One by One

One by One is the latest thriller written by Ruth Ware. I’ve read many of her previous works and subsequently added this new one to the Book Bucket List on my blog. It won the voting contest as the novel I should read in December 2020, so here I am! I chose this one because I am a huge Agatha Christie fan, and this book has some similarities to And Then There Were None, my all-time favorite book, so… of course I’ll be reading this one where a group of 10 corporate millennials head to a French chalet for a business meeting. Two factions are emerging about whether to sell the company now or wait for future opportunities. One by one, they all begin to die.

Let’s start with the good… the concept is wonderful. I like these types of locked door mysteries as it pushes the writer to develop a solid story with massive interrelated diversions and connections. You don’t have a lot of side story to worry about, and the focal point shifts from character to character as they get ready to bite the dust. Ware truly makes you feel like you’re in a blizzard, and when the avalanche happens, you know it’s getting real! The two POVs, Erin and Liz, are well fleshed out; they provide differing opinions and theories, but you know there’s a larger history they haven’t shared.

On the negative side… the company’s service is awful. Who wants to eavesdrop on what celebrities and friends are listening to? I have too little time to think about something like this(the music they currently listen to at the moment), but it is fine as a plot device. Unfortunately, none of these people are likeable, not even the two inn workers who have some connections themselves to the company or the people in the company. They are all surface personalities with attitudes and entitlement issues. All of them. If it were intentional to dislike all the characters because you watch them die awful deaths, I could enjoy that type of suspenseful grit. But… this is mostly about which ~30ish wants how many million dollars and what type of fun they can have with it when they win big. No one loves. No one is friends. No one cries. No one protects the others. No one offers a shed of anything outside of “I work here and I want money.”

This is the kind of book where you chuck everything you know about life and say… “okay, let’s just put 10 people in a room together and see who is the murderer and for what reason.” That said, in the last 3 chapters, when we learn some secrets, it does get a bit stronger and unified. However, for most of the book, I kept saying, “Why? This doesn’t seem to provide enough background, nor do these people want to live past this ski weekend.” So… I waffled around a 3. The writing is good. The plot has some merit. The setting is gorgeous and somewhat scary. But the background in the story and the characters are too weak for it to be something that is toted as approaching what Christie did with this plot device.

Of course, I’m not comparing it. I am only saying that it should’ve been marketed as a typical thriller and completely left as ‘4 of 10 people die,’ not truly one by one until you have to see which of the final 2 is the killer… or whatever the truth is, no what I mean? That said, when I drop all that, it’s a decent suspense novel, but I wouldn’t rush out to grab it. If you enjoy Ware, like I do, you’ll enjoy this one, though, so it’s worth the read.

First, let me preface this by saying that I would read Ruth Ware’s grocery list should she allow me the honor. I have yet to read one of her books without devouring the story within a day (or two if only because life gets in the way). As soon as I saw this book was releasing I preordered it and started it the same night it hit my shelf. I was instantly intrigued by the strange group of characters, the picturesque if dangerous setting and the way the book was split between the POV of two characters. I read until late into the night and couldn’t put this book down. Ware has a way of building tension fast and then stretching it out until the last possible moment where everything breaks apart and you’re left with your jaw on the floor. I don’t do spoilers so look elsewhere if you want to ruin a perfectly lovely read, but I highly recommend going into this one blind. Don’t even read the blurb, just start at the beginning and come talk to me when you finish. Enjoy!

I love Ruth Ware (and I’m someone who doesn’t normally read mysteries or thrillers). She adds just enough scare, emotion, and thrill into her stories and One by One was no exception. Easily one of the best books I’ve read in a while.

One by One is another thrilling read by Ruth Ware. If you’re an Agatha Christie fan, this book might be right up your alley. The employees/shareholders of Snoop, a Tech startup, are on a corporate retreat in the French Alps when an avalanche snowbound them in their luxury chalet. When Eva, the co-founder of the company, goes missing and Elliot, a shareholder, dies, the group realizes there’s a killer in their midst. Among this competitive, egotistical group, everyone appears to have a motive. Is the murderer the second co-founder of Snoop, Topher, who has the most to gain with Eva’s death, or another shareholder (Liz, Rik, Miranda, Inigo, Ani, Tiger-Blue, Carl). Is it the hostess, and cook, (Erin and Danny)? One of them is the killer.

As a fan of mysteries and whodunit novels, this story kept me guessing and eager to uncover the killer. Although I determined the murderer halfway through the book, the edge-of-your-seat, fast-paced, page-turner kept me engrossed to the harrowing conclusion. This is another enjoyable Ruth Ware suspense worth the read.

I was thrilled to receive an advance copy of One by One. Anything by Ruth Ware is a huge treat and this book certainly lives up to its hype. Told from dual points of view — Erin, the chalet girl and Liz, socially anxious, fish-out-of-water misfit enables you to get both an inside and an outside perspective to the story. You can tell Ware lives with her imagined characters for a while before committing them to paper. These intricate layers are so necessary to fully enjoy this book.

The writing is fluid and hard to put down. The format in the opening chapters is very different to her past books and begins by introducing nine colleagues of a tech company called Snoop; an app described as ‘voyeurism for your ears.’

These guests are staying in the luxury French ski resort of St Antoine with views to die for. But when a snow forecast threatens to become a snowpocalypse (Snowmaggedon) this desirable setting has the potential to become — yes, you’ve guessed it, a little hamlet with no way out and a group of people trapped together. The only access is via funicular railway or a blue run to the centre of the village. It might well be a beautiful place with its peaks and pistes and great skiing, but not when inclement weather makes it inaccessible by helicopter. I’m already sensing tension and claustrophobia, especially in a low of minus 20.

After a meeting in the den where the employees have a difference of opinion over the future of Snoop, tempers begin to flare, giving us a reason to be on high alert. As the guests are picked off one by one you hope the characters you like survive and the ones you don’t get what’s coming to them. But it’s not quite as cut and dry as that. Each guest is either a have or a have not, sleek, witty, beautiful, born with a silver spoon in their mouths. Whereas one ‘unwraps secrets carried for three years,’ someone underestimated that you think might needs further examination. So much food for thought.

Ware has done a brilliant job of holding these guests hostage in freezing conditions, dwindling heating and food to add to the ever growing list of worries. A terrible sense of abandonment and being cut off from the outside world increases the threat, hostility and suspicion building tension. She always writes about ordinary people in frightening situations and has expert knowledge of the .com boom. Adding a character who allows toxic practices to take root within this company brings a clever variation to the archetype.

When the key employees of the internet startup Snoop show up at a chalet in the French Alps, they are expecting a week of presentations and skiing. However, there is tension brewing just below the surface thanks to a buyout deal that has split the board. The tension only grows worse when heavy snow and an avalanche cuts everyone off from the rest of the world and one of the members of a group goes missing somewhere out in the snow. As the hours pass, it becomes clear a killer is in the group. Will help arrive before they are all dead?

While the cast of isolated characters trope is not new to the mystery genre, Ruth Ware quickly makes it her own in this page turning thriller. I love how she so successfully isolated the characters. The plot is wonderful with tension rising early before the characters fully realize the danger they are in. The twists kept me engaged the entire way through the nail-biting climax. The characters could have been a little stronger overall. Don’t get me wrong, I cared about them and the outcome, but I felt like many of them stayed two dimensional and those we got to know better bordered on the cliché. Being a thriller, I expected more foul language than in the books I typically read, but it was a bit excessive for my tastes. Still, these are nitpicks in an overall wonderful thriller.

A fascinating read as much for the idea of a spotify-like channel that follows celebrities and regular people alike as for the murder mystery. Imagine being able to listen real time to what your favorite musical artist or best friend is listening to. Not unlikely in today’s world.

The mystery set in a remote luxury ski chalet takes place at a corporate retreat for the small company that created the app. There’s enough paranoia and intrigue to keep you on the edge of your seat throughout. No one is what they seem. Everyone has secrets. All the makings of a twisty, turny plot.

A corporate retreat for a trendy app startup goes seriously wrong at an isolated ski chalet in the French Alps. Clashing personalities and hidden agendas are already a volatile mix. Add to that a blizzard and an avalanche. Then people start dying, one by one. Another thriller from Ruth Ware that sucks in the reader from the first page.

This opens with a punch – straight away a newspaper cutting reveals that four people are dead and two have been hospitalised after an incident in a small ski resort in the French Alps, St Antoine 2000, where there are only a handful of chalets. Then the narrative flips back to five days earlier and the reader is introduced to something called Snoop a music app which provides a streaming service subscribers can use to hear to what other people, including the rich and famous, are listening to in real time. The key players within the company have hired the remote chalet, Chalet Perce-Neige, to come to a decision about a buy-out which will make some of the guests ridiculously wealthy.

There are lots of characters to keep track of, but the ones who have a voice, Liz and Erin, are distinctive. There is a mystery: why is Liz there in the first place? She used to work for the company as a PA, for a year, but then left. She is so irrelevant they forgot to put her on the guest list and Erin hurriedly has to make her up a bed. There are hints about Liz’s awful childhood and she seems very nervy; always clicking her knuckles. She is awkward and despite Erin’s help comes down wearing completely the wrong outfit for a presentation. Ware is great at using her as a filter through which you can assess the other guests’ behaviour. Despite being very out of place both in appearance and personality, Topher and Eva, Snoop’s gorgeous co-founders, are both very keen to keep her on side.

Erin, who manages the chalet, has her own mystery and demons to contend with. She is working with Danny, a talented chef, who is a good steady character and provides polar opposite reactions to the nonsense spouted by some of Snoop’s personnel. Ware gets the entitlement of the party just right; the food fads and the teams’ ridiculous title names including a ‘Head of Cool’ called Tiger-Blue. Charismatic Topher’s behaviour is loathsome, glugging Krug, unable to remember Erin’s name, and so entitled he has his expensive bespoke cologne imported from Paris. I seethed over the disrespectful way some of the guests smoke inside the chalet, stubbing out their cigarettes in a tray of Danny’s mini Florentines. The worst, and ultimately the catalyst for the entire disaster, being the fact that, when there is danger of an avalanche, some of the party choose to disregard the safety warnings because they think themselves above the rules. I felt a lot of ‘serves you right’ whilst reading, but Ware is clever at keeping the characters one step away from being loathsome caricatures.

When of members of the party start dying or going missing, the novel launches into Agatha Christie’s ‘Then there were none’ territory which Ware alludes to. It’s really exciting as the body count rises and, under stress, the real personalities of the group are revealed, and it becomes obvious where their loyalties lie. It is difficult to get attached to the characters, although I did like Erin and Danny.

The biggest scary thing for me was the descriptions of the skiing. I learnt to ski in my early forties, and I hate it – I’m not good and it frightens me, so all the traumas of getting to the start of the slope, panicking and then having to go back down the bubble lift, really resonated.

Ware’s books are always so clever that I have to go back and start again, knowing what I’m looking for. The clues are there, and because they are subtle and due to the nature of the genre and Ware’s quick pace, they are easy to skim over. The final chase across the snow is terrifying especially as it brings flashbacks of what Erin’s own traumatic mystery is all about. Ware ties everything up neatly and some of the characters manage to redeem themselves slightly. Ware is the master of the unreliable narrator and is super clever at keeping up the mystery and suspense. Brilliant!

This is my favorite Ruth Ware book so far and I can’t wait to see what she comes up with next. I’m a sucker for villains in isolated situations. Very Agatha Christie-esque in terms of not knowing how the real bad guy is (and suspecting everyone in turn). Loved the characters, the setting, and the complete recklessness and distorted thinking of all the people involved.