The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
This book is very similar in premise to The Girl on The Train or The Woman in the Window; the main character witnesses something terrible and yet no one believes her due to her past actions or experiences. Now don’t get me wrong, I love these types of books and fully enjoy them, but it was a bit weird to feel like I was rereading rather than having an entirely new book in my hands. I think this may be partially because I had just finished The Woman in the Window a couple weeks before.
I’m always a sucker for flawed main characters; the ones that really aren’t the nicest of people and constantly make mistakes but yet are trying their hardest with what seems right to them. Ruth Ware perfectly captures this in Lo who is struggling to get past a traumatic experience by causing all sorts of trouble with her loved ones and colleagues. Add in the fact Lo is stuck on a yacht in the middle of a cruise with a potential murderer and the mystery soon pulls you in. Ware does a great job of describing several of the characters in ways that make them a potential culprit so that you can’t fully pinpoint what is going on until the end.
Ware’s writing definitely kept this book flowing as there were some scenes that dragged a bit with little action and were probably unnecessary, but you don’t fully notice it when delving into the inner voice of Lo. Ware also adds these little emails/online forums at the end of each part of the book from the outside world that add to the mystery and suspense of what will happen next as you are given glimpses of the future. The last part of the book was wonderfully climatic and added twists and ideas you wouldn’t expect. However, the epilogue was a bit too much and unrealistic for me, I could have done without that portion.
Synopsis: Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, has just been given the assignment of a lifetime: a week on a luxury cruise with only a handful of cabins. The sky is clear, the waters calm, and the veneered, select guests jovial as the exclusive cruise ship, the Aurora, begins her voyage in the picturesque North Sea. At first, Lo’s stay is nothing but pleasant: the cabins are plush, the dinner parties are sparkling, and the guests are elegant. But as the week wears on, frigid winds whip the deck, gray skies fall, and Lo witnesses what she can only describe as a dark and terrifying nightmare: a woman being thrown overboard. The problem? All passengers remain accounted for—and so, the ship sails on as if nothing has happened, despite Lo’s desperate attempts to convey that something (or someone) has gone terribly, terribly wrong…