Adrift by Will Dean

🔥🔥🔥 Due out 19 February 2026 🔥🔥🔥

Description from Goodreads:

"Three of them adrift on the narrowboat.

Mother, son, and wickedness.

Peggy Jenkins and her teenage son, Samson, live on a remote stretch of canal in the Midlands. She is a writer and he is a schoolboy. Together, they battle against the hardness and manipulation of the man they live with. To the outside world he is a husband and father. To them, he is a captor.

Their lives are tightly controlled; if any perceived threat appears, their mooring is moved further down the canal, further away from civilisation. Until the day when the power suddenly shifts, and nothing can be the same again."

📚📚📚📚📚📚

One of the most claustrophobic and tense books I've read in a long time

I've been a huge fan of Will Dean for a while now, having previously read The Chamber, First Born and the absolutely harrowing The Last Thing To Burn. He really is the master when it comes to building a thick atmosphere and that slow, creeping sense of dread that just gets under your skin. Adrift is no exception and it honestly had me on pins almost as much as Peggy was.

The story follows Peggy and her son Samson as they find themselves in an unthinkable situation. What makes this book so powerful is how Dean handles the emotional weight of their journey. I found the scenes involving the horrendous bullying Samson faces at school particularly tough to get through. They're genuinely heartbreaking and felt very real, which only added to the protective instinct you feel for them as a reader.

It isn't an easy read by any means, but it's incredibly well written. The way the tension ramps up is just brilliant and I couldn't put it down even when things got really dark. If you've read his previous work you'll know he doesn't pull any punches, and this definitely feels like another masterclass in suspense. It's a gripping, emotional rollercoaster that stayed with me long after I finished the last page.

Thanks to the author, Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for enabling me to read this difficult but powerful book.

📚📚📚📚📚📚

The Chamber by Will Dean

 Description from Goodreads:

"Six experienced saturation divers are locked inside a hyperbaric chamber. Calm and professional, they know that rapid decompression would be fatal and so they work in shifts, breathing helium, and surviving in hot, close quarters.

Then one of them is found dead in his bunk.

With four days of decompression to go before the locked hatch to the chamber can be safely opened, the group must watch one another’s backs at all times. And when another diver is discovered unresponsive, everyone is on edge. What…or who…is taking them out one by one? And will any of them still be alive by the time the four days is up or will paranoia, exhaustion, suspicion, and pressure destroy them all?"

📚📚📚📚📚📚

I have read a couple of Will Dean's previous books and have enjoyed them and this was no exception.

The Chamber is a take on the 'locked-room' genre but with a difference; six divers are locked in a hyperbaric chamber ready to start their four week shift working on oil lines in the depths of the Atlantic.  All seems to be going to plan until one of the divers is found dead ... then another - what is going on?  Are they being picked off one by one?  Who is doing it?  One of the divers or someone from the outside?  So many questions!

Written from the perspective of Ellen Brooke, one of the very few female deep sea divers; this book is full of atmosphere and tension and whilst it has quite a bit of "technical-speak" at the beginning, it's necessary for the story and clearly Will Dean has done an awful lot of research as it felt authentic to me.

With great characters, oodles of tension and a real sense of claustrophobia, this is a great thriller that kept me guessing right until the end and afterwards and many thanks to the author, Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for enabling me to read and share my thoughts of The Chamber.

👇👇👇👇👇👇

Connect with the author:

X

Facebook

Instagram

👀👀👀👀👀👀

Other books by this author I have read and reviewed:

The Last Thing to Burn

First Born

First Born by Will Dean

 

Description from Goodreads:

"THE LAST THING A TWIN EXPECTS IS TO BE ALONE ...

Molly lives a quiet, contained life in London. Naturally risk averse, she gains comfort from security and structure. Every day the same.

Her identical twin Katie is her exact opposite: gregarious and spontaneous. They used to be inseparable, until Katie moved to New York a year ago. Molly still speaks to her daily without fail.

But when Molly learns that Katie has died suddenly in New York, she is thrown into unfamiliar territory. Katie is part of her DNA. As terrifying as it is, she must go there and find out what happened. As she tracks her twin's last movements, cracks begin to emerge. Nothing is what it seems. And a web of deceit is closing around her."

📚📚📚📚📚📚

Well, that was an interesting and head-bashing read and I don't even know where to start!  You are either going to love it or not like it so much!  If I'm honest, for most of the book, I was in the "not like it so much" camp but as the story unfolded, it grew on me more and more and by the end, I was totally invested.

I'm not going to go into any of the plot but will say that you need to be prepared to put aside reality at times, accept that the main character of Molly is not a particularly likeable character (for me anyway) and she does ramble on a bit, which became annoying at times, but if you can do that, you will enjoy this rollercoaster of a read.

Many thanks to Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for my copy in return for an honest, unbiased and unedited review.

👇👇👇👇👇👇

Connect with the author:

Twitter

Facebook

Instagram

👀👀👀👀👀👀

Other books by this author I have read and reviewed:

The Last Thing to Burn

The Last Thing to Burn by Will Dean

 

Blurb taken from Goodreads:

"He is her husband. She is his captive.

Her husband calls her Jane. That is not her name.

She lives in a small farm cottage, surrounded by vast, open fields. Everywhere she looks, there is space. But she is trapped. No one knows how she got to the UK: no one knows she is there. Visitors rarely come to the farm; if they do, she is never seen.

Her husband records her every movement during the day. If he doesn't like what he sees, she is punished.

For a long time, escape seemed impossible. But now, something has changed. She has a reason to live and a reason to fight. Now, she is watching him, and waiting ..."

📚📚📚📚📚📚

Wow ... that was one heck of a powerful read and one where the characters will stay with me for some time.

Jane - named so by her "husband" Lennie - was trafficked from her native Vietnam with her younger sister, she is kept captive on an isolated farm in what can only be described as squalid and run down conditions.  She is watched every minute of every day, she is not allowed to speak to anyone, she is not allowed to go anywhere - her day is regimented from start to finish and for each perceived transgression, the treasured possessions she has are slowly burned in front of her eyes.

This is a harrowing story of a desperate life of servitude and abuse; the scary thing is that it is happening to thousands of men, women and children the world over which makes it even more upsetting.  However, it is also a story of hope and the desperate will and strength to survive and fight back when things appear to be hopeless.

The whole book is written from "Jane's" perspective and she is an enthralling narrator.  The setting is just perfect and described scarily accurately - my job takes me into isolated farmhouses that are pretty bleak and dilapidated and this made the story even more real for me.  

This is not an easy read by any stretch of the imagination but despite that, I found it very hard to put down. I was drawn into the story hook, line and sinker; it grabbed me by the throat and didn't let go until the very last page ... it lingers still in the back of my mind and there are very few books that do this.

Highly recommended.

Thank you to Hodder & Stoughton and NetGalley for my advance copy in return for an unbiased and unedited review.

👇👇👇👇👇👇

Connect with the author:

Twitter

Facebook

Instagram