Skip to main content

The Woman in Cabin 10

The Woman in Cabin 10 - Ruth Ware



Synopsis
Lo Blackwood, a travel journalist, has the assignment of her career: one of ten slots on the maiden voyage of the luxury passenger ship, the Aurora.  From the moment she steps on board, Lo is swept up in the plush interior and free-flowing alcohol, hob-nobbing with rich and important people. The night after departure, Lo is awoken by scream and a loud splash. She is sure she witnessed someone being thrown overboard, complete with blood smeared on the deck. And yet, when security comes, the blood is gone, and all passengers are accounted for. Lo is sure of what she saw, but as she begins to investigate, things begin to spiral out of control.


Review
This book is like a Hitchcock thriller, or Agatha Christie. There's a girl who disappears but no one else has seen her and no one is missing. Who was she and where could she have gone? Who is hiding something? The main character doesn't quite trust her own mind and has anxiety and panic attacks which makes people distrust her. 

The main character, Lo, isn't brilliant or special or courageous. In fact, she's quite the opposite.  and that is one reason I liked her. She's normal and has to force herself to get through some scary things. However, I feel like the author tried to create an unreliable narrator by giving Lo a severe panic disorder and medication that she takes for it. Thus, is what she experiencing real or the result of combining her drugs with alcohol (which is what some characters believe)? Plus, in the beginning Lo's house is robbed, which makes her so panicky and scared that she barely sleeps for the three days before she leaves on the trip. I kept waiting for the robbery to tie back into the plot, but it seemed to only serve as an incident to make her even more jumbled up. For me, using anxiety as a device to cast doubt on Lo's interpretation of events only served to stigmatize mental illness. 

Plot-wise, I liked that it wasn't an easy way out at the end. Things kept going wrong and she had to figure out how to deal with it. However, I felt like this was a step below what could have been a really good thriller. I would have liked the stakes to be higher, the consequences for her failure to be more severe, and for Lo to have had to stretch even more as a character to get her through, maybe to have had to make some tough, no-right-answer decisions.

All in all, it was a good mystery, kept me guessing, and I did not quite see the ending coming, so that's always a plus. It's a quick, engaging read, so if you're looking for a good book for a flight or train ride, this would be a good option.


Rating
I give this book 3 stars


Details
Genre: Mystery, Thriller.
Language: Lots of language.
Sex: Some mention of it, but no sex scenes.
Violence: Some violence, not too graphic.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

This Savage Song

This Savage Song - Victoria Schwab Review: The newest book by one of my favorite authors, V.E. Schwab (She goes by "Victoria" for her YA novels). I love the premise for the book: violent acts create actual monsters. The two main characters are a human girl named Kate who desperately wants to be a (figurative) monster: a big, bad crime boss like her father, who runs one half of V-City. The other is August, who is a literal monster, a Malchai, one that drains the souls of his victims through his music, who desperately seeks his own personal humanity. I loved them both, and their personalities and characters and drives are so multi-faceted and real. They interact with other characters in believable and different ways. The juxtaposition of these two characters in and of itself is one of the driving things behind this story, and one of the things that makes it so compelling. Even though marketed as a YA, it really delves into the deep questions: What makes us human? W...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thursday Themes: Five Books to Escape to a New World

Hello everyone! *waves* Remember how I said I was "back" and then didn't post anything for tover a year? Well now with this global pandemic I finally am returning to this blog. Lots of people are reading more than ever now, and I've had many people ask me to recommend various books. So I thought I'd do some posts more along those themes, and perhaps the occasional book review sprinkled in between. Today, the theme is inspired by traveling and exploring. I, like many of you, am tired of being stuck inside and unable to travel. One of the thing I love most about books is it's a way to escape and go on a new adventure. And I especially love books about finding a new world, ones that capture that awe and fascination and magical sense of a new place. It calls to that part deep within me that longs to see stunning vistas and meet new people and get to know a culture different from my own. Here are five books that capture that feeling, and will leave you aching t...
1 comment
Read more

Arcanum Unbounded

Arcanum Unbounded - Brandon Sanderson Synopsis A collection of Sanderson's "short" stories and novellas set in his Cosmere universe. Review It's no secret that Brandon Sanderson is one of my favorite authors. His writing is stupendous, his stories are incredible and his plot twists are mind-blowing. Rarely can I figure out exactly where the story is headed, but I am always exceptionally pleased when I get there! Sanderson isn't as known for his "short" stories. Probably because they aren't short. Two of them in this collection clock in around 40k words, which is approaching the line between a novella and a novel. A few of the stories ( The Emperor's Soul, Sixth of the Dusk, Shadows for Silence ) can be read with no knowledge of his other books, and would perhaps be a good introduction to his writing. Those ones you can get individually or are published in other anthologies. I myself had already read a few of the stories, but withi...
2 comments
Read more