The Woman in Cabin 10

Laura (Lo) Blacklock wakes up in the middle of the night. There is an intruder in the house. She is locked in her room. This experience reactivates anxiety issues that have troubled her for years. However she still accepts an invitation to travel on a new luxury ship in order to write an article for a travel magazine.However this adventure does not turn out to be the relaxing excursion she expected.

The journalists and other guests are allocated their cabins and Lo stays in cabin nine. The next door cabin is empty as the guest changed his mind about coming on the voyage. Then during the night Lo hears a scream and something, possibly a body, is thrown into the sea. When Lo reports the matter she is basically ignored. No-one on the ship is missing. But Lo knows that something is very wrong. So begins this account of Lo's nightmarish sea voyage. Parts of the novel move slowly but the tension builds as the story continues.

The sequel to this book is The Woman in Suite 11. 

In 2025 The Woman in Cabin 10 was made into a film for Netflix. 

The Woman in Suite 11

The Woman in Suite 11 is the second book in the Lo Blacklock series by English author, Ruth Ware. When Laura, also known as Lo, receives an invitation to visit the opening of an exclusive hotel in Switzerland she is uncertain whether to take up the offer. She wants to return to the workforce after the birth of her two boys but a traumatic experience when attending a ship launch ten years previously, plus the gap in her career largely due to the COVID pandemic, makes her think twice about accepting the invitation. Still she needs to start writing again sometime.

Arriving at the impressive hotel, Laura is surprised, and disturbed, to find three of the men who had also attended the ship launch had also been invited to the Swiss hotel. Then she is contacted by a fourth person who had been on the ship and Laura's quiet visit to Switzerland, where she hopes to interview the owner of the hotel for a commissioned article, becomes another dangerous episode in her life.

Throughout the novel there are many references to the events that occurred ten years earlier so I suspect that reading the previous novel, The Woman in Cabin 10, first would have been an advantage. However, I still enjoyed reading this fast paced mystery with Laura endeavouring to prove her innocence.