In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware Leonora “Nora” Shaw is a crime writer who left her school ten years ago after a breakup and devotes her life to writing whilst living in a small living space in Hackney. After leaving town, Nora loses touch with her old friends and expects her days to be the same. However, she later receives an email that invites her to a party that is held by her old best friend, Clare. The party is later hosted by Clare’s best friend, Flo, who seems to be a look-alike of Clare. Nora agrees to attend with reluctance as her old friend, Nina, suggests that they go together. As they meet the other guests, which includes a new mother and Clare herself, Nora realizes that Clare’s fiancé is her old ex-boyfriend from years ago, whose name is James. After playing a variety of games at the party, Nora and the others get into tense moments that later leads to an unknown man barging into the party and bleeding out whilst in their home. As Nora tries to figure out what happened to the man, she must eliminate suspects in the guests, and try not to become a suspect herself.
This book was a little bit in the middle for me. I really did enjoy the “chilling forest” theme and the notion of people staying in an isolated cabin with no worries, but the rest of the story sort of fell flat for me. Leonora was incredibly annoying by the fact that she stays hung up on her past relationship with her boyfriend over a decade ago. She also comes off as an unreliable narrator, but the reader is expected to assume that she’s not a suspect when she clearly has issues with her memory throughout the story. While I won’t give any spoilers, the whole scenario with Clare and James just set off as extremely childish and hard to believe in real circumstances, which I suppose was what the author was trying to reach. The plot itself was supposed to be exciting but the execution was so boring, and I could barely stay awake for the second half of the book. But I was able to stay awake to write the review, so I guess that says a lot about Ruth Ware.