The Woman in Cabin 10

Genre: Fiction, Mystery

This is the story Lo Blacklock (short for Laura), a travel journalist, who finds herself in the midst of a mystery. The story begins with Lo suffering a traumatic event. She is so terrified because of this event that she decides that going on an assignment to cover the maiden voyage of a new yacht, the Aurora, sailing through the northern fjords, will help her overcome her debilitating fear because being on a yacht is the safest place ever, right?! On her first night aboard the Aurora, she is still shaky from her experience and meets a brisk young woman in the cabin next to hers, Cabin Number 10. That night she wakes from a deep sleep to hear and see something from her room's balcony but she's not sure what exactly happened or if she can trust herself (alcohol is involved) that any of it is real. Lo spends the rest of the trip trying to uncover the mystery and eventually does just that.

In terms of the mystery, this book delivers. Indeed, what ends up happening to the Woman in Cabin 10 is an interesting turn of events. The ending also has a definite race to the finish and even a chase scene. From that perspective it was well done. What I didn't like is that Ware writes Lo as the narrator of her own story and she is much too much in her own head. There is a lot of telling the reader how afraid she is and how she might be over-reacting and then maybe she's right after all...did I mention she does this often? Lo's internal conversations, I think, make the story drag on too much, even though they were intended to add to the suspense of the story. If that part was edited-a lot- it would have been a better read.