The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

I just returned from Lake Tahoe and took some thrillers with me.  I love me a good engrossing thriller, especially when on vacation. When I opened the The Woman in Cabin 10, I knew I was not in for classic literature, but rather a best-selling, page turning thriller.

Ms. Ware sets us up with our main character, Lo Blacklock experiencing a harrowing home break in and assault. Although clearly shaken up, her job as a travel journalist requires her to embark on an exclusive luxury yacht trip.  This trip is her chance to write an important piece for her magazine.  The boat cruising through the North Seas provides a claustrophobic atmosphere and with only a few other carefully chosen passengers and crew, the premise had high creepy potential.

Lo wakes suddenly in the middle of the night and hears a body being tossed overboard. Here was my first niggle — now wait a minute, what does a body being pushed overboard sound like?  How did she instantly recognize the noise as a body and how could she even hear the noise in the rough North Sea waters?  Hmmmm

I forged on with The Woman in Cabin 10 not wanting to believe what was unfurling as a contrived and obvious plot.  I was sure I couldn’t have figured it out while only half-way through.  The optimist in me kept thinking there will be an unexpected twist, this bestseller has got to have something more than such a transparent storyline.

To make matters even worse for this poor reader, Lo Blacklock is a mess.  Haven’t we had enough unreliable narrators?  Lo drinks too much, is on anti-anxiety medication, complains incessantly, is self-pitying, weak, and beyond paranoid.  She’s supposedly a journalist, but she didn’t interview anyone and never opened a notebook. By the second half of the book, I hoped the murderer would off her — please, just toss her whiny ass overboard.

As a crime thriller, it lacked suspense and actually got boring in places — especially with the redundant, ad nauseam inner thoughts of Lo. The characters act illogically and much of the plot is disjointed.

There are good modern crime thrillers out there – try Harriett Lane
or  Gone Girl  both had originality and good writing, but sorry to report — not The Women in Cabin 10.

Ms. Ware’s debut novel In a Dark, Dark Wood, got very good reviews, so perhaps The Woman in Cabin 10 suffers from the dreaded second book curse.

A digital review copy was provided by Gallery/Scout Press via Netgalley.

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