The Woman in Cabin 10

All my reviews can be found at The Tiny Reader's Reference! Come on over and say hello!Short & Sweet: Despite a compelling premise, [b:The Woman in Cabin 10 28187230 The Woman in Cabin 10 Ruth Ware http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1465878007s/28187230.jpg 48209164] falls short with lackluster stakes and a frustrating, immature protagonist. Combined with a lethargic start, bulky middle, and linear plot, it makes for a dull novel with a lukewarm conclusion.I absolutely love stories with high, almost paranormal mysteries, and [b:The Woman in Cabin 10 28187230 The Woman in Cabin 10 Ruth Ware http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1465878007s/28187230.jpg 48209164] checked all those boxes, and more, with its premise. A murder on a highest class cruise, rubbing shoulders with some of the most powerful people in the world, trying to maintain normalcy while skimming the alibis of every person. A disappearance out of thin air. Such promise!However, based on other reviews, it seems as if you???ll fall into one of two camps ??? you???ll absolutely love this novel, or you???ll hate it. Unfortunately, I am in the latter. The novel opens to our protagonist, Lo Blacklock, a journalist for the travel magazine Velocity. She wakes up with a start, and looks out her bedroom doorway to see a burglar in her flat. Her and the burglar have a staredown, he slams the door ??? not touching Lo at all, but the door hits her too-close face ??? and locks her in. She manages to get out, calls the police, rekeys her flat, and spends the night somewhere else. Quite a violating experience, to be sure, and a hell of an opening. The first problem is then introduced: the privilege of listening to her wax on about this experience in a myriad of ways, jamming it into nearly every single moment, both where appropriate and not. Lo even dares compare her robbery to what she suspects the murdered woman felt. I quote:???I know what it???s like,??? I said, as he opened the door, ???Don???t you see? I know what she must have felt like, when someone came for her in the middle of the night.???Comparing a robbery, in which the robber not only leaves you alone, but locks you in a room to flee, to a full-blown suspected murder, left me with an entitled and immature vibe that pulled me directly out of the story to roll my eyes.Similarly, the kickoff (found at a late 85 pages in) starts as Lo wakes from a deep and drunken slumber. She futzes around in her room until she hears the sound of a splash.I held my breath, straining to hear.And then there was a splash.Not a small splash.No, this was a big splash.The kind of splash made by a body hitting water.Why jump to the conclusion that it???s a body?She jumps to her own veranda to see ???a smear of something dark and oily??? on the safety glass. Because we are both simultaneously on a high class yacht and in the stone age, she runs to call security and not take a picture or video. As a result, the smear is gone when she returns.Within the same vein, Lo tends to have illogical reactions to situations. It seems to cross the line from adult frustration to childlike anger control. In one notable example: she brings her concerns to the head of security Johann Nilsson, (literally, ???I think I???ve witnessed a murder!???) who takes her seriously by exhausting all possible options, given they???re in a ship in the middle of the flippin??? North Sea, and the crime scene is completely pristine. He listens to her account, hears her description of the missing woman, and proceeds to take Lo to meet every single person who fits the description on the ship, from Richard Bullmer, owner and billionaire, all the way down to the lowliest server. Quite literally. This takes up ten pages, where we travel down to the living quarters, and get to listen to Lo shake her head and Johann patiently guide her from one employee to the next.When Johann suggests that maybe ??? just maybe ??? her level of intoxication that night, combined with other factors, may have caused a hallucination or some type of suggestion, she flips the hell out in a reaction that truly had me taken aback. Slams the door, screaming, borderline panic attack, then throws herself dramatically on the bed to ???sob her heart out???. Later on, she claims that Johann ???hadn???t taken her seriously???. This dramatic and frankly audacious cognitive dissonance caused all sympathy I had for Lo to dissipate. The second problem is that really, not much else happens, aside from the first ten pages and last thirty pages. Everything in between is filled with Lo either having a borderline panic attack, falling asleep, nauseous, drinking, musing on who was a murderer, or talking to the staff.I believe my main problem with this novel, overall, were the lack of stakes and believability. Not for one moment did Lo genuinely sit down and say to herself, ???Yes, I was extremely intoxicated and half-asleep, this looks bad on the outside.??? She repeatedly, and stubbornly to the point of ridiculousness, doubles down, exaggerates the situation, and makes poor choices afterward, all the way up to the conclusion. This review, and myself, sounds very callous toward those who suffer from anxiety. I would like to assure you, dear reader, that I am not ??? I subscribe to a similar medication regime as Lo does. However, it was very difficult for me to sympathize and root for Lo when she was screaming at Johann for making a reasonable conclusion based on her inebriation and sleep deprivation that night. A frustrating one? Yes. A wrong one? Absolutely. But not an illogical one. The reveal, and conclusion, were satisfying to a degree. When [a:Ruth Ware 9013543 Ruth Ware http://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1434533707p2/9013543.jpg] writes action, it kept me turning the page to find out what happens next, written at an even and clipped pace. The very end closed the book on a positive note, and while it was great, I felt the answers I received were not necessarily worth the effort of slogging through the delayed beginning and bloated middle. If Ware had sprinkled a few subplots, reeled Lo back a couple notches, and rose the stakes much higher ??? perhaps Lo had indeed seen a murder, rather than allude or suspect one ??? [b:The Woman in Cabin 10 28187230 The Woman in Cabin 10 Ruth Ware http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1465878007s/28187230.jpg 48209164] would jump by leaps and bounds. Otherwise, I would pass on this one.