IN A DARK, DARK WOOD is being touted as the next THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN. This is a comparison that is perhaps unfair to both books, which should be judged on their own terms. While they share a couple of similar aspects, including a narrator who may be, in a word, unreliable, debut author Ruth Ware works hard to combine all of the elements of a horror novel --- several different, and occasionally clashing, personalities in a claustrophobic setting that is cut off from civilization when an interloper with seemingly bad intent materializes out of nowhere --- before yanking things in a totally different direction. That being said, this is more a character-driven novel that cuts across genres as it builds in intensity and suspense.

"...more a character-driven novel that cuts across genres as it builds in intensity and suspense.... [Ware] certainly gets points for combining elements of a number of genres --- suspense, romance, thriller and police procedural --- into a terse novel without making the proceedings feel crowded at all."

The plot is fairly straightforward. The book is narrated by Leonora (previously known as Lee, now referred to as Nora), a freelance novelist who is more or less content with her life and career. However, her life is somewhat uneasily upended when she gets an email invitation to a hen party being held for Claire, a high school friend of hers. Leonora is somewhat puzzled by the invitation, which comes from a woman she doesn’t know, given that she hasn’t spoken to Claire in 10 years. It takes a good part of the initial portion of the novel to find out why the formerly very good friends haven’t spoken in a decade, and that reason echoes throughout the remainder of the story. The closed setting --- a large glass house in a rural British environment, perched at the end of a long, circular drive and built up against a large forest --- helps to create the mood of unease that shoots through IN A DARK, DARK WOOD from the beginning almost to the end.

Flo, Claire’s current best friend and the catalyst behind the hen party, exudes a manic, aggressive cheerfulness, wanting everything to be right while constantly making the wrong decisions with respect to food, activities, and...well, just about everything. The house where the party is held over a very long weekend belongs to her absent aunt, and the “decorative” shotgun displayed on the wall adds to the vague and uneasy atmosphere of foreboding that hangs like a cloud over the proceedings. No one really wants to be there, except for Flo and Claire, and for different reasons. As the present and the past are presented from Nora’s point of view, the reader gets the uneasy feeling that Nora is perhaps not the most reliable of historians. So when things go very, very wrong on the second and last night of the party, suddenly transforming the book into an Agatha Christie-like whodunit, Ware’s audience isn’t completely sure that the doer isn’t Nora, even as we are all but too sure of her motive.

Ware’s in-the-room presentation of the interaction of the women at the party isn’t entirely flattering. I daresay that if I had read this book when I was 14, I would’ve been tempted to retreat to a cloistered monastery and taken a vow of celibacy. None of the characters --- with the possible exception of an extremely pivotal one who makes a brief but important appearance at the end --- is especially sympathetic, not even the nominal protagonist, who is a victim of Shakespearean proportions. Ware drops these folks into the weekend party from hell; tragedy ensues, in more ways than one. She certainly gets points for combining elements of a number of genres --- suspense, romance, thriller and police procedural --- into a terse novel without making the proceedings feel crowded at all.

Despite a couple of plot holes that will make even the most casual reader go “hmmm…”, IN A DARK, DARK WOOD is a great book to close out your summer.