One by One

Ruth Ware is back with a dual-POV thrilling mystery that is going to make you never want to ski ever again. A corporate retreat goes south quickly when there’s a surprise buyout offer, an avalanche, and then people start to die off…it gets dark QUICK but it’s fast-paced and engaging through most of the end.

Nine Snoop-ers check into a ski chalet in France, and things are quickly going to go downhill. Told in alternating POVs between Erin–one of the chalet workers–and Liz, a former Snoop employee, the reader quickly realizes that this company is dysfunctional in weird ways. There’s Topher, the charistmatic CEO, and his partner who is actually a former-life partner, Eva. There are their assistants, Ani and Inigo, finance guy Rik, coder Elliott, Miranda, Tiger, and then Liz…it’s quite a collection. Danny and Erin, the chalet workers, know these people are weird, but they don’t realize how out of control things are until the group comes back from a morning ski minus one person. And then, an avalanche sends them into survival mode with no way to contact the outside world. But someone has to get to the police soon because….people are dying in the chalet.

I really liked this book. I feel like it maybe was a little obvious what was up, but the pacing was really well done so I wanted to keep reading no matter what I suspected. It’s kind of like what we all wanted Nine Perfect Strangers to be but mixed with The Startup and an Agatha Christie novel.  Both Liz and Erin are interesting narrators, and I kind of liked only getting the others characters through their eyes. Il earned a lot about skiing in this book…like I never want to do it ever again. For the record, the first time I ever skied, I broke my wrist less than 20 minutes into the activity and had to be taken down the slope (piste? lol) in one of those sled things. This book now makes me feel…lucky?

Anyway, I really liked this book! The fast-paced nature was compelling, it had a unique cast of characters, and there were definitely layers to the mystery!