He enjoys cocaine and asking questions that should drive the plot but do not. Tom: Also identified by his sexual identity (gay), Tom met Clare through theater and brings an element of the male influence into the party. She dresses like Clare and is obsessive over the weekend being perfect. Flo is very controlling, seriously mentally and emotionally unstable, and 100% reliant on Clare. The hen weekend occurs at her aunt’s home. Nina is defined by her sexual identity (Nina is gay), her quick wit and biting sarcasm, lack of a filter, and her profession as a doctor/surgeon with lingering PTSD.įlo: Clare’s maid of honor. Leonora (known also as Nora, Lee, Leo, and Shaw): the narrator, seemingly unreliable once the reader realizes there is memory loss after an ‘accident.’ A lot of self-hatred, stammering, and regret over the loss of teenage sweetheart James. After a lot of back and forth “should I” and “should I not’s,” ‘Nora’ agrees to go, and sets up departure with another longtime school friend Nina. She receives an invitation to attend the ‘hen weekend’ (the British bachelorette weekend) of long time old and forgotten friend Clare. In a Dark, Dark Wood is narrated from the perspective of Leonora Shaw, a writer and author who has a dark past. I loved Ware’s descriptive flowing narrative, and many times I felt as if I was in the forest, the tree’s all around me, with my heart beating a single name over and over. The first thing to mention about In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware is that the prose is beautifully written.