The Woman of Cabin 10

The Woman in Cabin 10 
by Ruth Ware 


Blurb: 

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.

My Reaction:
Glancing through several reviews, I see that this book inspires some strong negative reactions. I feel a little more lukewarm about it. It wasn't great, no, but I thought it was a reasonably enjoyable suspense/thriller page-turner type of book-- with a few caveats. It sounds like maybe this book was promoted as Something Amazing, and when it couldn't live up to the hype, readers were not pleased. Or maybe I was just in a more generous mood when I read it. In any case, about those caveats...

First, I didn't really like Lo that much. I know, I know! Not all protagonists have to be "likable"-- but honestly, sometimes they should be. In this instance, a less irritating protagonist would've made the book better. Lo was a bit too rude, at times. Her poor treatment of her boyfriend, in particular, was frustrating to read. Then there were all the times she (stupidly) self-medicated with alcohol-- more than a little annoying to read about for the fifth or sixth time. Perhaps most damning of all, Lo is just not that bright, unfortunately. She certainly doesn't have much to offer in the way of investigative journalism or common sense.

Then there were plenty of examples of things that didn't make complete, logical sense to me-- "Why would she do X? What about Y? Surely someone would've noticed Z!" kind of moments. You do have to suspend your disbelief a fair bit.

I was also disappointed that there was so little description of the surroundings-- the sea, the sky, the shoreline. I would have enjoyed a little more Scandinavian local color, but given that most of the action took place on a yacht, I guess that was never likely to happen. (It would've been nice, though.)

Those things aside, it was a fairly generic piece of mystery-driven escapism. It's not the best I've read in the genre-- not the cleverest, not the most edge-of-your-seat, not the fastest-paced-- but if you like these kinds of novels, you might like this one, too. I thought it was interesting enough!

(My nit-pickiest observation while reading this novel was probably that the American boyfriend used some phrases that sounded very British-- definitely not believable from a guy from New York. But maybe that was just me...)