In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware

I love the unreliable narrator trend. Books such as The Girl on the Train, Gone Girl, Turn of Mind, and Luckiest Girl Alive are some of my all-time favorite reads, and take up a large section of my bookshelves.

In a Dark, Dark Wood is a welcome addition to this group.

Lenora is our narrator here. She lives a solitary life, for reasons we are not yet privy to, but this careful existence is shaken when she receives an invitation to a bachelorette party for her former best friend. Lenora almost declines, but eventually decides to go, to see the woman she has not spoken to for over a decade. We don't know why they haven't spoken, or what exactly it was that caused Lenora to shut everyone from her past out.

But we, the readers, do know the future repercussions of her choice to say yes-or at least, some of them. The bachelorette party is told in flashbacks, as Lenora lies in a hospital bed, under police guard. The flashbacks occur as Lenora begins to recover her memory, memories lost to an accident she cannot remember.

Ware does a fantastic job of making the readers identify with Lenora, and be completely caught up in her story. We learn what really happened as Lenora does. We know what she knows. We feel the claustrophobic tension of "the Glass House", where the party occurs and where secrets and blood are spilled.

I was lucky enough to receive an ARC of Ware's next book, and I am even more excited to start it now. Ware is a welcome addition to the psychological thriller genre.