Title: Drowning: The Rescue of Flight 1421
Author: T.J. Newman
Year published: 2023
Category: Adult fiction (thriller)
Pages: 304 pages
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Location: (my 2023 Google Reading map): USA (HI)
Summary: Flight attendant turned New York Times bestselling author T. J. Newman returns with an edge-of-your-seat thriller about a commercial jetliner that crashes into the ocean and sinks to the bottom with passengers trapped inside—and the extraordinary rescue operation to save them.
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: Oh. My. Gosh. Such an awesome book. I really liked T.J. Newman's first novel, Falling (link to my review) and this one was just as good. I read it in two sittings.
I grew to really care about the 12 who were trapped in the plane as we learned about them, could imagine being them, and wanted them to survive. I also liked the characters on the periphery, the Naval and Coast Guard crew, and the contractors who were trying to rescue the people on the plane.
At first I worried that the book would freak me out about flying or be too gruesome, but it didn't and it isn't. Yes, there are descriptions of people dying, but think of the movie Titanic, lots of dead that you don't know is far easier to read about than just a few that you do (why do you think the news focuses on individuals during war, etc?).
Newman obviously knows her way around a plane, the training the crew has had, and what happens in an emergency. It all felt so real without being overly technical. She gives the reader just enough to make us feel like we're there, but not so much that I want to gloss over it.
Reading this novel was like watching the rescues of the Chilean miners and the Thai soccer team: tense; nail biting; and emotional. Do you remember those events? Were you riveted to the news? If so, read this book.
Challenges for which this counts:
- Literary Escapes--Hawai'i
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