Opinions of a Wolf

A travel journalist borrows a mascara from the woman in the cabin next-door to hers, but then the entire luxury cruise denies there ever was a woman staying there.

Summary:
Lo Blacklock, a journalist who writes for a travel magazine, has just been given the assignment of a lifetime: a week on a luxury cruise with only a handful of cabins. The sky is clear, the waters calm, and the veneered, select guests jovial as the exclusive cruise ship, the Aurora, begins her voyage in the picturesque North Sea. At first, Lo’s stay is nothing but pleasant: the cabins are plush, the dinner parties are sparkling, and the guests are elegant. But as the week wears on, frigid winds whip the deck, gray skies fall, and Lo witnesses what she can only describe as a dark and terrifying nightmare: a woman being thrown overboard. The problem? All passengers remain accounted for—and so, the ship sails on as if nothing has happened, despite Lo’s desperate attempts to convey that something (or someone) has gone terribly, terribly wrong…

Review:
This is my sixth Ruth Ware book (two reviewed on the blog), and I generally enjoy them quite a bit, but this one was my least liked so far. Just like all of her books, the plot is sound and deliciously twisty. But I absolutely could not stand the main character.

We first meet Lo when she’s going through a break-in in her flat (first chapter stuff, not a spoiler). I think this is both supposed to make the reader empathize with Lo and later serve as an explanation for why she over-identifies with the mysterious woman in Cabin 10. Lo’s response to the break-in besides the logical things like changing her locks, is to drink a lot of alcohol and then wander over to her boyfriend’s flat in the middle of the night when she thinks he’s out of town. Then when he startles her by arriving home to his own flat, she (half-asleep) knocks out one of his teeth with a lamp. Then after he tells her he gave up a job to stay in the same city as her, she gets mad at him and starts a fight with him. Within twelve hours of knocking out his tooth. Maybe I’m just a little bit sensitive to tooth loss since I’ve been dealing for months with replacing a tooth lost to trauma. But I’m not sure how I’m supposed to like this woman after this set-up. It gets even worse when we later find out she’s on anti-anxiety medication that’s not supposed to be mixed with alcohol. Like. This woman is bumbling around like a bumper car in a pottery shop. So while I was curious about the missing woman in cabin 10, and the twists in that part of the story kept me reading, I couldn’t have cared less if Lo lived or died. Which is definitely not how I was supposed to feel given what a very real threat her life later comes under.

I liked the setting of a small luxury cruise ship on the North Sea. I could really see the ship in my mind, and it felt very much like a locked room Agatha Christie style story with the limited number of guests and crew to suspect. Perhaps we were supposed to think that Lo might be wrong about there being a woman in cabin 10, but I was quite confident from the beginning and the title of the book that she was a reliable (albeit terrible) narrator. There is a very slow literal locked room about two-thirds of the way in. I almost gave up at that part, but I’m glad I persisted because the twists were unexpected, and the scenery for the final confrontations was spectacular.

Overall, if you either think the plot makes the annoying main character worthwhile or, perhaps, you find her less annoying than I do, this is a fun, quick thriller read.

If you found this review helpful, please consider tipping me on ko-fi, checking out my digital items available in my ko-fi shop, buying one of my publications, or using one of my referral/coupon codes. Thank you for your support!

3 out of 5 stars

Length: 340 pages – average but on the longer side

Source: Found in free pile

Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)