My next read was The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware. I wasted to read this before watching the movie on Netflix. I’ve heard both are very good, and the book did not disappoint.
We follow Lo Blacklock, a travel magazine writer who is going on a one-week luxury cruise. This is truly the assignment of a lifetime. Until it’s not.
Lo Blacklock, alone in her London flat, is burglarized. The only injury is to her cheek when the burglar slammed the door in her face. Terrified doesn’t begin to describe what she’s feeling, what she went through. It clearly has messed with her mind, and she takes comfort in her boyfriend’s empty flat. He’s away at work. But when she’s startled awake by him, she smashes a lamp against his head. Again, it’s clear that what happened to her, along with her inability to sleep, is causing issues. She leaves him and the flat in anger. She must get to the Aurora. Work calls.
The Aurora is a boat unlike any other. It’s more of a luxury yacht than a cruise liner. But still, it’s over-the-top in amenities with a library, ballroom, lounge area, hot tub, and so much more. Lo feels so out of place, but she tries to mingle with the crowd; she needs to get a good story for her boss at Velocity, Rowena.
Lo runs into a former flame and a current journalist, Ben Howard. And given everything she’s been through, she decides that drinking more than she should would be a good way to cope. It’s not! She does end up in her room and finally falls into a deep sleep. But she’s awoken in the middle of the night by a scream followed by a splash. No, it can’t be. Someone jumped. Or was thrown overboard. It came from Cabin 10. She knows the girl in that cabin. She had borrowed her mascara earlier in the evening.
Well, she alerts security, Mr. Nilsson. But, he doesn’t seem to believe her. There was no one in that room. He takes Lo to the cabin, and it’s completely empty. No clothes, no sundries, no evidence anyone had ever been there. Plus, after Nilsson spoke to Ben, he confronts Lo with her past – medication use, the burglary, the drinking… He doesn’t believe her. But she knows what she saw – or heard.
There is no trace of this girl. She enlists Ben’s help (can she trust him?), and they don’t seem to get much evidence that she ever existed. She has bits and pieces of information from various guests but she can’t seem to put the puzzle pieces together.
As it turns out, this woman does exist. Her name is Carrie. She’s been impersonating the yacht owner’s wife, Anne, who is sick with cancer. Ann is the one with the money. And Bullmber wants it. He uses Carrie to get rid of his wife’s body – that’s the splash he heard. And the scream? That came from Carrie as she was trying to throw the body overboard.
Carrie ends up kidnapping Lo and keeps her in a locked room below deck. Lo can hear everyone disembarking. Will anyone notice she’s not there? Will anyone come looking for her? She ends up convincing Carrie that Bullmer is not in love with her. He only used her to get rid of his wife. The tables turn, and she lets Lo go.
Lo finally makes it home safely, but she feels so guilty for leaving Carrie behind. Authorities end up finding two bodies in the sea. One is Anne’s. The other? Bullmer himself. Originally thought to be a suicide, they retract that and confirm he was murdered. Carrie got free. And got revenge.
This book was excellent, and I can see why Netflix picked this up as a movie. We’ll be watching it this weekend and I’m so excited!
Update
I had to update this post after I watched the movie, The Woman in Cabin 10, on Netflix.
It’s interesting because it’s probably the first time I read a book before watching the movie. I knew it would be different. There’s no way they would keep all the details from the book. But I was a little surprised at some of the differences. I would imagine that’s due to time.
For instance, I got the impression that Lo wasn’t the big woman on campus, but in the movie, she is. And her trauma was due to a story she got where people she interviewed were killed, rather than the break-in that happened in the book.
Some characters were different, names had changed, and some of the details about Anne were different. Oh, and Lo did not have a boyfriend in the movie. Which was kind of a bummer because I wanted to see how he and their friends were handling the inability to get ahold of her. But the bulk of the story was very similar. Until the end. The end was completely different. But not in a bad way. It was just different.