The Friday 56 (With Book Beginnings): The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

Welcome to The Friday 56, a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice.

These are the rules:

1. Grab a book, any book.

2. Turn to page 56, or 56% on your eReader.
3. Find any sentence (or a few, just don't spoil it) that grabs you.
4. Post it.
5. Add the URL to your post in the link on Freda's most recent Friday 56 post.

I'm also taking part in Book Beginnings, a weekly meme hosted by Rose City Reader.  The rules are pretty simple - you share the first sentence or so and your initial thoughts, impressions, or whatever else it inspires.  Don't forget to link up your post's url with Rose City Reader.

This week I'm spotlighting one of my current reads, The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware.  As soon as this arrived at my library, I knew I wanted to give this a try - I mean, Ruth Ware's new novel (my first) has been billed as very Gillian Flynn and Paula Hawkins-esque mystery thriller.  I've only read through the prologue and first two chapters so far, but I'm particularly enjoying the intensity.  I'm pretty sure I look like this while reading it, too!

Beginning:

The room was like a perfect replica of a drawing room in a five-star hotel, or a reception room on the QE2, but it was small.  In my dream, the girl was drifting, far, far below the crashing waves and the cries of the gulls in the cold, sunless depths of the North Sea.  Her laughing eyes were white and bloated with salt water; her pale skin was wrinkled; her clothes ripped by jagged rocks and disintegrating into rags.

56:

There could not have been more than twelve or fifteen people in the room, and yet they filled the space, and even the chandelier was scaled down to fit.  It gave the strangest impression - a little like looking in through the doorway of a doll's house, where everything is miniaturized and yet slightly off-kilter, the replica cushions a little too large and stiff for the tiny chairs, the wineglasses the same size as the fake champagne bottle.