Recommended by a someone in a reading group, I likely wouldn’t have read it otherwise but she was so enthusiastic about it.  Anyway,  I was pleased with the book and hooked into it for the whole day. I wasn’t overwhelmed,  but it had excellent suspense and good character development plus some an interesting theme.  Some of the technical parts were over my head but it didn’t matter that much.  

Drowning: The Rescue of Flight 1421  
by  T.J. Newman: 2023 
Read by Steven Weber / Laura Benanti
7h 43m
Rating: A+ / suspense  

From Simon & Schuster: 
Six minutes after takeoff, Flight 1421 crashes into the Pacific Ocean. During the evacuation, an engine explodes and the plane is flooded. Those still alive are forced to close the doors—but it’s too late. The plane sinks to the bottom with twelve passengers trapped inside.

“More than two hundred feet below the surface, engineer Will Kent and his eleven-year-old daughter Shannon are waist-deep in water and fighting for their lives.

“Their only chance at survival is an elite rescue team on the surface led by professional diver Chris Kent—Shannon’s mother and Will’s soon-to-be ex-wife—who must work together with Will to find a way to save their daughter and rescue the passengers from the sealed airplane, which is now teetering on the edge of an undersea cliff.

“There’s not much time.

“There’s even less air.

“With devastating emotional power and heart-stopping suspense, Drowning is an unforgettable thriller about a family’s desperate fight to save themselves and the people trapped with them—against impossible odds.
**********

The story seemed horribly contrived for awhile,  but with some thought it could easily happen. The author is a former bookseller, airline stewardess and author of Falling, a prior novel. 

The tension is expertly developed along a couple lines – it’s humans against time and humans against each other. There’s also the theme of child deaths which winds through.  And there’s science at its basic level similar to what Andy Weir used in The Martian ( 2011), excellent science fiction.