400 pages
Published July 2025 by Gallery/Scout Press
Publisher's Summary:
When the invitation to attend the press opening of a luxury Swiss hotel—owned by reclusive billionaire Marcus Leidmann—arrives, it’s like the answer to a prayer. Three years after the birth of her youngest child, Lo Blacklock is ready to reestablish her journalism career, but post-pandemic travel journalism is a very different landscape from the one she left ten years ago.
The chateau on the shores of Lake Geneva is everything Lo’s ever dreamed of, and she hopes she can snag an interview with Marcus. Unfortunately, he proves to be even more difficult to pin down than his reputation suggests. When Lo gets a late-night call asking her to come to Marcus’s hotel room, she agrees despite her own misgivings. She’s greeted, however, by a woman claiming to be Marcus’s mistress, and in life-or-death jeopardy.
What follows is a thrilling cat-and-mouse pursuit across Europe, forcing Lo to ask herself just how much she’s willing to sacrifice to save this woman...and if she can even trust her?
My Thoughts:
This is my eighth book by Ware. I found myself, from the start, wondering if it might be my last.
It's a sequel of sorts to Ware's hit, The Woman In Cabin 10, in which Lo Blacklock finds herself locked in a cabin on a boat, certain she is going to die there. This book opens giving readers the belief that the same thing has happened to Lo again. And that's where Ware first lost me. Could this woman seriously have found herself in exactly the same position ten years later? Didn't Ware have any better story ideas than to rehash the same story?
By the time this story finally caught up with the teaser opening chapter, I had spent too much time being frustrated with idea that this would be the same story to be very much relieved that it wasn't.
I will say that the story picked up and I did find myself racing through it. Did I figure out all of the plot twists? No, I didn't; although to be fair to myself, that was partly because some of the plot points felt so preposterous that they never would have occurred to me. But also, yes, I did figure out some of the twists and you'll know by now that if I've figured it out ahead of the denouement, it's pretty obvious. Another problem I had with the book was that there were so many loose threads. Now you might say they were red herrings, but they didn't feel like that and they never got explained away.
Overall, a disappointment. But let's be honest, I've like Ware enough in the past to give her another chance when her next book comes out.
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