The Woman in Cabin 10

Crime
Thriller

By Ruth Ware

Paperback 352 pages
Publisher Vintage (26th Jan 2017)

"A tense, moody drama set on a press trip that goes horribly wrong… Ware has produced a fantastic variation on the woman-in-peril theme, with a plucky protagonist and a brilliantly claustrophobic setting." Joan Smith, Sunday Times

📕My Review

What initially drew me to this book was its claustrophobic setting on board a boutique cruise ship. I had visions of a modern-day Death On The Nile scenario racing through my mind. This cruise, however, was sailing towards Norway's spectacular Northern Lights.

Lo Blacklock, a travel journalist, is woken late at night in her cabin by screams from the room next door. She rushes to her window and spots a body being thrown overboard. Horrified, she reports the crime but isn't taken seriously. The cabin next door has been unoccupied since setting sail and everyone on board is accounted for. Undeterred and refusing to accept the incident as an alcohol-induced figment of her imagination, she faces an uphill struggle to prove there's a murderer on the ship. 

The Woman in Cabin 10 is the first book I've read by this author and I enjoyed it immensely. I was turning pages until the small hours trying to piece the puzzle together. Not wanting to spoil the plot, what I will say is that I was able to figure some of it out fairly easily; not everything admittedly but just some. There were times when I thought the pacing could do with speeding up, but on the whole it was ok. Main character Lo was rather annoying and needy (I wanted to give her a proverbial kick up the backside) but setting those points aside, the book was suspenseful and gripping.

Book Source: Purchased copy
Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐

📗The Blurb

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.

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 and emotional, Lo has to face the fact that she may have made a mistake—either that, or she is now trapped on a boat with a murderer...

📘The Author

Ruth Ware is an international number one bestseller. Her thrillers In a Dark, Dark Wood, The Woman in Cabin 10, The Lying Game and The Death of Mrs Westaway have appeared on bestseller lists around the world, including the Sunday Times and New York Times, and she is published in more than 40 languages. Ruth lives near Brighton with her family.

Ruth Ware's website