One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware

 

Title: One Perfect Couple

Author:  Ruth Ware

Narrated by:  Imogen Church

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 14 hours and 25 minutes

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Schuster Audio.  Thank you!

 

If you could be on a reality TV show, which would you like to be on?  I always thought it would be fun to be on The Amazing Race.

Lyla is a post-doctoral researcher.  Her boyfriend Nico is an actor.  He receives an opportunity to join the cast of a new reality show, One Perfect Couple, but only if Lyla goes with him.  She decides to join him to help out his career.  They must compete against four other couples for a prize.  Unfortunately, Lyla finds out that individuals are voted off and that the point of the show is to recouple.  She is not happy that Nico left this detail out of the explanation.  A horrific storm hits the island where the show is filmed in the Indian Ocean, and all of the teams are cut off from the world on a desert island with limited food and water.  As people start dying one by one, are there more sinister forces at play?

My thoughts on this book:

·       This book is survivor meets Lord of the Flies meets Agatha Christie’s And then There are None.

·       This was a very engaging audiobook.  I enjoyed the thrilling suspense.

·       Lyla is the narrator of the story, and Imogen Church did a great job of providing her voice in the audiobook.

·       Lyla is also my favorite character.  As a woman in STEM myself, I enjoyed her perspective on everything, even though I wanted to sit down and have a serious talk with her about her relationship with Nico.

·       I loved the tropical Indian Ocean setting. 

·       I enjoyed the surviving while deserted on the island scenario as well as the bonding between the characters that took place on the island.

·       All the couples have various problems that come to head in such a tense situation.

·       I don’t want to get too much into the plot and ruin the story.  I finished this audiobook quickly and greatly enjoyed the thrill of the story.

·       I wasn’t wowed by the ending, but it worked okay for me.

Overall, One Perfect Couple is another great suspense thriller from Ruth Ware. 

 

Feature: Marple by Agatha Christie

 

"I wonder, sometimes, if there isn't a concentration of evil in small places."

Do you have a favorite literary character you would like to see have new adventures?

Thank you, Partner @bibliolifestyle @williammorrowbooks for the gifted copy of Marple: Twelve New Mysteries and for allowing me to be on this tour.

I've started reading this collection and I was pulled in by the very first line. I loved the first story, Evil in Small Places by Lucy Foley. There are great stories by so many of my favorite authors!

Book Description from Goodreads: A brand-new collection of short stories featuring the Queen of Mystery’s legendary detective Jane Marple, penned by twelve remarkable bestselling and acclaimed authors.

This collection of a dozen original short stories, all featuring Jane Marple, will introduce the character to a whole new generation. Each author reimagines Agatha Christie’s Marple through their own unique perspective while staying true to the hallmarks of a traditional mystery.

Naomi Alderman
Leigh Bardugo
Alyssa Cole
Lucy Foley
Elly Griffiths
Natalie Haynes
Jean Kwok
Val McDermid
Karen M. McManus
Dreda Say Mitchell
Kate Mosse
Ruth Ware

Miss Marple was first introduced to readers in a story Agatha Christie wrote for The Royal Magazine in 1927 and made her first appearance in a full-length novel in 1930’s The Murder at the Vicarage. It has been 45 years since Agatha Christie’s last Marple novel, Sleeping Murder, was published posthumously in 1976, and this collection of ingenious new stories by twelve Christie devotees will be a timely reminder why Jane Marple remains the most famous fictional female detective of all time.

#marple #marpletwelvenewmysteries
#missmarplemysteries #agathachristie

One by One by Ruth Ware

 

Title:  One by One

Author: Ruth Ware

Read by:  Imogen Church

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio

Length: Approximately 13 hours and 8 minutes

Source: Review Copy from Simon & Schuster Audio.  Thank-you!

One by One was an excellent thriller that worked quite well as an audiobook.  Tech start-up Snoop is having a company retreat in a remote chalet in the French Alps.  The group has a hard decision to make about potentially taking a large offer to sell the company, which will greatly profit each of the shareholders in the company.  After an avalanche, the group is stuck in the chalet and suddenly people are dying one by one.  Who is the killer and why are they killing? 

Imogen Church is an excellent narrator, and this story really played out well as an audiobook. Especially as the climax of the novel came to a head, I just couldn’t stop listening to this book!  The book alternates the story between two narrators.  One works at the Chalet and the other is a shareholder at Snoop.  This allows perspective from both inside and outside of the Snoop group. I liked the two workers at the chalet, Erin, and Danny.  The other characters were pretty unlikeable, but I really liked those two.  The killer became very apparent well before the end of the book, but the book allowed time to understand why the killer did what they did and the aftermath. 

Favorite Quotes:

“I stop, thinking of Topher and his cushioned, monied existence--the way he has had everything handed to him on a plate, the way he's never had to scrap for anything, never had to swallow a snub from a boss, or pick up a stranger's dirty underwear, or do any of the myriad demeaning, boring jobs the rest of us take for granted.

They are arrogant, that's what I realize--maybe not Liz and Carl quite so much, but all of them to some degree. They are protected by the magic of their shares and their status and their IP. They think that life can't touch them--just like I used to do.”

Only now it has. Now life has them by the throat. And it won't let go.”

Overall, One by One was a good thriller and audiobook.  It’s the perfect type of book for this time of year.

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

The Woman in Cabin 10 is a suspense novel that is the love child of the classic Hitchcock movie Vertigo and the bestselling novel, Gone Girl.  Unfortunately, the Woman in Cabin 10 has none of the thrilling charm of either of these classics.

Lo Blacklock is a journalist who has been given a plum assignment, to report on a small luxury pleasure craft that will be sailing to Scandinavia.  There are only 10 cabins on this craft.  Right before she leaves, Lo is “burgled” in her flat and keeps having flash backs to it.  She also has an argument with her boyfriend who is off on his own assignment to Russia.  Once on board, Lo meets a mysterious stranger in Cabin 10.  The only problem is she never sees her again and no one on board knows who she is talking about. What happened to the woman in cabin 10?

Lo is the definition of an unreliable narrator.  She is an alcoholic and much is made that she is also on anxiety medication.  She also is having panic attacks from being burgled.  This kept the story in suspense as you weren’t really sure what was going on . . . similar to Gone Girl and to Girl on a Train.  Unfortunately, I never grew to care for Lo as a character or frankly any of the characters.

As I’ve said before on this blog, I love character stories with well-developed characters that I can enjoy the journey with.  I think the fatal flaw with this book that none of the characters were well developed and many storylines were started and then never followed up on.  There were so many hanging threads at the end, it made you wonder – where they put there for a reason or was it just careless construction?  It seemed like careless construction.  When you found out the answers at the end, it didn’t go with the rest of the story and just wasn’t developed enough.  And you didn’t find out all of the answers to all of the questions raised throughout the story.

The tantalizing news flashes kept me intrigued and reading the story as did the fact it was the April Pick for the Page-turners Kewaunee Library Book Club.  I was hoping the resolution of the story would make it all worthwhile, but in my eyes it didn’t.  I went to book club scared I was the only one who felt this way, only to find that everyone else felt the same way.  It’s interesting as this book is getting a lot of buzz and I really wanted to read it, but I’m not sure what all of the buzz is about.  If you read it, what did you like about it?

What is the best suspense novel you have read?  I think in my life that would be Rebecca or My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier.

Overall, The Woman in Cabin 10 was a disappointing suspense novel that had the makings of a good tale, but didn’t quite get there.  I was kept interested until the end, but careless construction and poor characterization really sank the story.

Book Source: The Kewaunee Public Library