Book Review – One By One by Ruth Ware – Another Thrilling Suspense!
Table of Contents
My Rating 4 out of 5
Plot Summary – One By One
Ruth Ware is known as the ‘Agatha Christie‘ of our times, and time and again she lives up to that hype, and how! In this bone chilling novel in 2020, she does a brilliant job of serving up a story the ‘Queen of Crime’ would have been mighty proud of!! A group of people, stuck in a chalet with nowhere to go and death strikes among them… Ms. Christie would be licking her lips from her grave at that!
Snoop, is an app which links to Spotify and lets the subscriber tag onto a Celebrities music choice – lets you listen to the same track the Celeb is listening to, in real time. The founders, Eva and Toph, along with 8 other employees and stake holders have organised a retreat in the French Alps and have arrived there from their Corporate office in London.
There’s the prospect of skiing, relaxation, music, good food coupled with the luxurious stay at an exotic locale… What else could one ask for? The Chalet they are staying at is managed by Danny and Erin, a couple of friends, and they are also looking forward to a week of hectic work and some delighted guests at the end of it.
But as usual, fate has other plans, as a massive avalanche strikes couple of days into their retreat! It cuts of all contact with the outside world, including cell phone connections and they are totally locked in behind tonnes of snow and no help imminent. It has affected the entire region and disaster management teams are working round the clock to help all they can.
Meanwhile, one of the party, who was out skiing, does not return… In the aftermath of that, there is finger pointing, suspicions and motives being tossed about amongst the small group. The biggest motive? As old as time itself – Money! There’s an imminent Buyout offer on the table, which will make millionaires out of the few stakeholders, but some of them are resisting the loss of ownership and control. And then more people go missing or are found dead… One by One!
The murderer is one among them, but who’s it??
Conclusion – Book Review – One By One
This is a book you can read at one sitting over the two long weekends we’ve had around the end of 2020 and that’s exactly what I did. It is a breathtaking page-turner, where Ruth cranks up the suspense quotient page by page. A group of people with nowhere to go, with millions to gain or lose, have a murderer loose among them. Who’s next??
In her inimitable style, Ruth Ware sketches out all the characters of the dozen or so people – with all their flaws and idiosyncrasies. Like in any group of Corporate employees, there’s the offensive bully, the submissive roll overs, the psycophants and the scheming types. And most of them have the motive, one way or another, to be the murderer!
This one will keep you on your toes, as each chapter is narrated by one character or another and gives a glimpse of their viewpoints but at no time, either absolve them of suspicion or free them of possible motives. It keeps you hooked right till the end and what a climax that turned out to be!! A must read, and makes me wait with bated breath for her 2021 release!!!
*I hope you’ve liked reading this review, do watch this space for more!*
Read the Goodreads Review here
Licking her lips from her grave?! I need to erase that image now, haha. I may give this a try – I started “Cabin 10” but I think I got bored of it.
This is way way better than Cabin 10, which was a little slow IMO. But she’s grown as an author, this one hits the ground running!