Book 16 - The Woman In Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

Lo Blacklock is a writer for a travel magazine and she has been granted a once in a lifetime opportunity to board a luxury yacht to travel to Norway to see the northern lights.  Now, she's only been given this opportunity because her boss is pregnant, but you know...beggars can't be choosers and that sort of thing.  A few nights before she is set to leave, she wakes up with a massive hangover and realizes her bedroom door is shut and her cat is acting weird.  She doesn't remember shutting the door before she went to bed but she gets up to check things out.  Upon opening her bedroom door, she comes face to face with an intruder in her home.  They stand there and stare at each for a moment but he simply slams the door in her face, leaving her cheek bruised.  He also locks her ass in there, finishes taking what he wants, and walks out the front door.  She is, of course, traumatized and can't sleep...like for days.  She walks around in a blur always seeing the latex gloves the man wore on his hands.  It fucks with her mind and she's honestly a fucking trainwreck.  She decides to go stay at her boyfriend's house because he's out of town but she doesn't feel safe in her own space anymore.  He comes home in the middle of the night, tries to wake her up, but she's caught in a nightmare and thinks she's being attacked so she bashes him with a fucking bedside lamp.  I'm telling you...she has become unhinged.  Now...she's gotta get on a boat and try to do her job.  Before leaving to catch the boat though, her boyfriend, Jonah, tells her he turned down a job for her and that he loves her...but she's so fucked up in the head she basically just leaves.  Really bitch?!  Some of this just made me not like her.  I don't know.  I have never, thank you Jesus, been broken in on and I can definitely imagine it's traumatizing and it's an invasion of space...but I don't get her putting so much distance between herself and Jonah.  I don't get it...the man said he loves you...he turned down a job for you...and you start freaking out even though you've been together for years.  I get that you probably want your independence, God knows I love mine, but like...don't just leave the guy hanging there because you're about to lose a good man.  You've gotta learn to communicate with him and I guess maybe that's why I don't like her.  She doesn't actually talk to him about what or how she's feeling about any of it.  Anyway...so yeah...I started off on rocky ground with Lo.

She eventually boards the vessel and meets the rich motherfuckers on board.  All of them dripping in money...some snooty, some not.  And she can't relate to any of them...and now she has learned that her ex-boyfriend is on board.  Well, fuck.  She goes about getting ready for the formal dinner and realizes she doesn't have her mascara...it was in her purse...which was stolen during the break in.  She hears a toilet flush from the cabin next to her, cabin 10, so she knocks on the door to see if maybe the guest has mascara.  Lucky for her, an impatient young woman opens the door, looking a bit surprised that she is standing at her door, but ultimately giving her a mascara and telling her she can keep it.  She pushes it from her mind and gets ready for dinner.  She proceeds through the drinks, dinner, and dessert...getting a wee bit sloshed in the process and then finally makes her way back to her room.  Her ex, Ben, tries to put the moves on her and she knees him in the crotch and goes into her room.  She finally manages to fall asleep but is abruptly woken by something, she's not sure what, and then hears a splash.  She steps out onto her balcony and sees what she is sure is a smear of blood on the partition separating her balcony from the balcony of Cabin 10.  She immediately calls the 'front desk' and tells them what she has heard and they send security to her room.  Once security arrives, we learn there is no longer a blood smear, nor has there ever been a guest in cabin 10.  The guest who was supposed to be there had something come up and wasn't able to make it.

Now, Lo has to spend all of her time proving she's not crazy, meanwhile some shit keeps happening that makes her doubt even herself.  No one, except Ben, will listen to her...and to make things worse, no one from the staff or passengers is missing.  There's a lot of run around and not knowing who to put her trust in and a lot of suspects and she just can't seem to let it go.  All of which gets her ass in trouble because she won't shut up about it.  She eventually finds herself knocked in the head and held captive in a room in the lowest level of the boat.  Eventually we find out the owner of the ship, Richard, was married to a very wealthy woman who has breast cancer.  He 'accidentally' killed her...no he didn't but you know...and had his mistress impersonate her for the duration of the trip.  Well she's a dumb bitch because you know he's going to kill you too.  The wife and all traces of her must be dead and gone or else he doesn't get her wealth.  Well, when Lo saw the mistress and heard the body of the real wife being thrown overboard, she fucked up their plans.  Eventually the mistress gains a conscience and lets Lo go through yet another complicated plot and it takes the bitch a while to make it home.  At this point in the book I was like just end it already.  It was moving along steadily but once I knew what was going on, I was like okay wrap it up already.  The ending just kind of dragged along a bit too long for my tastes.  She makes it back home to Jonah and she's all don't turn down the job in New York, I love you too, let's move there together, blah blah blah.  Well glad it took you almost dying to realize what you had.  I never got around to actually liking Lo...as you can tell.

Great concept, good plot...slightly poor execution of the ending in my opinion.  Maybe that's just me and there were several loose ends that needed tying up but still.  So overall...4 stars.  Not quite sure it lived up to the hype that I had heard about it...