The Woman in Cabin 10 came out in 2016, and I finally finished it this month. 

Here’s a general preface — I don’t often read mystery/thriller/horror. At all. I’ll occasionally read something if it seems part of a cultural reset, like Gone Girl or Murder on the Orient Express. I found the book at my local Goodwill Bookstore for $1.50 and my girlfriend had the paperback copy, so we decided to read it together on our weekend getaway to Big Bear. Even though this book takes place on a luxury cruise ship, it still felt apt to read it in a cabin. 

A quick summary: Laura “Lo” Blacklock is a travel journalist whose big break may be coming up in the form of the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to aboard the maiden voyage of the Aurora, a boutique yacht set to sail on the seas of Norway, under the famed Aurora Borealis. The ship is filled with press, royalty, and the extremely wealthy, spread over ten opulent cabins. The story begins, however, with a burglary that’s meant to undermine everything Lo says henceforward. Her experience being intruded upon in the middle of the night makes her paranoid and afraid, so when she thinks she hears a passenger being thrown overboard, when she sounds the alarm — people only tentatively appease her. Couple her as a victim with a drinking problem, and then add that she’s on medication for anxiety and depression — and you have a classic unreliable character. 

Unfortunately for Lo, not only is she established as an unreliable character, she’s unlikable. She possesses no charm or humor, and she isn’t described as overwhelmingly beautiful. Moreover, she’s vapid and shallow, and kind of a bitch to her boyfriend, without any real explanation. She was annoying and when a book is written in the “I” format, which I’m sure was a choice, you feel annoyed at all times. Overall, the writing to me felt lazy. There are one too many questions left at the end of the mystery, and yet not ones that really itch you to understand. Just questions that showcase the lack of good storytelling. I wasn’t ever gripped by the tale, and the twist was a little odd. A lot of reviewers on Goodreads compared the book to The Girl on the Train, which I genuinely cannot remember if I finished. So if that’s a book you’ve read and enjoyed, you may like The Woman in Cabin 10.

It reminded me sort of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express in that there could only be a finite number of suspects for what had to have been the murder of at least one passenger aboard the cruise ship. However, I didn’t like that instead of keeping it to the finite number of passengers, and creating a backstory for each of those characters, the author decided to extend outwards to the entire staff, including the waitstaff and the sailors. There were too many details when you involve so many characters. It got repetitive in that regard, as well. The same questions, the same lack of credibility, and then suddenly Lo’s locked up somewhere. 

Perhaps it was also a little hard to follow in the beginning as I switched from reading a hardback cover, to listening to the audiobook (which mixed English, Norwegian, and New Jersey accents) and then finally as an e-book. So maybe that’s on me. The book received a 3.7/5 on Goodreads, and I could only give it a generous 2.5. It wasn’t a quick read for me, even though the language is easy to understand, just because of how unlikable Lo was. I’m glad I finished it to say I did, but I definitely couldn’t recommend it in good faith. That isn’t to say it’s a bad book, it just wasn’t quite my cup of tea.

Promptly after finishing this book and taking the necessary photo, I dropped it off at my local little library, perhaps for someone else to enjoy better than I did.