Continuing on with my mystery trend as of late, I want to tell everyone about Ruth Ware’s latest book The Woman In Cabin 10. Since this recent obsession of mine was kicked off with Ware’s first novel, In a Dark, Dark Wood, I figured why not try the one that people have been buying like crazy since it came out.
The main character is a travel journalist named Lo Blacklock, who has worked at the same magazine for awhile and gets an exciting assignment because her boss is on maternity leave. Lo is eager to go on this assignment and make a good impression on her boss, because she would love to keep getting assignments such as this. 
Richard Bullmer, the multi-millionaire businessman who married a noblewoman from the Netherlands, has built a state-of-the-art luxury cruise liner named the Aurora and is about to take its maiden voyage to the North Sea. The ship is said to the be the height of luxury and opulence, so obviously Lo is very excited to cover the maiden voyage and profile some of the super A-list guests.
A few days before Lo is set to leave on her trip, she is a victim of a home invasion and is extremely shaken. Lo is determined to not let this unfortunate event keep her from her work. On the day of departure, Lo boards the ship and is immediately impressed with the ship and the staff. Her cabin is like nothing she has ever slept in, and she settles right in. On the first night is a formal welcome party, complete with evening gowns and tuxedos. When Lo was getting ready, she met the girl in cabin 10, which is beside her cabin; however she does not see her at the the welcome dinner. Lo wonders if she is being hidden there by another passenger because she doesn’t look like the kind of person who would be on this ship. Richard Bullmer is handsome and extremely charming and his wife is exquisitely dressed, but extremely frail due to the treatment for aggressive breast cancer she has been diagnosed with and battling with for a year.
Later that night, Lo is woken by a noise next door and then hears what she believes to be a body splashing in the water. To say that Lo has a proper freakout about this would be an understatement, and rightly so. She gets the head of security involved and demands to meet all of the staff to see if the girl in cabin 10 is among them or if anyone notices her missing. So what seemed like it was going to be a very pleasurable assignment soon becomes a real-life nightmare. Lo is nervous about the confined spaces, jumpy from her home invasion, and rather unnerved because no one believes her suspicions about what has happened to the girl next door. Lo discovers that all the passengers and staff members remain accounted for, which makes it especially hard to prove that there was a person murdered if no one even knows about the person. Much to Lo’s dismay the cruise continues on as if nothing is wrong. This does not dissuade Lo in her hunt for answers.
There is a crazy twist in this book that I didn’t see coming at all. Mrs. Ware really set the mood of this book in her writing. There were times that I found myself struggling with the small spaces that the character was put in and just her general mood of desperation. I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone needing a thriller in their life.
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