bookswithlydscl's Reviews (639)

3.75* - really solid and enjoyable christmas set, campy, 80s era horror.

Part Memoir, part mystery, is a novel but also not. We traverse through the town of Greenwood and the lives and secrets of its inhabitants jumping around people, and time.
This isn't a straight A to B linear storyline but weaves through time, moving backwards and forwards with fragments of ideas, memories and story dropping in and out. Very SGJ, definitely not one to start with.if you're new to his work.

4.25*

6 divers locked together in a pressurised hyperbaric chamber. Sealed away from the world for a month to conduct deep water pipe repair work, this close knit team has to work and live together and trust each other with their lives. Only it doesn't quite go to plan and after the discovery of a dead team member, suspicions rise, paranoia creeps in and the remaining team face 4 days of depressurisation wondering who did and who could be next.

The Chamber works really well as an incredibly tense and claustrophobic locked room thriller. It's a slow burn story until about 40% in when the action starts to rise but that slower pace does serve to build a vivid picture of life in what is a pretty unique story setting. There is a little repetition in the narrative during this point but it also serves to highlight the rinse and repeat nature of the team's lives in that confined space.

The nature of the story being a locked room, you know as a reader that you can't believe everything being laid out in front of you and I think Brooke makes for a great unreliable narrator (a trope that when done well, as it is here, I love). I found myself compulsively reading as I couldn't figure the how of the situation. That my feelings echoed the bewildered and frankly traumatised team, meant I was trying to work out the mystery along with them. I felt their frustration as things didn't seem to work despite their best efforts and I felt that sense of mistrust as the group shrank.

Despite this build up the ending when it came fell a little flat for me, it was a little too ambiguous and didn't quite have the wow factor because of it. However, it has stayed in my mind and I have mulled it over ever since so with a little distance from the initial reading experience I would say that it's pretty effective despite that initial sense of disappointment.

Thriller and locked room mystery fans won't be disappointed in this book - just remember to breathe as you read because that claustrophobic setting is the absolute star of the show.

Thank you to Netgalley and Hodder and Stoughton for a digital review copy of "The Chamber" in exchange for my honest and voluntary review.

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Raw notes - tense, claustrophobic, locked room thriller
Little slow until 40% in but built the atmosphere and picture of life in that setting well.
Ending fell a little flat - felt a little ambiguous and would have liked a more 'wow' impact for the ending.
Unreliable narrator - I love

One of my least favourite installments.

Ending fell a little bit flat for me
Loved the setting and tight timeline

another fine instalment made better by it finally being Rita and Ham's wedding

3.25*  - fine, safe edition in the series

Well that was deliciously dark. Enjoyed that one a lot.