The Woman in Cabin 10 features Laura “Lo” Blacklock who has been suffering sleepless nights due to paranoia as a result of a robbery in her house. Laura has also been offered a trip on the Aurora, a luxurious cruise ship that would survey the northern lights, which Laura’s work as a journalist focuses on. She decides to go for hope that a small vacation will soothe her paranoia. On the Aurora, there are other passengers with interests of their own, as well those who may not have right intentions. As Laura gets ready for the dinner, she borrows mascara from the woman in cabin 10. When Laura wakes in the middle of the night to a splash in the water, she then finds blood on the deck. However, when she goes back with the security guard to survey the scene, the blood is wiped clean and there is no further evidence that a crime occurred. Laura then asks about the woman in cabin 10 and is met with blank stares and confusion as cabin 10 had remained empty the entire time. Laura knows she wasn’t imagining the crime but her sleepless nights and antidepressants don’t exactly solidify that the woman in cabin 10 existed, or the idea that she was thrown overboard. Does Laura know who to trust as the finds the culprit? Or was there never a culprit to begin with?
This novel felt excruciatingly long to read, even though it took me only two days to read it. Still, I felt that it took forever to finish and actually get to a plot that would be interesting. The plot itself had a very exciting premise- I would have loved to read about a murder on a refined cruise but instead I got an excerpt from Death on the Nile (which was worse than this novel, if you can believe it). The characters felt flat and I just had trouble remembering all the names of the staff and the other passengers as well. Laura didn’t help with that as it was annoying to be in her perspective the entire time. I think it would have been interesting to at least have another passenger’s perspective. Also, I couldn’t remember any of the other passengers so I suppose that’s why the murderer took me a while to understand (I had to flip back several pages to see who it was). If Ruth Ware maybe spent more time with the other passengers instead of describing every individual swarovski (which she loved to mention) crystal on the chandeliers then maybe I would have rated this a bit higher! Also, northern lights need to be at a strong light frequency in order to be seen with the naked eye and would otherwise require special cameras…