Review: THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10, Ruth Ware

• format: Kindle (Amazon)
• File Size: 1461 KB
• Print Length: 352 pages
• Publisher: Vintage Digital (June 30, 2016)
• Publication Date: June 30, 2016
• Sold by: PRH UK
• Language: English
• ASIN: B019CGXYRS

Synopsis  (Amazon)

This was meant to be the perfect trip.

The Northern Lights. A luxury press launch on a boutique cruise ship.

A chance for travel journalist Lo Blacklock to recover from a traumatic break-in that has left her on the verge of collapse, and to work out what she wants from her relationship.

Except things don’t go as planned.

Woken in the night by screams, Lo rushes to her window to see a body thrown overboard from the next door cabin. But the records show that no-one ever checked into that cabin, and no passengers are missing from the boat.

Exhausted, emotional and increasingly desperate, Lo has to face the fact that she may have made a terrible mistake. Or she is trapped on a boat with a murderer – and she is the sole witness...

My take

This seemed appropriate holiday reading as I will be going on a cruise shortly, although not to the Northern Lights. The luxury boat Lo finds herself on is considerably smaller than the very large liner I shall be on too.

There are10 guest cabins on the Aurora and Lo is in cabin 9. She has already been a bit unnerved by a burglary at her flat just a couple of days before, nor is she a good sailor, so noises in the cabin next door in the middle of the night make her think the worst. What she imagines is that a body has gone overboard but then she finds out that the cabin was supposedly unoccupied.

She has a hard time getting the head of security on the boat to believe her, but then the owner of the boat seems to take her seriously, and then things go seriously wrong.

There are a couple of interesting twists to the tale, and the structure provides some red herrings. Mostly we see things from Lo's point of view, but then some of her friends back home in London become concerned when they haven't heard from her. Lo's narration is interposed with emails and chat room conversations among her friends. The reader knows that on the boat Lo is having trouble with Internet connection.

An enjoyable read.

My rating: 4.4

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