The Woman in Suite 11 by Ruth Ware

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🕵️‍♀️ The Woman in Suite 11 ⭐ 4/5

by Ruth Ware
👉 Buy on Amazon (affiliate link)

⚠️ Trigger Warnings

Murder • physical & emotional abuse • sexual violence/harassment • trauma & PTSD • imprisonment • substance use • suicide • mental illness 

🚨 Spoiler Warning

Full spoilers ahead! This review spills everything — including major twists, who dies, and who escapes. If you haven’t read it yet (or The Woman in Cabin 10), proceed at your own risk!

🌊 First Impressions

Okay, let me just say — I was way too excited about this sequel 😅.
I gave The Woman in Cabin 10 a 3.5/5 years ago because, while it was totally gripping, it also veered into so-far-fetched-I-laughed territory. But somehow that book stuck with me. I still think about that eerie cruise ship, the claustrophobia, the mystery.

So when The Woman in Suite 11 came out, I was READY.
It’s funny — being hyped for a sequel to a book I only gave 3.5 stars? Make it make sense. 😂 But honestly, I couldn’t wait to see what happened to Lo Blacklock next.

And I’m glad I did — because this one is just as suspenseful, twisty, and atmospheric as the first. I was suspicious of everyone. At one point, I was even side-eyeing Lo’s mom.

🏨 Overview

Published in 2025, The Woman in Suite 11 is the official sequel to The Woman in Cabin 10 — now also a film starring Keira Knightley as Lo Blacklock.

The story picks up ten years after the events aboard the Aurora cruise ship, where Lo was held captive and traumatized. Now she’s a mother of two, ready to step back into her career as a travel journalist.

When she’s invited to cover the luxurious Grand Hotel du Lac in Switzerland, she sees it as the perfect opportunity to restart her life — and prove she’s still got it.

What she doesn’t expect?
To come face-to-face with ghosts from her past… and a new web of secrets that threaten everything she’s rebuilt.

Themes explored include trauma recovery, career reinvention, and how the powerful manipulate and control others, especially women trying to escape abusive systems.

🧳 Plot Summary (FULL SPOILERS BELOW!)

✈️ A New Beginning

Lo heads to the Swiss Alps to cover the opening of the Grand Hotel du Lac, owned by billionaire Marcus Leidmann. Her husband, Judah, stays home with their kids.

When she arrives, she realizes several people from the Aurora cruise are also attending — including Ben, her ex-boyfriend (awkward), and Cole, the friendly photographer who was also on the ship. Lo’s book about her ordeal, Dark Waters, made her famous (and infamous), and everyone seems to have read it.

Cole gives Lo a friendly kiss on the cheek — which, unfortunately, will come back to haunt her later.

🪞 A Ghost from the Past

One night, Lo returns to her room and finds a note: “Come to Suite 11.”

Inside is Carrie, the mysterious woman from Cabin 10 — the one who saved Lo all those years ago.
Carrie confesses that after escaping Lord Richard Bullmer, she was recognized at a bank by Marcus Leidmann. He blackmailed her, threatening to expose her identity if she didn’t obey him. What followed was seven years of captivity, manipulation, and abuse.

Now Marcus has gathered everyone from the Aurora at the hotel to prove she’s still under his thumb. Carrie begs Lo for help escaping — she needs to borrow Lo’s extra passport (she has dual citizenship).

Lo hesitates, but her compassion wins out.

🚂 The Great Escape

Carrie and Lo execute an elaborate plan straight out of a spy movie: disguises, fake illnesses, train swaps, identity switches — the works.

Carrie poses as Lo using her extra passport. Lo lies low at a countryside hotel called the Old Manor, thinking the danger is behind them.

But when Marcus is found dead in a bathtub at that very hotel, things go south fast.

Lo’s proximity to the body, her “history of violence” (thanks, Cabin 10), and a misleading photo of Cole kissing her cheek all make her look guilty.

She’s arrested. She panics. And then — she fights back.

⚖️ The Investigation

With the help of her lawyer Dan and supportive friends (Ben and Cole, who rally behind her), Lo gets released on bail.

She starts her own digging, using hotel keycard data and — genius move — tracking the AirTag that Judah hid in her luggage.

The tag leads her to Carrie, who confesses that she and Marcus’s son Pieter killed Marcus together. They staged everything to look like Marcus was alive after the fact, using a pre-recorded call.

Carrie says it was self-defense, that she and Pieter planned to expose him, but things got messy. She agrees to turn herself in — but only to Filippo Capaldi, the supposed Interpol agent who had questioned Lo earlier.

Only problem? Filippo isn’t Interpol. He’s Marcus’s former driver, and Carrie’s new partner in crime.

💀 The Final Twist

Back home in England, Lo’s recovering from the chaos when Pieter breaks into her mother’s house, trying to retrieve the phone Carrie left behind — a phone loaded with damning evidence.

They struggle, glass shatters, and Pieter — cornered and desperate — ends his own life in front of Lo.

The phone reveals everything: Pieter and Carrie murdered Marcus, and Lo is officially cleared.

Back in New York, Lo writes a major expose on the collapse of the Leidmann empire. Her career rebounds, her family’s safe, and for once, she feels at peace.

Until she gets an Instagram DM from — you guessed it — Carrie.
It’s a photo of her and Filippo, smiling on a beach somewhere tropical.

Alive. Free. And definitely not done scheming. 🏖️

💬 Thoughts

Ruth Ware is the queen of luxury-gone-wrong thrillers. Her prose is crisp, cinematic, and she nails the uneasy glamour that makes these books so bingeable.

I was completely sucked into this story — the pacing, the setting, the moral gray areas. I loved the clever twist that Carrie used Lo’s reputation and passport to vanish.

That said… I can’t help rolling my eyes at Carrie’s character arc. How is she again the abused mistress of a wealthy monster? We’ve done this! It made her storyline feel déjà vu.

Otherwise, this sequel does what sequels rarely do — it justifies itself. Cabin 10 was about survival; Suite 11 is about what happens after survival, when trauma and trust collide.

And honestly? I was glued to the pages.

📖 Final Rating: ⭐ 4 out of 5

The Woman in Suite 11 is everything you want in a Ruth Ware novel: lush setting, creeping paranoia, morally tangled women, and a final “wait, what?” twist that lands perfectly.

Even if you didn’t love Cabin 10, this is a solid, high-tension follow-up — familiar, satisfying, and just a little unhinged.

🛍️ Where to Buy

👉 Buy The Woman in Suite 11 on Amazon (affiliate link)

🔎 Similar Reads & Recommendations

If you liked the suspense, atmosphere, and rich-people-behaving-badly energy, try:

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