Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for this ARC!!

I have not read any of this author's books before, but I appreciate the writing style! While this was not like my usual heart-pounding, seat-gripping thriller, I did get invested by the end. The author was helpful in including tid bits for specific diving terms prior to the beginning of the novel, and that was very handy. I felt fully enveloped with the crew and also taking each minute and hour in the chamber with them. The ending may or may not have me slightly confused still, but overall a good read.

This book has a super intriguing premise and I loved a lot about the setup: creepy and atmospheric deep-sea chamber housing saturation divers on a mission that goes wrong. Similar to why I love space books, I loved the detailed descriptions of the technology and equipment and how the main character had to meticulously solve each little (big) problem that came up. After a while we kind of deviated from those things that I love in a sciency thriller and moved into a mystery that became repetitive and way more focused on the other characters’ pasts than I was interested in. While I do appreciate that Will Dean likes his twists, this one (or two) didn’t surprise or hit me as much as I would have wanted in order to make the entire book feel worth the read. I’m sure I’ll keep picking up this author’s books in the future, because his unique settings and initial plots are intriguing enough to give a try, but this one definitely was not as much of a favorite as The Last One was.

I thought this book was okay. The beginning dragged for me with all of the technical information being shared. Towards the middle things got better, although time dragged for me much like it did for the characters. The ambiguous ending left me feeling unsatisfied.

THE CHAMBER by Will Dean is a psychological crime thriller/mystery with the ultimate locked room. Six experienced saturation divers begin to die, one-by-one, in their place of work, a hyperbaric chamber. If you are claustrophobic, this may not be the book for you, but you will be missing out on an amazing who-dun-it thriller that leaves you questioning your assumptions all the way to the last page.

Locked in a hyperbaric chamber is a tight and hot environment in which to live as six professional saturation divers work in shifts on deep sea oil rigs. They all depend on each other for their lives and know there is no exit until after decompression. After only one dive shift, one of the divers is discovered dead in his bunk and then it happens again. The divers can find no reason for these deaths and do not know who to trust. Now, as the company calls a halt to the month-long job, the divers must wait through four days of decompression as they continue to die one-by-one.

The story is told by Ellen Brooke, one of few female saturation divers, and she is in the chamber with five other experienced divers. Ellen is a wife and mother who does not know if she will return home. As the clock ticks down the time of decompression, the dead bodies increase and so does the level of suspicion and conspiracy theories. I always thought I was slightly claustrophobic until I read this book and now, I know I am much more claustrophobic than I believed. This is definitely not a job for the feint of heart.

I loved this book! I learned about a career I knew nothing about and would never attempt but found fascinating. I changed my mind so many times as to who or what was killing the divers. This mystery/thriller is fast paced, even with the explanations of sat diving and the countdown to the end builds to a heart pounding climax. No spoilers here, but make sure you read to the very last page.

I highly recommend this psychological crime thriller/mystery!

We love a book that opens with a diagram. I truly appreciated the combination of fiction with true science. It felt like everything was 100 percent plausible (a la, Michael Crichton or Andy Weir). It was very realistic in that sense. I truly did want to like this book, but it just lacked a level of charisma that made it uninteresting to me. Still, I think the tense and suspenseful scenes were very well done. Everything in between was a bit of a drag for me. The environmental setting of this book really helped adding to the sense of claustrophobia (again, quite well done). However, it was a bit of a double-edged sword, because there wasn’t much exploring going on. Turns out, there’s not really anything that interesting about being stuck in a metal chamber. I think this book has an audience out there. Those who enjoy the above-mentioned authors, or the more recently released Ghost Station by S.A. Barnes would probably enjoy this book.

Thank you netgalley for the ARC. I REALLY wanted to love this. The Last One is one of my favourite thrillers of all time so I was VERY excited! Sadly, this fell flat for me. I learned a lot about deep dea diving but unfortunately It isn't a topic I am interested in and I didn't have the claustrophobic feeling that I hoped to feel while reading this. I will continue to read Will Dean but this wasn't for me!

3.75

This book is phenomenal on audio. The narrator does such an amazing job at portraying the character slowly going a little stir crazy inside the Chamber as the book progresses. It was such a fun listen and if you’re a huge fan of audiobooks I highly recommend listening to this one. I was extremely excited to dive into this one (no pun intended) when I received the ARC copy a while ago. I have never read anything like this and it has since made me excited to read other suspense locked in/claustrophobic novels. It is not necessarily a thriller or horror alone but the suspense and the drawn out, weighed down feeling of the narrative really pulled the reader in to make you feel like you’re also stuck inside the Chamber with these divers. I think the writing style and the way the narrator is kind of telling us the story as it goes along is helpful for those who may not know much about the ocean, deep sea diving, etc. I really felt the tension of the Chamber and the suspense our main character was going through, like when will this be over, when will she escape? My only concern with this book is that with the drawn out story and the long time spent under the sea in the Chamber, the ending felt the exact opposite and rushed. I was left confused and agitated at the characters, the author, and the book as a whole because of the ending. Without the rushed ending and with maybe a bit more explanation this would’ve been super close to a 5 star read for me! Still an amazing narration I highly recommend the audio!

This starts off as a very intense read and a bit thrilling but an about halfway through. It does seem to plateau as a story wraps up. It does pick back up again, but I’m still left, wanting it to be more thrilling aspect.. I also did feel that the ending didn’t really explain enough and left me still wondering why so I wish you would have wrapped it up a little bit better but overall it still is a good read.

I am loving Will’s books in the summer time! The Chamber had me hooked from the very first page. It felt like such an intense and edge of your seat read. The writing was really descriptive and well researched - it felt like I was a part of this crew. It also kept me guessing until the very end. I think this would make a great book club pick as there is so much to speculate and talk about too. The only thing that bugged me is the unnecessary and prolonged character back stories that didn’t have much to do with the actual storyline. But, other than that I had a hard time putting this suspenseful book down!

Will Dean brings us a locked room thriller. Ellen Brooke is part of a team of divers working via hyperbaric chamber under the sea. After completing a dive, Ellen comes above into the chamber, and one of her coworkers has died. Shortly after that, another one succumbs to a mysterious fate. Slowly, one by one her coworkers are dying. However, they are stuck in this chamber for four days while they decompress. Can Ellen make it out alive?

This book is very technical, especially in the beginning, with a lot of terms most people will not be familiar with. It’s a pretty cluster phobic book, but I wasn’t really into it. I kept hoping for more clues or action, other than people just dying.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books

This was a very atmospheric, locked room thriller. Told from one POV, this was a very slow burn. I will say that this was an anxiety inducing read. Could you imagine the panic and fear of being stuck in a small room with no help of getting out 😦😦😦

Thanks to Netgalley and Atria for the arc of The Chamber. I was so excited to get this book. It’s been an anticipated summer read and it did not disappoint. So, let me start by saying that I do not like small spaces. I do not like the thought of being locked in anywhere so reading this made me feel tense and I found myself holding my breath in certain places. I’m not very familiar with saturation or diving so this was all new to me and some parts that described it in detail were not my favorite, but still interesting and I felt like I learned something new. This has definite claustrophobic vibes. Very cool! Enjoyed it.

This book combines the eerie setting of a parabolic chamber in the ocean with a 'locked door' mystery plot.

Ellen is a SAT diver stuck in a parabolic chamber on a job with 5 others. Most of the others she knows and trusts from previous jobs they have worked together, but when divers start dying, she starts to questions how well she knows them.

I really enjoyed most of this book. I found the mystery very intriguing and catchy. I found the characters very interesting and enjoyed their individual stories. I also enjoyed Ellen as a POV character and really liked how Will Dean turned her into an unreliable narrator as the book progressed and you learned more about her past.

I just struggled with visualizing the parabolic chamber and the surroundings, so the book seemed to drag for me in the parts where there was a lot of talk about the chamber and the parts. For example, the chamber is supposed to be underwater and the divers communicate to the people overseeing the mission through speakers, but then there would be people watching the divers from little windows. I did reference the diagram in the front of the book frequently, but still had a hard time with visualizing the setting of the chamber.

Overall a solid book that is different from anything else I have ever read, but The Last One is still my favorite Will Dean book.

The chamber is will deans latest and a unique take on a locked-room mystery! Six divers are in a hyperbolic chamber when one crew member dies the other five begin to worry about being stuck in the chamber after the
death under mysterious circumstances. Another crew member goes sick and it becomes clear that one of them is a killer-but who and why?

This is an interesting premise and a unique twist to the locked room thriller. The genre and trope is one of my favorites, but it does eventually get tired, so it’s refreshing to see a new take on it.

Deans thrillers are always winners and this one will please the many fans!

Thanks to the publisher for the arc via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Locked-room mysteries are a hit-or-miss for me, even though the premise sounds appetizing. However, "The Chamber" stands out as a unique and intriguing addition to the genre, making it one of the definite hits I've read this summer!

If you are into diving, this story is even more fascinating. While a bit over my head, it's full of diving facts and information that add an intriguing layer to the story. I wish I could fully grasp and remember all the facts and information I read!

The story is set in a hyperbaric saturation chamber. The narrator, Ellen, is the only female diver among the six crew members, which is interesting because the author is male.

The tension ramps up when a crew member is found dead in his bunk, and the decompression process begins, lasting four days. Things become even more intense when another member falls ill, and they don't have any answers.

The confined, pressurized environment of the chamber, the constant need for cleanliness, and the looming threat of deadly bacteria make for a truly gripping read. If you're a diving enthusiast or a mystery lover, this book is a must-read that will keep you captivated from start to finish!

Get ready for an incredible ending in "The Chamber"! It's absolutely mind-blowing and will leave you stunned, yet possibly satisfied.

Thank you to Atria Books/Emily Bestler Books for this ARC provided via NetGalley. All opinions are my own and leftvoluntarily.

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Really enjoyed this claustrophobic locked room whodunit. Dean did an amazing job of making 6 people in a pressure chamber slowly start distrusting each other and the details of how deep sea divers and environments and equipment works was a great stage.

Highly recommended for anyone that likes locked room mysteries.

I am one of those weird people who likes to read books about my greatest fears – I guess maybe because that way I can experience things I’m too scared to do in real life? In any case, The Chamber, which features two of my greatest fears (the deep ocean and enclosed spaces), seemed like just the ticket. Six saturation divers are living in a pressurized chamber during a 28-day job in the North Sea, when one of them dies under suspicious circumstances in his bunk. They can’t leave the chamber, because they have to decompress properly or risk death – a process that takes several days. And no one can come in to help them for the same reason. It’s a locked room murder mystery in the most intense circumstances imaginable, and I expected to fly through it.

But much to my surprise, I found this book to be really, really boring. And the problem actually lies in the book’s hook: The divers are trapped in the chamber. So there’s nothing for them to do except sit around and talk while they go through the decompression process. And maybe that still would have been okay, if this was a different type of book: a literary character study, perhaps, that allowed the narrative space to really dive (ha, pun!) into the nuances of these characters and their motivations. But while character development is attempted, it all feels very surface-level (another pun!). Instead, the characters mostly talk about their past experiences, or the experiences of other divers they know, in passages that feel like they could have been lifted directly from Will Dean’s interviews with real people in this profession. Some of their commentary is interesting, but it’s not exciting and does nothing to move the plot forward.

And after so much build-up to the moment when pressure would be equalized and the divers could leave the chamber, I was disappointed that the mystery was never clearly, resolutely resolved. I mean, I think I know what happened, but I definitely wanted one of those “killer explains all of their motivations in a big scene at the end” sorts of moments, rather than the ambiguity we got.

Anyway, The Chamber was a miss for me – but if you decide to read it, I highly recommend that you check out some YouTube videos about saturation diving first. The conditions that these divers live in, their day-to-day in a hyperbaric chamber while they’re on a job, their complex missions on the ocean floor – it’s so fascinating and frightening and truly has to be seen to be believed, and it’ll help to set the scene for this book. Hopefully you’ll have a better experience with it than I did. Thanks to Atria/Emily Bestler Books for the complimentary reading opportunity.

Never would have guessed that I would be so interested in the world of saturation diving. The ultimate locked-room mystery, The Chamber places Brooke and her fellow saturation divers in a hyperbaric chamber and divers start dying and they cannot leave. Being trapped in a small space is creepy enough but adding a murder mystery? Top-tier. This novel is well-researched and captures setting and feeling of being in this chamber, the mystery was engaging and kept me guessing. 3.75 stars rounded up.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

This was a thriller with an unique storyline, 6 deep sea divers are in a hyperbaric chamber, and one by one they start dying. They don't know if someone from the outside is trying to kill them or if the killer is one of the 6 of them inside the chamber. Because of the depths and pressure they cannot just resurface and get out of the chamber, there is a multiple day decompression process before they can leave this chamber. They start to question everything from the people preparing their food and supplies, to the gas they're breathing in the chamber, to the water they brush their teeth with, to the integrity of each other. They don't know who to trust, only that people are dying and something sinister is definitely going on. This was a unique thriller with an enjoyable storyline! 💙📚

Thank you to the author and to the publisher for this ARC of The Chamber, exchange for an honest review.

Wow! I couldn't help but think of the vessel tha5 had loved to see the Titanic. I was totally freaked out. The suspense is terrifying. Shocking why and whom.