Not the Woman in Cabin 10: The Lying Game

I was so pleasantly surprised by the quality of The Woman in Cabin 10 that I quickly acquired all of Ruth Ware's titles. I have to say though, The Lying Game was not what I expected it to be.

This story of four grown women who return to the town they grew up in (and buried their secrets in) did not feel as fresh to me. Maybe it's not an overdone trope in suspense, mysteries, or thrillers, but it is an overdone trope in slashers, and I am up to my eyeballs in those. So I was able to guess much better what the trajectory of the book might be, and even though the resolution of a body resurfacing in the lake didn't end exactly the way I thought it would, I can't say it was the most satisfying reveal or solution (much like I felt about The Woman in Cabin 10, actually), and the plot felt like one stupid move after another, rather than a ratcheting up of tension.

My background in slasher tropes affected my reading of this in one other significant way: I couldn't empathize with the characters. These four girls all have their flaws, some more serious than others but all serious, and even if they fool themselves into thinking they've moved past it into new women, they all too easily let themselves be sucked into yet another shitty situation. As they continue to lie to their significant others and uproot their lives, endangering their infant children, the morality of the slasher rained down up me: they deserve what's coming to them. If not more. And I'm almost positive that was not how Ware envisioned people responding to her characters. But there really was no other way for me to read it.

Thankfully, each of her books has an entirely different premise, and I'm not so put off yet as to rid her from my shelves. Fingers crossed that The Death of Miss Westaway is everything people say it is.

K Rating: 2/5