The Woman in Cabin 10

By: Ruth Ware

Narrated by: Imogen Church

Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's Summary

From New York Times best-selling author of the "twisty-mystery" (Vulture) novel In a Dark, Dark Wood comes The Woman in Cabin 10, an equally suspenseful and haunting novel from Ruth Ware - this time set at sea.

In this tightly wound, enthralling story reminiscent of Agatha Christie's works, Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, has just been given the assignment of a lifetime: a week on a luxury cruise with only a handful of cabins. The sky is clear, the waters calm, and the veneered, select guests jovial as the exclusive cruise ship, the Aurora, begins her voyage in the picturesque North Sea. At first Lo's stay is nothing but pleasant: The cabins are plush, the dinner parties are sparkling, and the guests are elegant. But as the week wears on, frigid winds whip the deck, gray skies fall, and Lo witnesses what she can describe only as a dark and terrifying nightmare: a woman being thrown overboard. The problem? All passengers remain accounted for - and so the ship sails on as if nothing has happened, despite Lo's desperate attempts to convey that something (or someone) has gone terribly, terribly wrong.

With surprising twists, spine-tingling turns, and a setting that proves as uncomfortably claustrophobic as it is eerily beautiful, Ruth Ware offers up another taut and intense listen in The Woman in Cabin 10 - one that will leave even the most sure-footed listener restlessly uneasy long after the last minute ends.

Includes an excerpt from Ruth Ware's The Lying Game!

©2016 Ruth Ware (P)2016 Simon & Schuster Audio

Don't bother

I realize that if the lead character was sober, there wouldn't be a story but really this woman is such a loser. She is constantly drunk, hungover, hungry, over tired, confused, and at a loss for words. It's tiring. She's not likable at all.

Hours and hours of tired...

I didn't enjoy this book.
The protagonist was not very likeable and she spends the entire story telling us how tired she is... over and over. I'm disappointed because I liked the author's last book, and although I think the narrator is outstanding ( based on this book and many others ) I think some may confuse their dislike for her with the character herself. I don't 't recommend this book

Fairly good once you get past the whining

I bought this book because I 'sort of' enjoyed Ruth Ware's last book. For more info on that read my review of her book In A Dark, Dark Wood.
I think overall she's a good writer and I enjoy her writing style quite a bit. This book is similar in style and pace and it's exciting and keeps you guessing. Unfortunately, as in her previous book, the main character does a good bit of melodramatic whining. I'm not sure if this component of the character's personality was part of the point of the story. I suppose it provides a contrast for her eventual transformation, but it was so grating I almost stopped listening. Thankfully the whining factor diminishes in the last quarter of the book.
I'm glad I kept listening because I really enjoyed the story and the ending. It's not a great book, but I think it's pretty solid and was worth the credit.
The narration is well done.

trapped in the head of a screeming neurotic

The story could have been a nice little mystery, although the ending was a bit anticlimactic. But the problem is in the presentation - the whole yarn is told through the protagonist's internal dialog, and this is a hellish place to live for the several hours it takes to tell the tale. Our heroin is a severe neurotic prone to panic attacks, claustrophobia, social anxiety, and she needs to help us understand what her body is doing every second: her heart pounds in her chest. Her throat is raw. Her stomach clenches. Her knees wobble. She is trying to choke down an ear shattering scream. And all this is just saying "hello" at a dinner party. And she vomits a lot. This sort of tedious reporting on her internal state takes up perhaps one half of the narration. I recommend giving it a pass.

An Unpalatable Main Character

I can’t think of a character I have disliked more than the main one, Lo, in this book. Literally every paragraph (no hyperbole—it was LITERALLY EVERY paragraph) was an exchange that was awkward, inappropriate, cringe-worthy, etc. Every time a choice had to be made, Lo excessively agonized, seemed to know what should be done and then did the opposite, all the while feeling sorry for herself. The characterization felt so off to me, because on the one hand she is supposed to be a motivated journalist working her way up the ranks, but then in the other hand she spends the first 2/3 of the book bemoaning the fact that all the other journalists are accumulating information but she’s not (primarily because she seems incapable to saying no to the offerings of alcohol and spends pretty much every moment either drunk or hungover or because her ability to have a conversation and ask questions without being a creep or an idiot, important for a journalist, doesn’t seem to exist).
It was unfortunate because I think Ruth Ware is a really fantastic writer and the book was tightly plotted and would have been terrific if I could have stomached the main character. I did finish the book, thinking that maybe there was a point to such a pathetic personality but when there wasn’t a point, I mostly felt resentful at having given such a needy, whiny, self-pitying character so much of my literary time.

it took a long time to get rolling!!

The main character was such a sad sack, I found her very annoying throughout the first half of the book. But I was rewarded for hanging on, because the second half was well worth it.....but I won't divulge any spoilers here!

Excruciating!!

The only emotion this audiobook stirred in me was anger. It was an absolute waste of my time listening to one long panic attack down to the most excruciating detail. The book is 90% about how scared and bad Lo feels all the time. The narrator is normally good, but on this story, Lo sounds like she is on the verge of crying all the time.

The plot was very promising and suspenseful, but is wasted by making the book about a girl that needs some serious emotional help. My advice to Ruth Ware is that other writers successfully write about damaged souls by adding humor, warmth, and a much better paced story.

I did enjoy Ware's book "In the Dark, Dark Wood", but this book was so bad I will never listen to another Ware story.

Wow!

I have to tell you, I saw this book, read the blurbs and skipped it, first time around. Then I bought and read, "In A Dark Dark Wood" and was blown away by how good it was, so I went back to "Cabin 10" and bought that. Glad I did.

Great book -- I was hooked from page one. Certainly a unique concept -- I've never really thought about how vulnerable people are while on cruises, but I get the idea. Being outside the jurisdiction of your own country, and dependent -- to some extent -- on the country of the registry of the ship -- is a pretty scary situation, if someone is out to get you. Ruth Ware uses this vulnerability expertly, and makes a very sinister situation of it all.

I admit there were a couple of "refrigerator" questions -- things you don't think about while listening, but occur to you only after you've finished, and are digging around in the fridge for a snack -- but I won't name them here. You'll either have your own questions, or you won't -- you don't need mine. I mention this just to say that there are some unresolved issues (in my opinion) but that none of it occurred to me until well after I'd finished the book, and thus did nothing at all to decrease my appreciation.

Special tribute to narrator Imogen Church who did a masterful job on the whole thing, including perfectly respectable work on the Norwegian accents, throughout. I'm no authority on Norwegian accents, but she managed to convey "Scandinavian" without making any of the characters sound stupid, which is what happens many times. Anyway, Church did a good job.

At this writing, there are only two Ruth Ware books on Audible. Since I really really really enjoyed them both, I hope there are more, soon. Encore!!

Disappointed

I admit that I only got through about 5 hours- was excited to see this new book released since I enjoyed In a Dark Dark Wood very much. The same impeccable narrator raised my expectations . But after several hours, unfortunately this book continues to be extremely boring and monotonous with an ordinary storyline. Oh well.

Simply preposterous

The reason I stuck with it was to see how crazy the plotting could get. In the spirit of the overwrought story, the reader was much too dramatic. Skip this book.