Published by Harvill Secker on 30th June 2016

Synopsis

In this tightly wound story, 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. 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 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…
With surprising twists and a setting that proves as uncomfortably claustrophobic as it is eerily beautiful, Ruth Ware offers up another intense read.

My thoughts

There seems to be a bit of a theme in books at the moment to have an unreliable female narrator (think The Girl on the Train) and this is another one. Having heard some mixed reviews on this I went into it not really expecting very much and because of this, I believe, I actually quite enjoyed it . The main character of Lo is well written but not particularly likeable or sympathetic, she drinks too much and takes pills on top for her anxiety. She imagines all sorts of things, which of course makes her claims unbelievable, especially when she witnesses a murder, she has been drinking and there is no evidence at all of the person who was murdered.

The first half of the book moves at a solid pace  and there are not that many characters on the boat that could be the killer, but Ware casts suspicion upon all of them. However other than Lo and her partner Judah – who does not go on the cruise with her, there was no real depth to some of the characters and I really didn’t care who was killed or who the killer was.

In the second half of the book we are expected to believe that Lo convinces the killer’s accomplice to help her escape with hardly any persuasion, this was a bit too far and why this book has been given mixed reviews, the turn around by this character was to quick, as was the ending which felt really rushed this is a shame as the book had so much promise.

I gave this 3 out of 5 stars