The Woman in Suite 11

Ruth Ware has been my favorite thriller author since I read The Woman in Cabin 10 nearly eight years ago. That book is still among my top three favorites by her, so I was excited to learn it would have a sequel: The Woman in Suite 11.

It’s ten years after the horrors that happened on the Aurora, and Lo Blacklock has moved on with her life. She and her husband Judah now live in New York City with their two young sons. Lo wrote a bestselling memoir, Dark Waters, but has otherwise not really worked in years. So when she gets an invitation to the opening of a luxury hotel in Switzerland, she hopes it could help jump-start her return to travel journalism. But she’s not the only guest there who was also on the Aurora, and it seems that her past has finally caught up with her…

What I Liked:

• Returning to the characters of The Woman in Cabin 10. It would probably help to refresh your memory on the many players from that novel! But it was fun to return to so many people then and seeing how they resurface now.
• Getting to see how Lo was affected and has changed since. People can chance a lot in a decade, and it’s certainly true of Lo. We get to see how she’s still dealing with the psychological impact of the earlier events, but also how she’s settled into motherhood. She’s not the same unreliable narrator as before!
• Women helping women. For all her sketchiness and faults, Carrie is still in some ways a victim, so it’s no wonder that Lo wants to help her. It may not be her best choice, but she feels it’s the right one in order to protect Carrie from an evil man.

What Didn’t Work for Me:

• The Woman in Suite 11 goes in a few different directions, sometimes feeling more scattered than it should. I wish it had been a bit more focused and scary.
• Some things don’t feel fully resolved by the end. The piece of paper from Ben? The mushroom soup? Lo’s role in getting to England? The conclusions of the investigation? I wanted more answers.

Final Thoughts

As much as I loved its predecessor, The Woman in Suite 11 doesn’t hit quite the same way. I still enjoyed this novel and some parts were quite exciting; I did race through the whole book. But this was a rather different sort of thriller. It’s less edge-of-your-seat and more looking-over-your-shoulder-so-you-don’t-get-caught. Ruth Ware fans will likely appreciate it, but it’s not as gripping as her usual work. Regardless, it was fun to catch up with these characters, and I look forward to the upcoming movie adaptation of The Woman in Cabin 10.

Special thanks to Gallery Books and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Get the Book

You can buy The Woman in Suite 11 here – it’s available as a hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.

The Woman in Suite 11 by Ruth Ware
Series	Lo Blacklock (#2)
Audience	Adult
Genre	Thriller; Crime Fiction
Setting	Switzerland; France; England; NYC
Number of Pages	400
Format I Read	Ebook (NetGalley ARC)
Original Publication Date	July 8, 2025
Publisher	Gallery/Scout Press

Official Summary

In this follow-up to #1 New York Times bestselling author Ruth Ware’s multi-million copy mega-hit The Woman in Cabin 10, Lo Blacklock returns to attend the opening of a luxury hotel, only to find herself in a white-knuckled race across Europe.

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?