This was definitely out of my wheelhouse, but I enjoyed the science behind it. There is no way you would get me in a diving bell or anything under the ocean like this. This was a little too slow for me, but I appreciate how character driven it was. I love them books teach me about new topics and I learned so much during this one.

The Chamber is one of the most horrifyingly claustrophobic, terrifying, stressful psychological thrillers I’ve ever read. And it was awesome in the most horrible way. 😂

@willrdean upped the ante in his brand of deranged, stressful thriller settings with this one. Being set in a literal ticking time bomb of a saturation diving chamber, that will literally kill everyone inside instantly if opened unexpectedly, while meanwhile characters are mysteriously dropping dead inside and there’s nothing anyone can do about it……I swear I don’t think I breathed at any point during this book. Straight tension from start to finish.

You don’t know who to trust, and you feel the level of crazy devolving as the story progresses and the characters slowly lose their grasp on sanity. No spoilers but holy hell - it will keep you guessing and gasping.

This one will haunt me for a long time. And is so so necessary for your summer reading list if you want something unique, gripping and utterly nightmarish. It just can’t be missed.

Many thanks to @atriabooks for the copy

Many thanks to NetGalley and Atria/Emily Bestler Books for gifting me a digital ARC of the latest book by Will Dean, who can do no wrong in my book. All opinions expressed in this review are my own - 5 stars!

Six experienced deep sea saturation divers are locked inside a hyperbaric chamber. They know all the dangers and take all the precautions necessary to survive. Then one of them is found dead. With four days of decompression left before the locked hatch can be opened, the group must now question each other. Will any of them survive?

I cannot imagine the research that had to go into this book, because it was a total immersive (pun intended) experience. It also brings up the fact that we are totally unaware and so unappreciative of all those people who do horrible jobs so that we can go along blissfully unaware in our own lives. If you like a locked-room mystery, this is for you. It's so tense and the countdown is on to see what is happening to these divers. I was shocked at the first twist and a little confused at the end, but that was all part of the fun. This is a don't miss read - highly recommended!

Will Dean is one of my favorite authors and has quickly become an auto read author for me, especially after his book The Last One. The Chamber was another tense, pulse pounding, locked-room style, atmospheric and claustrophobic thriller! It was so hard to put down and I found myself sneaking in pages whenever I had a minute. I loved learning about saturation diving which I’ve always been interested in knowing more about. I’m not sure where he comes up with these crazy ideas but I absolutely love his writing! I will continue to read anything he writes.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Atria for my early digital copy!

⭐️⭐️⭐️ A good concept that falls down at the end. The Chamber is a claustrophobic thriller that definitely holds your attention. Six deep sea divers are locked into a pressure chamber so they can repair oil equipment in the North Sea. Then they start dying. Under pressure and unable to safely decompress, they are trapped in a literal and figurative pressure cooker fighting for their lives.

This is objectively an amazing set up—the environment is richly drawn and the details are very good. You feel the walls closing in around you as you read.

Unfortunately, other aspects of the execution on this left me underwhelmed. The ultimate resolution was meh at best and every so often this book would lean into thinking it was serious literature—I wish it could have just settled into being a fun exciting thriller.

Ultimately this book is fine but forgettable.

I received an arc in exchange for this honest review.

3.75 rounded up. Solid 4 for most of the book, but I think I needed more from the ending. The book is designed to be extremely claustrophobic and introspective. The repetitiveness and slow crawl of the tension is exactly what the characters are feeling inside the chamber. It's suffocating and slow and your mind starts to kind of unravel. I felt like I was losing it a little.

Definitely don't skip the glossary at the beginning. It helps you understand the complex ... system? That the divers are living in and the terms used. I had to suspend reality a little bit so I would stop asking myself logistical questions (how does the chamber not lose pressure when they use the medlock? How do they get in and out of the bell without water rushing in?)

Definitely a locked room suspense book. Wouldn't call it horror or a thriller.

Take out like 50 pages and maybe explain the outcome a bit more and I think it could have been a 5 for me.

Thank you so much to Atria books and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book. It's August now and I've been waiting to read a thrillers that properly shakes my core and here it finally is.

I'm one to normally dislike locked room thrillers but this book just swept me in from page one and couldn't let go until the last second.

It was SO FRICKIN GOOD.

Six deep sea divers isolated deep below the sea work on an oil drilling site totally dependent on their crew to operate their pod remotely for their food, showers, bathroom and information. All is routine with these experienced divers until their teammates start dying putting everyone on edge as to what, how and why this is happening. Will they get back to the top alive once the decompression period is over and what is causing divers to suddenly die? Is it the crew? Is it one of them? Will Dean has done a lot of research to make this accurate and realistic and it really made me claustrophobic and paranoid reading it. If you liked the movie Gravity, you will enjoy this thriller where being alone and your thoughts and mind can become your own worst enemy.

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy. #netgalley #theChamber

The Chamber is a chilling thriller. Six saturation divers are locked in a chamber for a month. During the first dive of their trip, one diver is found dead in his bunk. Then others come quickly after him. As the divers decompress as quickly as possible, they struggle to figure out what is happening.

This book was creepy!! I cannot imagine being a saturation diver to begin with, but I imagine being trapped in a room where people are dying mysteriously. Crazy! This will definitely keep you guessing, but there are some clues that I should have read more into from the beginning.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for this ARC!

I’m a big fan of Will Deans book and I really enjoyed this locked room thriller! The short chapters made this story flow so well. I definitely wasn’t expected to be so invested in these characters, but I really was.

The Chamber is a claustrophobic underwater thriller that I can’t recommend enough!

Dean never disappoints! The Chamber by Will Dean will have you hooked! The surprisingly chilling plot and the twists come flying at you. Loved the pacing and really enjoyed Will Dean's writing style.
This book blew me away. This book was a wild ride from start to finish.
With great writing, so many twists and turns, and truly intriguing characterization The Chamber was such a fun read and I can’t wait to read what he writes next!

Thank You NetGalley and Atria/Emily Bestler Books for your generosity and gifting me a copy of this amazing eARC!

This would be my first Will Dean read and I was so excited to receive a copy of The Chamber.
If you're not into a slow burn, this may not be the one for you. But if you're willing to get through a lot of technical terms and back story of the MC and the team, it's worth it in the end.
The scenery was perfect for a thrilling ride, and I really had a picture painted in my mind, which I loved.
It took me a while to really get into it, but I loved the idea right away so I was invested.
The ending left me feeling like I wanted more, but also ready to put the story to bed.
I would have loved it more if there had been multiple POV, and it probably would have been easier to dig into it, but overall I am happy with the story and I really enjoyed the characters.
If you're a fan of Dean's other books, I would definitely give this a shot.

4.25 stars rounded down.

The first few pages of this book had me scared that I was not going to be able to keep up. I needn’t have worried, it came together and made sense very quickly. I’m not familiar with basically anything under water and I could still follow along.

There’s a reveal or two that’s a surprise, the pacing is good and I definitely was nervous with the suspense of what the heck is going on?!?! However, the ending left me with a couple of big questions.

Advance reader copy provided by Atria and NetGalley but all opinions are my own.

ARC REVIEW🌊🤿🚢☠️⚓️

THE CHAMBER - @willrdean
Pub date: tomorrow! 8/6/24

“And Then There Were None meets The Last Breath in this tense and suspenseful locked-room thriller that takes place inside a hyperbaric chamber from the author of the “brilliant, twisted, and oh so clever” (Chris Whitaker, New York Times bestselling author) novel The Last Thing to Burn.”

😮‍💨 I really didn’t know what to expect going into this one! As far as “locked room” mysteries go, I’m very picky when it comes down to the setting. I felt like this take was very unique! The author did a great job of making you feel like you were actually the one in this cramped, claustrophobic space, breathing in the thick, humid gases— with nowhere to run or escape to.

There were alot of technical terms/diving “slang” in the first ~20% of the book, but the author does include a glossary to refer to. (He definitely did his research👏🏻)
I feel like it was a little *too much* information to absorb. But, soon after, the story progresses.. the pace picks up.. and that’s when things get crazy🫣🫣

It was also a little tough trying to keep up with everyone’s nicknames / actual names. I found myself flipping back quite a few times to remind myself who was who. Luckily, the story is told through only one POV.

Overall I really enjoyed this one! It definitely opened my eyes to the extreme dangers that saturation divers are exposed to. From the first page, you can truly feel the tension + anxiety building, and it just keeps rising from there once the team members start dying one by one ☠️. But the question is.. what, or who, is killing them?

It’s safe to say, after reading this, I won’t be deep sea diving or entering a hyperbaric chamber anytime soon🫠🫠🫠

I’d recommend this one if you like:
Locked room mysteries
Unique settings
Unreliable/unhinged narrators
Psychological twists

Thank you to @netgalley + @atriabooks for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest review. This one hits shelves TOMORROW, 8/6!

#bookreview #netgalleyreview #thechamber #psychologicalthriller #thrillerbooks #thrillerbookreview #willdeanauthor #bookstagramfeature

Classic locked door trope. Tensions high, and divers dropping like flies. While it did leave me on edge, the ending fell short.

This plot is my worst nightmare. It’s bad enough dealing with a potential murderer on land, but when you’re stuck in a hyperbaric chamber for days with no option to escape or to even get help, that’s unthinkable. Admittedly, I could not finish this story because it made me feel anxious and claustrophobic and oddly like I couldn’t breathe. I think that’s also a sign of a good story, but I couldn’t do it!

Thank you to NetGalley, Atria Books, and Will Dean for the eARC copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Will Dean does it again! I went into this book expecting a claustrophobic thriller and that’s exactly what I got from this. The Chamber hooked me from the very beginning and I was eager to continue reading. The chapters are short and suspenseful and the pace is quick and engaging, which was perfect for this twisty thriller. One of the things I really appreciated about this was the glossary at the beginning of the book that defines a lot of diving lingo to help provide context to what the divers are saying. I can tell there was significant research done to provide more to this atmosphere that Will Dean created. My only downfall with this was that the ending left me a little confused. I know ambiguous endings are a thing, but personally I felt like I needed just a little more clarity.

Will Dean certainly loves his ambiguous endings! No spoilers here, but I was certain the ending meant one thing until @planwithemm told me she thought differently.

THE CHAMBER is a locked room thriller on steroids, and this time the pressure is literal! Swipe for the synopsis, but essentially, four deep-sea divers are locked in a hyperbaric chamber on the ocean floor. When divers start dying, there's a four-day decompression required before the others can get out.

I loved how vividly this chamber was described. I could feel the anxiety of these characters mounting as the book went on, and was feeling a bit claustrophobic for them towards the end! Understandably, some characters began to go a bit nuts.

The technicalities of sat diving are explained really well, in a way that gets the gist across to someone like me who knows nothing about it without getting too caught up in explanations. The book has a glossary and images to help the reader out, too.

THE CHAMBER is a really fun read that will undoubtedly lead to some interesting discussions. If you've read it already, I would love to hear what you thought of the ending! If you haven't yet, it's out today. Happy reading!

4 out of 5 Stars!

When 6 experienced saturation divers go down for a routine mission, they realize soon enough it is anything but normal. Locked inside a hyperbaric chamber deep under the sea, one of them is found dead in a bunk. But they just can’t leave. They have 4 days to decompress before the chamber can be safely opened. Was it an unfortunate accident, or was someone taking them out one by one?

“The Chamber” by Will Dean is a book I haven’t ever read before! I got very educated about saturation diving along with unfolding a mystery. “The Chamber” is a very fast-paced thriller that left me with goosebumps. This book has suspense, twists, and a mysterious vibe to it. I truly felt like I was in the chamber along with the characters watching their fate unfold.

In my opinion, this book felt very repetitive. Maybe it’s on purpose, as working in the chamber comes with very repetitive tasks. But, I was just yelling at the characters to get on with it! If it was on purpose, I felt like the author could have made it more clear what the motive was. Also, this book was very confusing on different levels. Learning about saturation diving was so interesting, but there were a lot of terms thrown at you fast. There was a dictionary at the beginning of the novel with common terminology that was super helpful, but I felt like I was constantly flipping back and forth. Every main character has a real name along with a diving nickname, which I didn’t necessarily care for, as it was hard to keep track of all the names. I understand it’s realistic, but I didn’t like how the real names were introduced towards the end of the book after I had already gotten to know all the characters.

This was a very twisted, psychological thriller. Even though I guessed the big twist and the ending, I still did enjoy reading this book and learning more about the motives. Along with that, I really enjoyed the main character, Ellen. You learned a lot about why she became a saturation diver and the challenges that come with being a woman in a man’s field. Even without the main plot, I would have read a book just about her and her job.

Pick up “The Chamber” by Will Dean on August 6th, 2024!

Thank you to Atria Books, Will Dean, and Netgalley for a digital ARC of this novel in exchange for my honest review.

This new thriller from Will Dean is a take on the “locked room” mystery and I normally love those. Unfortunately this one fell pretty flat for me. This is a veryyyyy slow burn, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but all of the details about saturation diving were boring to me. Also a lot of pages are taken up with the divers telling stories about their past experiences. The problem with this to me was that these stories didn’t really shed much light on the characters and just seemed like filler. This could have been better as a short story but it just went on too long with too little. I did enjoy “The Last One” by this author so I would probably still check out his stuff in the future!