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Aug 26, 2017susan_findlay rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
This is a really hard book to review because it's very uneven. It's divided into several "parts", each of which consists of several chapters. Most of the parts end with some sort of communication (email, newspaper article, etc.) relating to the story but not part of the core story. These endings are the author's most effective tool for building suspense. Without them, I'm not sure I would have made it to the second half of the book. The first two parts were deathly dull. We meet the main character, Lo (short for Laura) whose main character traits appear to be "drinks a lot" and "is mean to her boyfriend". Not the most compelling heroine. I really should have felt bad for her given the opening events, but I didn't. The author didn't convince me to like her first. When the heroine finally gets to the boat and we finally encounter "the woman in cabin 10", the story starts to get somewhat more interesting. I still felt like I was mostly killing time for the middle section of the book though. It was only when I got to the last third or so that the suspense really picked up. The last third(ish) of this book is excellent. Unfortunately, it's dragged down by the first two thirds(ish). I'd really like to give separate star ratings to each section but, since I can't, I'll average it out to somewhere in the vicinity of 2.5 stars.