Whalefall, Daniel Kraus
Whalefall, Daniel Kraus
21 Rating(s)
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
Club: $12.49

Whalefall

Author: Daniel Kraus

Narrator: Kirby Heyborne

Unabridged: 8 hr 10 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/08/2023


Synopsis

A USA TODAY BESTSELLER
Named a Best Book of 2023 by Book Riot, Shelf Awareness, and NPR

The Martian meets 127 Hours in this “astoundingly great” (Gillian Flynn, #1 New York Times bestselling author) and scientifically accurate thriller about a scuba diver who’s been swallowed by an eighty-foot, sixty-ton sperm whale and has only one hour to escape before his oxygen runs out.

Jay Gardiner has given himself a fool’s errand—to find the remains of his deceased father in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Monastery Beach. He knows it’s a long shot, but Jay feels it’s the only way for him to lift the weight of guilt he has carried since his dad’s death by suicide the previous year.

The dive begins well enough, but the sudden appearance of a giant squid puts Jay in very real jeopardy, made infinitely worse by the arrival of a sperm whale looking to feed. Suddenly, Jay is caught in the squid’s tentacles and drawn into the whale’s mouth where he is pulled into the first of its four stomachs. He quickly realizes he has only one hour before his oxygen tanks run out—one hour to defeat his demons and escape the belly of a whale.

Suspenseful and cinematic, Whalefall is an “powerfully humane” (Owen King, New York Times bestselling author) thriller about a young man who has given up on life…only to find a reason to live in the most dangerous and unlikely of places.

About Daniel Kraus

Daniel Kraus is a New York Times bestselling writer of novels, TV, and film. His novel Whalefall received a front-cover review in The New York Times Book Review, won the Alex Award, was an LA Times Book Prize Finalist, and was a Best Book of 2023 from NPR, The New York TimesChicago Tribune, and more. With Guillermo del Toro, he coauthored The Shape of Water, based on the same idea the two created for the Oscar–winning film. Also with del Toro, Kraus coauthored Trollhunters, which was adapted into the Emmy-winning Netflix series. His also cowrote The Living Dead and Pay the Piper with legendary filmmaker George A. Romero. Kraus’s The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch was named one of Entertainment Weekly’s Top 10 Books of the Year. Kraus has won the Bram Stoker Award, Scribe Award, two Odyssey Awards (for both Rotters and Scowler), and has appeared multiple times as Library Guild selections, YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults, and more. His work has been translated into over twenty languages. He lives with his wife in Chicago. Visit him at DanielKraus.com.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Sadie on August 08, 2023

Title/Author: WHALEFALL by Daniel Kraus Other Books I Enjoyed by This Author: BLOOD SUGAR, THE LIVING DEAD, THE AUTUMNAL Affiliate Link: [URL not allowed] Release Date: August 8th, 2023 General Genre: Science Fiction - Action & Adventure, Science Fiction - Hard Science Fiction, Th......more

Goodreads review by Tobin on August 22, 2023

And here we are, in August, and I believe I've just finished the most disappointing novel of the year. This one's being pushed as "scientifically accurate" and I've seen comparisons to Andy Weir's The Martian. Is it accurate to science? Yeah, as far as that goes, sure. So, I'm gonna say right up......more

Goodreads review by Debra on June 02, 2023

Jay Gardiner has taken it upon himself to locate his father's remains in the Pacific Ocean off Monastery Beach. He feels that by doing so it will help him with his guilt over not coming around during his father's cancer battle and later suicide the previous year. His father was a hard man who loved......more

Goodreads review by Chelsea on July 25, 2023

While Whalefall is of course a survival horror story, it is at heart a tale on grief and complex parent/child relationships and working through the grief and growth that comes from facing those issues head on. Please note that the horror/survival aspect is a slow burn, and Jay isn’t even swallowed b......more

Goodreads review by Michelle on August 26, 2023

I think Daniel Kraus is becoming one of my favorite authors. I loved every second of reading Whalefall. Beautiful writing and storytelling that hit me straight in the feelings. Going on the favorites list!......more


Quotes

"Narrator Kirby Heyborne embodies the gruesomeness and terror and beauty in Daniel Kraus’s story. Listeners will feel its intensity in the pit of their stomachs. Teenage scuba diver Jay Gardiner is consumed by guilt as he seeks to find the remains of his father, who died by suicide, in the Pacific Ocean. As Jay searches the ocean’s depths, he is swallowed by a sperm whale. As the story switches between key moments in Jay’s past and the rapidly decreasing air in his tanks, listeners will feel like they themselves are gasping for air. Heyborne’s performance robustly expands Kraus’s tale, and it is divine."