The Lying Game by Ruth Ware

Book Cover

The 'Lying Game' is a 2017 thriller by Ruth Ware. Much like her previous works, this one also has an atmospheric setting and a good mix of interesting characters with grey shades and relies heavily on their antics to take the story forward.

Thea, Kate,Fathima and Isa are four childhood friends.They used to play a secret game in their childhood-the lying game!Seventeen years later, all of them receive a text message from Kate which says that she needs to meet them all urgently.At the drop of a hat, the three of them rush to meet Kate(!),only to witness some bizarre experiences at Kate's 'Tide Mill'.Pretty soon they realize that their past is catching up and it has something to do with the disappearance of Kate's beloved father, Ambrose and their expulsion from the Salten boarding school, all those years ago.

The Protagonist is Isa and the story is being told from her perspective.The supporting cast include Isa's toddler Freya, her friends Kate,(step)brother Luc,friends Fathima and Thea and a few others.The basic problem with this book is that while Ware has invested so much time and pages in getting her characters right, she has forgotten to add some layers and twists to the story.The 'Lying Game' angle is also forgotten after the initial gimmicks(the school re-union scenes)!  Things get highly predictable and boring after the first hundred pages or so and the overall length of the book at 370+ pages doesn't help in making the proceedings racy or interesting either!

Ruth Ware gets her setting right, the claustrophobic premise is quite unsettling and to be very frank, the episode involving the dead goat is also quite scary.But from then,the story goes downhill , the next 350 pages or so is sheer boredom.The narrative gets some life again only towards the last ten pages or so,by then the reader has totally lost interest in what Mrs Ware has got to say. The basic problem with the book is that it has only one genuine suspense to tell and the entire plot is an excuse to reach that point!

On the whole, I am giving it a 2.5 out of 5.

-nikhimenon

The Woman In Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

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                 The  success of The Girl On The Train and Gone Girl inspired many first time writers and scribes to come out with their own versions of it .While some of them have been decent enough (The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena definitely being one ) ,many of them have been damp squibs.Ruth Ware's The Woman In Cabin Number Ten (though pretty formulaic) fortunately belongs to the former category and is undoubtedly a time-pass read.'The Woman'... is Ruth Wares's second novel after the hugely succesful 'In A Dark, Dark Wood'

                The Protagonist is Lo, a woman with anxiety disorder and also with drinking issues  (Rachel,anyone?).She is the resident editor of Velocity,a travel magazine.As her boss is on maternity leave,she is assigned to cover the inaugural voyage of a luxury cruise.While everything is okay in the beginning,she happens to witness a woman being thrown out of her next cabin to the deep blue sea.Though she is pretty sure about what she has witnessed,not everyone is convinced about her version of events-as there has never been an occupant in the next cabin! (cabin number 10)

               The writing is decently paced and devoid of long, unnecessary detailing.As the book cover rightly puts it,'The Woman'.. reads more like an Agatha Christie meeting The Girl On The Train.The setting is pretty much Agatha (too many people locked in a particular set up),but the writing and characters are more like Paula Hawkins'. We have got a (not-that-likeable) flawed heroine who is trying desperately to prove what she has 'witnessed' has not been a product of her deviant mind.

               On the downside, I felt that the blurb gave away too much regarding the story line. It's like, if you have read the blurb, you can pretty much skip the first one fifty pages or so. Also, the suspense is not that unpredictable either (the tail-end twist with that mystery about the money in the account is good though!).On the whole, I am giving this book a 2.9 out of 5.

-nikhimenon