Someone talented should make this novel into a movie for the big screen. I heard T.J. Newman's other book Falling will be and Drowning would make an excellent popcorn worthy film as well.
I have a new respect for flight attendants. They are not glorified waitpersons, in fact they are highly trained professionals who (God forbid) just might save lives in the face of a crash. T.J. Newman is a former flight attendant and writes as such. If you've ever had the thought while travelling on an airplane that the safety demonstrations were silly or over the top, you won't after reading Drowning. I for one will always secure my electronics, personal items and fasten my seatbelt tightly especially after experiencing a crash like depicted in T.J. Newman's latest. I will also know where the exits are.
Flight 1421 is going down. In aviation, the emergency landing of an aircraft on water is called ditching. There are ninety-nine souls on board and they're just a few minutes into the flight out of Honolulu when an engine blows. The shrapnel pierces the hydraulic lines making the aircraft freeze in place. The plane heart-stoppingly crashes into the ocean and miraculously doesn't cartwheel or obliterate. The passengers and flight crew that weren't fatally injured upon hitting the water start scrambling for the exits and into rafts. One of the passengers is Will, an engineer travelling with his eleven-year-old daughter. He sees the oil slick start to ignite on the ocean's surface and convinces the pilot, Kit, to seal the exits and stay within the plane. Now there are twelve souls on board. And the plane begins to sink while a gruesome and fiery scene takes place outside of its windows.
What follows is the survivor's harrowing story perched on the edge of a cliff on the bottom of the ocean floor with oxygen running out and water running in. The Coast Guard and a group of civilian contracted industrial divers, one of whom has a personal connection to Will and his daughter, work tirelessly topside to rescue the people stranded on the plane at the bottom of the ocean two hundred feet down. Sound exciting? it is.
Despite some stereotyped characters and some predictability (c'mon, of course the unlikable, douchey characters are going to die first) Drowning still had me at hello. It was a thrilling rollercoaster of a book and I ate it up! 5/5 stars.
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