A good book might reveal something about yourself that you didn't know already, but I think a good book can also reinforce something you already knew about yourself. For me, it is the fact that I never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever want to go scuba diving.

This book was marketed as Horror/Thriller for some reason, but I think this sits squarely in the Wilderness Survival genre, which I've read before. Unlike The Revenant or The North Passage however, this extreme scenario didn't take place over days or weeks, but more like 90 in-fiction minutes that I honestly found quite harrowing (I'd never imagined the phrase, "palm meat" before, and I don't think I want to again).

But there's more going on than just the pivotal moment literally depicted on the (very cool) cover. Our protagonist is a bitter teenager who had a very difficult relationship with his father that jostled some very deep, specific, and uncomfortable memories of my own dad. Paternal disappointment and filial spite run deep in this story, and hoo boy that hit way closer to home than I was expecting.

Chapters are extremely short - the page count is very deceptive on this one - and are titled by how much PSI is left in the scuba tank. So the first several chapters before we even get in that water are all titled "3000 psi", but the first time that changes (chapter "2974 psi") I'm already stressing out, and Murphy's Law is essentially the secondary antagonist here.

I've seen some other reviewers complain this is just "daddy issues inside a whale", which comes across to me as someone using humor to deflect from addressing a difficult topic. I found that using what honestly is one of the most unique survival scenario I've come across in a long time as a vehicle for exploring grief within an in-fiction time limit was super novel, and executed extremely well. Gonna be thinking about this one for a while.