries space but overall, I think this is a solid read.

2.5⭐️ rounded up

I loved the setting and the feeling of claustrophobia throughout this book. The build up of stress when the main character was diving made me feel like I was experiencing it too. I appreciated the glossary in the beginning, as some of the diving descriptions were quite technical.

I found the names/nicknames hard to keep track of. It was also slow for most of the book, then picked up at the end and finished abruptly. There wasn’t much explanation about what happened and I was hoping for a twist or at the very least, more resolution.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

The beginning of this book was kind of slow, but once the deaths started happening the pace picked up! My theory throughout the whole book was that the main characters family was dead, and I loved being right. There was still surprises I didn’t see coming! The main character being the killer was kind of a surprise, especially with her framing the other survivor for the murders! She’s fully convinced he did it, and she didn’t. It makes me sad for the guy!

I was back and forth on my rating for this one and I think ultimately, the pacing is what took me down to a 2. It just didn’t have any suspense or enough twists along the way to keep me tethered. I didn’t mind the thorough diving explanations or chatter, but the author kept the cast very unorganized with their real name vs nicknames using the interchangeably and it got very confusing. I didn’t feel connected with anyone and frankly, didn’t care about anyone’s fates.

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.