Book Review: Ruth Ware revisits old characters in new thriller, 'The Woman in Suite 11'
Most of the main characters who survived the first book return, led by Lo Blacklock, a decade older and raising a pair of sons in Brooklyn. She's now happily married to Judah and she wrote a book called 'Dark Waters' about her ordeal aboard the cruise ship Aurora (the plot of 'Cabin 10'). She knows motherhood won't last forever, and so when she's presented with the opportunity to rekindle her travel writing career by visiting a luxury hotel in Geneva, she jumps at the chance. The hotel is owned by a reclusive European billionaire named Marcus Leidmann, and once Lo convinces the Financial Times she can deliver a profile, it's off to Switzerland, where Ware throws the thriller switch and readers are taken on a ride across the European continent, eventually ending up in England for the story's climax.
Lo's voice is the best part of the book. She's a mom now, so her sarcasm is tempered a little by maternal compassion, but she still reads like she'd be a great hang. Here she is looking out the window of a car as it drives through the countryside: 'The villages were almost absurdly cute, in that Swiss cuckoo-clock style of ornate wooden fretwork and sparkling paint… I half expected a nun to come running out from the trees and break into song.'
It's difficult to write much more about the plot without spoiling it, but Ware stays inside Lo's head throughout, as she analyzes the intent of everyone's actions and weighs her options. The tension builds steadily as she encounters various characters from the first book and begins to piece together what is happening. The story is peppered with multiple references and echoes back to 'The Woman in Cabin 10,' another reason to read or watch it first before cracking open this new novel.
Once you do, you'll settle into the rhythm of a Ware thriller. Many chapters end with snippets from websites or other sources that tease forward the plot, practically forcing you to turn the page and learn how it all happened.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
a minute ago
- Forbes
Outraged By The Biggest Loser But Fine With Ozempic?
The new Netflix docuseries Fit for TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser rips the glossy veneer off one of America's most successful reality franchises, exposing the cruelty that was sold as 'health.' What millions of viewers once consumed as inspirational entertainment is revealed instead as a case study in public humiliation, exploitation, and weight stigma disguised as self-improvement. But the series isn't just about revisiting past abuses. Watching Fit for TV in 2025, during the cultural frenzy over GLP-1 induced weight-loss, makes the show feel less like a relic and more like a prophecy. The biggest question it raises is one we urgently need to confront: what really happens to people when weight is lost rapidly, at any cost? Contestants on The Biggest Loser were paraded as 'success stories' for dropping significant amounts of weight in record time. What the show never revealed was the aftermath. Fit for TV documents lives marked by long-term physical trauma and metabolic damage. A 2016 NIH study tracked contestants for six years. Almost all had regained the weight they'd lost on the show, and many surpassed their starting weight. They all exhibited slower metabolisms than before, making the sustained weight-loss they desired nearly impossible. Behind the screaming trainers and televised weigh-ins was a worldview shaped entirely by fatphobia. The show thrived on unexamined cultural myths: that there's no such thing as 'too far' when it comes to forcing fat people into thinness, that higher-weight people are secretly lazy frauds withholding their 'true' thin selves, and that fat people cannot be trusted with their own health unless punished into submission by people who are smaller than them. The horror stories are chilling. Contestant Tracey Yukich nearly died of rhabdomyolysis after collapsing during competition: 'I just cheated death... I didn't die,' she recalled. 'My organs were literally shutting down," Yukich shared with People earlier this year in an interview. Trainers admitted that brutality was the point. 'What's not boring television?' Bob Harper, former host of the show, shrugged. 'To see us in a gym yelling and screaming.' Co-creator David Broome put it even plainer, 'We created results. We didn't create wellness.' That blunt admission cuts to the heart of something significant – results and wellness are not the same thing. What made The Biggest Loser 'good TV' is the same illusion fueling our present-day obsession with GLP-1 weight-loss: the fantasy that transformation is the same as healing, and that short-term weight loss equals long-term well-being. If Fit for TV proves anything, it's that America's appetite for spectacle has not changed. We've simply traded one medium for another. Yesterday it was contestants collapsing on treadmills. Today it's viral before-and-after Ozempic reels on Instagram. The cruelty may be quieter, the shame may be less overt, but the underlying message remains intact: rapid weight-loss at any cost is worth celebrating no matter what. The truth is harder to watch. Neither reality TV nor pharmaceuticals can change what bodies have always known: that forced thinness is unsustainable, and the demand for it can be damaging in the long-run or potentially life-threatening. The Biggest Loser was never just a show. It was a cultural tutorial in fatphobia. And in the Ozempic era, we have to ask ourselves: are we doomed to repeat history?
New York Post
30 minutes ago
- New York Post
From 'White Lotus' to 'Sirens': Why everyone on TV is rich
They're a dime a dozen. These days, it seems like nearly everyone onscreen is rich. The aesthetics of luxury lifestyles is all over TV – whether you're watching a murder mystery, a satire, or a drama. Jessica Kender, production designer for the Prime Video series 'We Were Liars,' exclusively told The Post that she wanted the show to look like, 'Everything that we have been bred to believe will be there, if you follow the money.' Advertisement 13 Joseph Zada, Emily Alyn Lind, and Esther McGregor in 'We Were Liars.' Jessie Redmond 13 Sam Nivola, Sarah Catherine Hook and Patrick Schwarzenegger in 'The White Lotus.' Fabio Lovino/HBO 'We Were Liars' is one of the many recent shows with moneyed characters in glam settings. Now streaming, it's a twisty thriller about Cadence (Emily Alyn Lind), a teen girl from a wealthy family with their own private island. Advertisement New Jersey native Kender grew up observing people who vacationed in Martha's Vineyard, 'where the elite go.' 'We tried to hit those notes,' she explained. 'It's everything you're shown when you open a magazine, like Architectural Digest.' She added that when a show is aiming to show off wealthy characters, 'Everyone knows what that looks like, because it's what the media shows us. The media tells us, 'you want this.' So, that's what we're trying to re-iterate onscreen.' 13 Emily Alyn Lind and Joseph Zada in 'We Were Liars.' Jessie Redmond Advertisement 13 Walton Goggins and Aimee Lou Wood in 'The White Lotus.' Fabio Lovino/HBO HBO's hit 'The White Lotus,' is about murder and vacations, and the characters aren't staying in hostels or bargain Holiday Inns – a real-life stay at one of Season 3's Thailand villas costs thousands of dollars per night. Even if a TV show's plot doesn't directly involve wealth, chances are, the characters live in homes that would realistically cost millions. The Netflix show 'Sirens' starring Julianne Moore and Meghann Fahy was about the complicated relationship between sisters, but it also came with a large helping of 'house porn.' Advertisement 13 Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber in 'The Perfect Couple.' ©Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection The 'Sex and the City' spinoff 'And Just Like That,' meanwhile, was ostensibly about friendship and romance — but it's full of designer clothes and impossibly large NYC apartments. In fact, Carrie's (Sarah Jessica Parker) Gramercy apartment was listed for $4,495,000 in 2019. 'Succession' followed a toxic family with a media empire, 'Yellowstone' was about a dysfunctional family with a ranching empire, 'The Righteous Gemstones' focused on a televangelist family – and they all have their own versions of mansions and armies of staffers to do their bidding. Nicole Kidman's entire recent catalogue shows are chock-full of house porn and millionaire characters, including 'Big Little Lies' and 'The Perfect Couple.' 13 Meghann Fahy in 'Sirens.' MACALL POLAY/NETFLIX 13 The home in 'Sirens.' Macall Polay/Netflix Bob Thompson, the founding director of Syracuse University's Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture and a Trustee Professor of Television and Popular Culture, told The Post that part of the appeal of these shows is, 'just the fun of seeing this stuff we don't have.' 'A lot of people used to go in the back of the New York Times Magazine and look at these ridiculously huge houses that were for sale,' he observed. Advertisement 'I find it much more interesting to watch a series about an organized crime family, 'The Sopranos' or 'The Godfather,' than I would watching a series about somebody who lived the life I live on a daily basis.' 13 Sarah Jessica Parker in 'And Just Like That.' Craig Blankenhorn/HBO Max 13 Milly Alcock and Julianne Moore in 'Sirens.' COURTESY OF NETFLIX He quipped that he enjoys his own life, 'but I certainly wouldn't want to watch somebody doing it. And I think there is a sense that TV brings us this stuff that we can't otherwise see.' Advertisement Thompson said that it's also 'easier' to have shows 'in settings of the very rich and the very privileged, because it's kind of an easy source of drama and spectacle.' The professor and TV expert pointed out that one big reason for the explosion of wealth on TV is that, 'in the last 25 years, since around the turn of the century, we've become comfortable with our principal characters being bad people.' He explained that the trend is 'relatively new,' because in the history of American TV, shows were usually, 'about heroes, good guys. There were antagonists, but the [show] was about the protagonists getting the best of them.' 13 James Gandolfini in 'The Sopranos.' Getty Images Advertisement This trend began to change with the 'golden age of TV' in the 2000s' with shows such as 'The Sopranos,' 'Breaking Bad,' 'Mad Men' and 'The Shield.' 'Oftentimes rich folks in at least a supposedly democratic culture, can be hard to portray sympathetically – because they've got all this stuff, they're so privileged,' he said. Shows that premiered during the antihero boom, 'opened the door for a lot more wealthy folks,' he told The Post. 'It would have been hard to do a show like 'Succession' in 1965, and have it be about a noble media magnate.' 13 Jeremy Strong in 'Succession.' HBO/IMDB Advertisement To convey the right aesthetics of luxury, Kender explained that the 'We Were Liars' production 'tried to be on the same wavelength as a Ralph Lauren polo ad, that makes you feel very aspirational.' 'That's the aesthetic we were aiming to give the audience – this idea of this perfect wealth. And food porn,' she noted. 'Not only did you want to live in their house, but eat in their house.' Aside from high-end clothes, a home that could be featured in a magazine, and 'food porn' like 'towers of seafood,' Kender had another key marker to signify moneyed characters. 'I was talking with someone who was telling me that they had been an assistant for a very wealthy family. And one of the things the wealthy family did every other day was have their fresh flowers refreshed.' So, when Kender worked on 'We Were Liars,' she said, 'I was like 'these are the type of people who have their flowers refreshed in their home every other day…Not by the people who live there – it's almost like elves come in and refresh them.' 13 Emily Alyn Lind, Esther McGregor, Joseph Zada and Shubham Maheshwari in 'We Were Liars.' Jessie Redmond/Prime There are still some shows featuring characters who have modest homes and jobs, however — such as 'Abbott Elementary.' But shows about blue-collar lives such as 'Roseanne' and its spinoff 'The Conners' are increasingly dwindling. 'Especially when things are so tenuous right now with our economy, with our world – for the TV viewer [part of the appeal] is seeing the rich being flawed,' Kender said. 13 Reese Witherspoon in 'Big Little Lies.' HBO 'You're sold this American dream. We're showing you on TV what you want to be.' But, on many of these shows, including 'We Were Liars' and 'The White Lotus,' when the show dives into the dark parts of characters' lives, 'you realize how tragic that life can be, as well,' she said. She explained, 'In the time we live in, it's almost refreshing to know, 'even if I hit that point, this is not what's going to make me happy. I'm going to be able to find happiness with where I am now.''
The Verge
31 minutes ago
- The Verge
Fire bad, theatrical release date good.
Posted Aug 18, 2025 at 6:08 PM UTC Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates. Charles Pulliam-Moore Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Entertainment Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Film Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Netflix Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Streaming
