I can deny it as much as I want, but summer will be drawing to a close very soon. So, I used the end of the season as the perfect opportunity to squeeze in one final breezy summer read. My selection? Beloved murder mystery/thriller The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware.
Fans of Ware and her signature first-person, damaged-protagonist style will know that this is not a new novel. It came out back in 2016. But it is the ideal candidate for one of my favorite book recommendation sources, Reese’s Book Club. And yet, when I scrolled back through the history of Reese Witherspoon selections, I was surprised to see that the novel had never made the list. (Ware’s The Lying Game did make it back in 2017.)
Great for fans of The Woman in the Window, The Girl on the Train, Gone Girl (or, frankly, any of the novels that inspired the Kristen Bell parody series The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window), Ware’s novel follows Lo Blacklock, a journalist who is assigned to cover the launch of a new luxury yacht, the Aurora. Things take a turn when she thinks she witnesses the aftermath of a murder. The victim? A woman staying next door in cabin 10. The only problem? There is no record of this woman ever being a passenger on the ship.
The book is twisty and fun, with plenty of surprises plot-wise. Lo falls into many of the genre’s tropes, but once you get past her panic attacks and overwhelming anxiety, she becomes a character you can truly root for as she tries to unravel the mystery. And the mystery is a complicated one. I won’t give any spoilers, but I definitely didn’t see the major twist coming (it hits about two-thirds of the way through).