Author: Ruth Ware
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Reviewer: Jacquie Byron
If you loved The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware and finished that book with a real curiosity as to where the two female protagonists, Laura (Lo) and Carrie, ended up then you’ll probably romp through this one, The Woman in Suite 11.
The author’s dedication at the front of the book reads, “to everyone who wanted more,” and this, I would say, sets the tone. So too do Ware’s acknowledgements at the end of the book, where she notes that she’s never written a sequel or follow-up before, and never wanted to. It is readers – and, I assume, viewers, considering the subsequent film adaptation starring Keira Knightley as the bashed-about Lo – who cheered the author, and her publishers, on. Good on them.
To read this book as a standalone may not be as satisfying as it will be for those who have followed the trail from the first. To borrow a culinary comparison – apt, given there’s a bit of food porn in the first third of the book – it’s like arriving at a swish restaurant meal an hour late. The main course is excellent, but everyone else has enjoyed cocktails, canapés and an entrée and you can’t help wondering what you missed.
Nevertheless, Ware, a writer with at least another nine works under her belt, knows what she’s doing, so new readers coming to this book will find a fresh story that’s easy enough to follow. I, for one, had only seen the movie, and I assume it was heavily altered from the original text. They usually are.
The Woman in Suite 11 will probably not go down as Ware’s finest book. (I have previously reviewed The It Girl which was a corker.) As the author herself says, it was written in response to vociferous demand. That’s different from writing because you have a burning story to tell. There is definitely not an unnecessary amount of revisiting the old story or rehashing, which was a relief. Indeed, when the woman killed in the first book is mentioned, the reference is so opaque that it was the one and only time I was glad I’d seen the movie.
The story is set a decade after the first one, giving Lo plenty of time to move cities, have kids, and be happily paired up. This opens up opportunities for interesting vignettes of domestic life, working life, and motherhood – the joy of little ones, the way they smell, and how they wrap you around their chubby fingers. It also gives Carrie, Lo’s complicated partner in crime, ample time to get herself into a whole new tub of hot water.
There are luxury hotels in this book, some international travel, and clever use of modern tech to propel the story. While I sensed where the plot was going earlier than I would have liked, I still found myself going to bed looking forward to the action I knew I’d be immersed in. That’s not my usual kind of reading, and it was, for the moment, fun.
As before, Lo gets put through the wringer. At times, she is her own worst enemy and, if she were my mate, I’d either try to shake some sense into her or tell her to call me when the whole thing was over. Her husband is a patient man.
What is refreshing is an amateur sleuth character who is anxiety-ridden, has in-laws, and, when she careens across a floor covered in smashed glass, actually cuts her foot rather than continues on Lazarus-like. These touches of reality balance out some of the more fanciful elements of the story.
Publisher blurb
When the invitation to attend the press opening of a luxury Swiss hotel – owned by reclusive billionaire Marcus Leidmann – arrives, it’s like the answer to a prayer. Three years after the birth of her youngest child, Lo Blacklock is ready to re-establish her journalism career, but post-pandemic travel journalism is a very different landscape from the one she left ten years ago.
The chateau on the shores of Lake Geneva is everything Lo’s ever dreamed of, and she hopes she can snag an interview with Marcus. Unfortunately, he proves to be even more difficult to pin down than his reputation suggests. When Lo gets a late-night call asking her to come to Marcus’s hotel room, she agrees despite her own misgivings. She’s greeted, however, by a woman claiming to be Marcus’s mistress, and in life-or-death jeopardy.
What follows is a thrilling cat-and-mouse pursuit across Europe, forcing Lo to ask herself just how much she’s willing to sacrifice to save this woman…and if she can even trust her