Book: “In a Dark, Dark Wood” by Ruth Ware
Publishing Info: Scout Press, August 2015
Where Did I Get This Book: The library!
Book Description from Goodreads: What should be a cozy and fun-filled weekend deep in the English countryside takes a sinister turn in Ruth Ware’s suspenseful, compulsive, and darkly twisted psychological thriller.
Leonora, known to some as Lee and others as Nora, is a reclusive crime writer, unwilling to leave her “nest” of an apartment unless it is absolutely necessary. When a friend she hasn’t seen or spoken to in years unexpectedly invites Nora (Lee?) to a weekend away in an eerie glass house deep in the English countryside, she reluctantly agrees to make the trip. Forty-eight hours later, she wakes up in a hospital bed injured but alive, with the knowledge that someone is dead. Wondering not “what happened?” but “what have I done?”, Nora (Lee?) tries to piece together the events of the past weekend. Working to uncover secrets, reveal motives, and find answers, Nora (Lee?) must revisit parts of herself that she would much rather leave buried where they belong: in the past.
In the tradition of Paula Hawkins’s instant New York Times bestseller The Girl On the Train and S. J. Watson’s riveting national sensation Before I Go To Sleep, this gripping literary debut from UK novelist Ruth Ware will leave you on the edge of your seat through the very last page.
Review: I’m sure that a lot of women and girls can relate to the concept of having the friend who overshadowed you when you were together. Though I try to be a more confident and self assured person now, in the past I’ve had a number of friends who always held more of the attention and admiration than I did, which led to a great deal of insecurity. So it should be no surprise that I felt very deeply for our protagonist, Leonora (or Lee, or Nora), in “In a Dark, Dark Wood”. As someone who tried to reinvent herself at least somewhat since those days, there were moments that I just wanted to hold my hand out to Nora and say “Girl, I feel you.” When I picked up “In a Dark, Dark Wood” I thought that I was going to be in for the usual kind of story that many thrillers of this type have been; anti-hero mess of a protagonist, lots of crazy twists and turns, lots of cynicism and not much joy. But I was pleasantly surprised to find that, outside of a few said twists and or turns, this book sloughed off the other trends without a care in the world. Nora is a character who does have some issues, but I found her to be extremely likable and relatable. I wasn’t actively rooting against her, like Amy in “Gone Girl”, nor was I actively cringing for her in awful, self induced terrible situations she was in, like Rachel in “The Girl on the Train”. With Nora, there were moments of ‘you need to get a grip’, but they were done in a way that just made her seem well rounded and multi-faceted as a character.
The plot of “In a Dark, Dark Wood” is fairly standard for this genre: a bunch of acquaintances find themselves in a situation that might have gone better if they actually knew and trusted each other, but as it is there is suspicion and doubt for Nora as she tries to piece together what happened. While the setting of a remote cabin with little to no cell service is kind of old hat, it never felt like it was trying too hard in this story. I will say that this story did have some predictable aspects to it, at least predictable to me. There were a couple of moments where I felt that Ware was hinting a little too hard, and that she was spelling things out so much that I figured out some pretty big twists before they were meant to be found. While it’s true that I didn’t figure everything out, it can be pretty frustrating to know where a story is going by the time you get to the big reveal. But that said, there were a lot of things that did keep me guessing, and even though I discerned a bit before I was probably meant to, it didn’t take away from my overall enjoyment of the book. In fact, figuring some things out made it so I was distracted enough to be caught off guard by a few other things. That’s the sign of a good mystery, I think.
I also have to say that I liked the ending. I won’t spoil it here, but there was a certain amount of ambiguity to it, along with a bit of hope that a lot of these books really do lack when all is said and done. I choose to think the best of the possibilities, as while I’m cynical and snarky most of the time, I do like having a bit of hope in my life and in my literature. It was very refreshing to see some hope here, when so many books in this genre these days end with either no hope whatsoever, or with broken people for whom there will never be a total release. This one felt different, somehow, and I really, really liked that.
“In a Dark, Dark Wood” is a book that I cannot recommend enough for fans of thrillers. I think that this one could be and should be the most recent one to take off. Definitely check it out if you’re looking for a quick, twisty thrill ride.
Rating 9: A twisty and turn-y thriller with great moments of suspense and mystery. Had I not called the conclusion about fifty pages before, it would have gotten a 10. But even so, I really liked this.
Reader’s Advisory:
“In a Dark, Dark Wood” is included in these Goodreads Lists: “Psychological Chillers by Women Authors”, and “Psychological Thrillers”.
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