Review: The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware
It has been around 3 months since I last posted. It has been difficult to pick up a book, any book, for some time, for no other reason than being in a funk. I think sometimes you find yourself not really drawn to anything, even books, my one true love. Fortunately, I had this little number lying around to get me out of the funk.
Laura Blacklock (who goes by Lo) is a writer at Velocity, a small travel magazine, after her editor goes on maternity leave she realizes it's the perfect opportunity to show her talents and go for the promotion she has been chasing for years. Lo also suffers from extreme anxiety–don’t we all, girl?!–to which she takes medication for, but when her apartment is broken into while she is in the other room, her anxiety reaches an all-time high. She stays in her boyfriend's place, only to get into a fight with him. Needing a break from everything, Lo is thankful when she is assigned to review a luxury cruise line for a week. Hoping to catch her boss's attention and network with important people in the industry, she forces herself to attend, no matter her mental state.
The Aurora is an elite luxury cruise liner scheduled to travel the Norwegian fjords on its maiden voyage. With top-of-the-line staff on board, the ship has 10 cabins and is limited to 20 passengers. Lo is booked for cabin 9. On the first night is woken up by a blood curdling scream from the room next to hers. She goes onto the veranda and sees blood on the balcony. Fearing the worst, she calls security to report it, only to find that no one is staying in cabin 10, in fact, it is empty. It’s only when security informs her that the guest who was originally going to be staying in cabin 10 could not make it does Lo begin to feel something amiss as she swears she borrowed makeup from a girl in cabin 10 the previous day. After checking in on all the staff and guests, security informs Lo that everyone is accounted for, Lo begins to spiral into a pool of anxiety and paranoia, even questioning herself. She is sure of what she saw and what she heard, but nobody believes her. Did it really happen or is it all in her head?
Lo was written as severely anxious and borderline paranoid, it reminded me of myself in many scenarios, however, I hated how unreliable and nosy she was. Okay–hear me out– if Lo had stuck to her assignment and stopped “investigating” the scream, then maybe she wouldn’t have been targeted and received her promotion! As I was reading I kept thinking to myself, no wonder she isn’t getting ahead in the magazine, she gets sidetracked every chance she gets!
I absolutely loved the scenery of the book, it lured me in. It was like a cozy book to read on a cold stormy night. Overall, I loved how the author set the scene in the London streets and on the Aurora. The use of description is one the best I have read, I felt like I was on the boat.
Now, for the plot! The first half of the book was slow paced, so much so that oftentimes I found myself not wanting to read for days before actually getting back to it. Throughout the story, Lo is constantly tired from lack of sleep or verging on drunkenness and is way too impulsive for her own good. In the beginning of the story she is given a daily agenda for the trip, she goes over it once and then forgets about it, then is surprised when she encounters the guest doing activities from the agenda. It simply irked me that she didn’t take the assignment seriously, but then wondered why she was not getting ahead in her career. However, being that she was in a high stress situation, I give her the benefit of the doubt. Moving on!
By the second half of the book the pace picks up and Lo begins to make the right moves. I will definitely give props to the author, the last part of the book had me hooked! So much so, that as Lo was escaping the Aurora, my anxiety was through the roof! I could not put the book down until the end. The twists in the book begin to unravel and everything begins to make sense. Of course, a few parts of the ending were pretty predictable, nonetheless a good ending. Unfortunately, I didn’t see much character development from Lo, not sure if that was done on purpose or not, only in the last few pages does her character seem to grow.
Overall, I enjoyed the book. It was easy to read. I saw many people on Goodreads comparing this book to The Girl on the Train, I haven’t read that book so I won’t assume anything, but it piques my interest.
6/10 🌟
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