A ripping thriller that kept my earbuds (metaphorically) glued to my head.

Six minutes after takeoff, Flight 1421 crashes into the Pacific Ocean. During the evacuation, an engine explodes and the plane is flooded. Those still alive are forced to close the doors—but it’s too late. The plane sinks to the bottom with twelve passengers trapped inside.

More than two hundred feet below the surface, engineer Will Kent and his eleven-year-old daughter Shannon are waist-deep in water and fighting for their lives.

Their only chance at survival is an elite rescue team on the surface led by professional diver Chris Kent – Shannon’s mother and Will’s soon-to-be ex-wife – who must work together with Will to find a way to save their daughter and rescue the passengers from the sealed airplane, which is now teetering on the edge of an undersea cliff.

There’s not much time.

There’s even less air.

With devastating emotional power and heart-stopping suspense, Drowning is an unforgettable thriller about a family’s desperate fight to save themselves and the people trapped with them – against impossible odds.

Review:

I really enjoyed TJ Newman’s debut novel, Falling, which I also listened to on audio and reviewed here and I’ve been looking forward to her sophomore book, Drowning.  Both stories are set in and around commercial airliners and both are ripping thrillers but they’re nonetheless quite different.

Drowning is about the rescue of people trapped within a plane which has crashed into the ocean off the coast of Hawaii. The story mostly takes place over the course of just a few hours. The blurb (above) describes the story very well so I won’t add to it here. My earbuds were glued to my ears and I kept finding excuses to listen, I was that engrossed.

The narration by Steven Weber was superb. He had a great range of character voices and his pacing and tone were fantastic. Mr. Weber narrated most of the book, including POV from the lead character, Will Kent, and also from one of the rescuers and briefly from another male character too – I’d estimate approximately 60-70% of the listen.

Laura Benanti narrated the sections from Will’s not-quite-ex-wife, Chris Kent’s perspective, plus that of a female Navy officer involved in the rescue attempt. It was good but not quite to the standard of Mr. Weber’s.  I thought her character voice for the Navy officer was too high-pitched and girlish for the way the officer was described in the text. There was also not quite the same character differentiation in Ms. Benanti’s range as compared to Mr. Weber. Rating her narration separately, I’d give her a B and him and A, so it averages to a B+.

I don’t want to give away what happens at the end but I will say that it does end well. I believe Falling is being made into a movie. Drowning would also be great on the big screen – the way the story unfolds is very cinematic.

The tension is pretty much constant and the story is action-packed. There is also time spent on characterisation; I cared about these people and what happened to them.

The recent loss of the Titan submersible made some of the subject matter in Drowning even more topical and, due to the YouTube rabbit hole I fell down learning about implosions, pressure and deep water diving, I probably understood it better overall. Not only that, I could also tell that much of the technical  aspects were accurate, which made it easier for me to go along with other things in the story which either seemed a little unrealistic or where I had no clue whether it was realistic or not.

I don’t listen to many thrillers these days. I think I lucked out when Ms. Newman’s promo tweets about her book made it into my Twitter feed because both of her books have been crackers.

Narration:  B+

Book Content:  A-

Steam Level: 0

Genre:  Thriller

Publisher:  Simon & Schuster