Whalefall - Daniel Kraus

Whalefall

By Daniel Kraus

  • Release Date: 2023-08-08
  • Genre: Adventure Sci-Fi
Score: 4
4
From 109 Ratings
$13.99 On itunes Buy on Amazon

Description

A USA TODAY BESTSELLER
Named a Best Book of 2023 by Book Riot, Shelf Awareness, and NPR

The Martian meets 127 Hours in this “astoundingly great” (Gillian Flynn, #1 New York Times bestselling author) and scientifically accurate thriller about a scuba diver who’s been swallowed by an eighty-foot, sixty-ton sperm whale and has only one hour to escape before his oxygen runs out.

Jay Gardiner has given himself a fool’s errand—to find the remains of his deceased father in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Monastery Beach. He knows it’s a long shot, but Jay feels it’s the only way for him to lift the weight of guilt he has carried since his dad’s death by suicide the previous year.

The dive begins well enough, but the sudden appearance of a giant squid puts Jay in very real jeopardy, made infinitely worse by the arrival of a sperm whale looking to feed. Suddenly, Jay is caught in the squid’s tentacles and drawn into the whale’s mouth where he is pulled into the first of its four stomachs. He quickly realizes he has only one hour before his oxygen tanks run out—one hour to defeat his demons and escape the belly of a whale.

Suspenseful and cinematic, Whalefall is an “powerfully humane” (Owen King, New York Times bestselling author) thriller about a young man who has given up on life…only to find a reason to live in the most dangerous and unlikely of places.

Reviews

  • Grieved with me

    5
    By Margrettwokids
    Got me through a family death

  • Glaring Flaws

    4
    By HoldInTheSpam
    I changed my rating from 5 stars to 4 for one main reason: the relationship between Jay and his father. To me it felt like that subplot was just justification for emotional abuse. If I were writing this story, I wouldn’t have given the father any time of day and would have had Jay cut himself off from the rest of his family for enabling the father. The ending was also a bit too vague and abrupt for me.

  • Too much an anatomy lesson

    3
    By what happened to good movies
    I want to love this book. But there was so much scientific anatomy that I got bored. And the lyrical poetic nature of it just did not hit home for me.

  • A very entertaining read

    4
    By Amigo73
    Rarely do I give 4 stars. Rarely does a book deserve them. But Whalefall was a solidly good read. I read it in one sitting because it seemed wrong to break up the momentum. The analogies and symbolism were just a delight too. It was like The Old Man and the Sea meets Jonah.

  • Disappointed

    2
    By Corwinter
    I had high expectations for this book. Compared to the Martian it is plodding, predictable, implausible and just… sad.

  • Tears

    5
    By Robertshdbrb
    It was a blessing to have stumbled upon this book the day it released. I had recently read The Martian by Andy Weir, and seeing this book connected to both The Martian and 127hrs in its description intrigued me. It was so much more than I was prepared for. I came for a fictional diving story, but I fell in love with the relationship between father and son weaving throughout it all. As the story began to unravel, I cried. Maybe it was a fluke. I cried again. I'm surprised. I cried again. And again. And again. It was so beautiful and cathartic, and although my idyllic relationship with my own father is far and away the antithesis of the character's, this story stirred up all of the best moments I've had with my dad, and brought me to ponder the painful loss that eventually will come. To the author - Thank you so much. All of your work was worth it. This has become my new favorite book.

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