The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware on January 7, 2020
Genres: Fiction / Literary, Fiction / Thrillers / Psychological, Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense
Pages: 384
Format: Paperback
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“Maybe that was closer to the truth–we weren’t captor and captive, but two animals in different compartments of the same cage. Hers was just slightly larger.”
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…
While it was well written and the story moved along quickly, I have a couple of things to pick at. One, is that Lo is a complete headcase and I couldn’t relate or connect with her, at all. She was annoying and repetitive at times, and since the book is written in first person, you’re in her head the entire book. She’s not very likeable, either. Without spoiling anything, I didn’t feel any connection between Lo and what happened, and it made me feel like I was just reading about an incident, rather than being in the middle of it. The first 50% was excellent and kept me on the edge of my seat. I wanted to know who all these people were, and what did they have to do with the missing woman? Plus, descriptions were beautifully done and made you feel like you were really there. Fast paced and twists and turns abound, and everyone is a suspect…at least, initially. Feels like it started with a good idea but fell apart a bit at the execution.
I gave this novel a 3.5 star-rating. I thought the story and solution itself way too convoluted and improbable. A lot of the plot seem to be twisted to fit the storyline. The red-herring news article interludes also didn’t read as something that would be worded in real life the way they would have been – more as intentionally worded to mislead the reader.