One by One by Ruth Ware

A special thank you to Edelweiss and Gallery/Scout Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Snoop is a successful streaming app where you can "snoop" on what your favourite celebrity is listening to—or your ex—anonymously and its on the brink of a buyout.

When an off-site company retreat at a beautiful resort, meant to promote collaboration and wellness, goes horribly wrong, people start dying. 

Just how well do you really know your colleagues?

Told from the dual points of view of Liz and Erin, neither of these women are likeable and Ware's audience will struggle to connect with either of them. There are way too many characters that the reader will care little about—they lack substance and development. At times there are pages upon pages of mundane details and instances where the reader is force-fed information.  

One by One left me cold. With scant characters and a thin plot, Ruth's attempt at trying to write a fresh take on a classic mystery fails—she's simply out of her element. Ware should stick to writing gothic suspense, this is where she truly excels. 

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RUTH WARE is an international bestselling author whose thrillers include In a Dark, Dark Wood, The Woman in Cabin 10, The Lying Game and The Death of Mrs. Westaway.

Her books have been optioned for both film and TV, and she is published in more than 40 languages.

Ware lives near Brighton with her family. 

The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

A special thank you to Edelweiss, NetGalley, Gallery/Scout Press, and Simon & Schuster Canada for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Rowan Caine is writing her lawyer from prison. She has been charged with the murder of a child in her care.

After answering an ad for a nanny with an extremely generous salary, Rowan arrives at Heatherbrae House set in the beautiful Scottish Highlands. She is instantly captivated by the "smart" house—that mixes the old charm with new modern conveniences—and by the Instagram-worthy family.

What Rowan doesn't know is that everything on the surface is a complete facade and that she's actually stepping into a nightmare. There's constant surveillance from cameras that appear to be in every room, noises coming from the attic, a poisonous garden, and the children are certainly not the well-behaved girls that were at her interview. Rowan has also been mislead in that she's been left alone for weeks at a time, with no adults around apart from the mysterious handyman, Jack Grant.

While maintaining her innocence for the crime of murder, she is forthcoming about the other mistakes she's made. She's admitted to lying to get the job and that she's not a good nanny, but she is most definitely not a murderer. So this begs the question, who is?

Ware's The Death of Mrs. Westaway was a Gothic gem and I was expecting more of that; in this novel there is also a creepy Gothic Victorian. In fact, the house is not only the setting, but ends up being more of a character in the book. Other effective ominous elements were the poisonous garden, footstep noises, and the locked closet—these types of macabre nuances are where Ware excels in her execution.

The characters were intriguing, even the secondary and tertiary. From the opening, you can tell there is something not quite right where Rowan is concerned. Given that she's supposed to be a nanny, Rowan appears to be out of her element. I do however feel that Ware could have fleshed out the husband and wife more. I mean what kind of parents leave their three little girls—soon to be four when Rhiannon arrives home from boarding school—with a virtual stranger?

I loved that this was an epistolary novel. The letters were the perfect vehicle to deliver the story. Where the plot stalled was with the ending, especially given the extensive build up. This was a bit of a disappointment given that the narrative was a slow burn—with the pages and pages of the day-to-day childcare and feeding which got a bit mundane after a while—and the reader was not fully rewarded for their patience.

RUTH WARE is an international bestselling author whose thrillers include In a Dark, Dark Wood, The Woman in Cabin 10, The Lying Game and The Death of Mrs. Westaway.

Her books have been optioned for both film and TV, and she is published in more than 40 languages.

Ware lives near Brighton with her family. 

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware

A special thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Harriet, who goes by Hal, is down on her luck. She reads tarot cards on the Brighton pier and struggles to make ends meet.  Hal is all alone after her mother was tragically is killed by a hit-and-run a few years earlier. When she receives a letter that bequeathes a large inheritance, she knows it to be a mistake but acts on it anyway. Hal only needs a few thousand pounds to change her luck once and for all—she deserves a bit of happiness.

She makes the trip down the English coast to attend the funeral of her "grandmother" and meet her "family". Being able to read people as well as she does, Hal quickly realizes that something is very wrong with the situation and finds herself at the centre of it because it revolves around the inheritance.

It turns out what she thought was a lie, may actually hold some truth, and someone is determined to keep it a secret.

Ruth Ware, this is fantastic! I loved it as much as The Woman in Cabin 10. You truly are a master of your genre.  

She's checked all the boxes: a creepy old house, suspense, symbolism.  But the best part is the writing—Ware reveals just enough to keep the reader completely enthralled, but doesn't give anything away.  I especially loved the use of the tarot cards to help Hal figure out what's going on.  "Don't rush—her mother's voice in her head.  Build your story.  Lay it out—card by card."  That's exactly what Ware does. Brilliant!

RUTH WARE is the international bestselling author of In a Dark, Dark Wood, The Woman in Cabin 10, and The Lying Game.

Ware lives near Brighton with her family. 

The Lying Game by Ruth Ware

A special thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Canada for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

After devouring The Woman in Cabin 10, I was excited to get my hands on another Ruth Ware book. Initially I was enjoying this book, especially the parts that take place at the boarding school, but I didn't fully buy in. I don't want to make comparisons, and whether this was on purpose or not, but there were echos of The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Is Donna Tartt not one of the most brilliant literary voices? This seems like a compliment, right? But in fact, this comparison does this book a disservice. Ware is a strong enough writer to stand on her own and does not have to draw on this inspiration. Again, this may be me creating the parallel between the two, but it's there: the exclusivity, the boarding school, the murder, the circumstances, the lasting effects of the death on the group, and that it is a murder mystery in reverse. Moving on...

There is an immediate hook. A woman is walking her dog in the quaint coastal village of Salten along the section of river known as the Reach where the tide meets the stream.  Her dog charges into the water to retrieve what is perceived to be a large stick, when in fact it is a human bone.

The next morning, three women—Isa, Fatima, and Thea—get a text from Kate, the fourth in their exclusive group, that simply says "I need you". Hoping they would never get this request, they drop everything and rush back to Salten. The girls were a fearless foursome at the Salten House boarding school. They used to play the Lying Game which involved telling the most outrageous things to people for points. Only there are rules: tell a lie, stick to your story, don't get caught, never lie to each other, and know when to stop the lie. For some, the lines become blurred with what are actual facts versus what is fantasy. Ware reveals bits and pieces of the girl's time at the Salten boarding school, and how extreme the game got—they were all expelled in their final year under mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of the art teacher, Ambrose, who also happens to be Kate's eccentric father. 

Where this book stumbles is with our narrator, Isa. She is a new mother, and Ware loses the plot because this character is so consumed by this role. The baby proves to be a distraction for both Isa and the reader which ultimately detracts from the story. Without the baby, Isa could still be an unreliable narrator—her memories of events are viewed through the lens of a naive young girl who seems enchanted with Ambrose, Kate, and Luc (the step-son/step-brother).

More of the girls' time at school needed to be written and the other characters needed more attention. I found it a stretch that these girls were only friends for such a short time, yet remained so incredibly loyal over the span of 17 years. There was simply so much more to the story. Ware took a wrong direction, not in using Isa as our narrator, but with hinging so much of her character on being a mother. The boarding school, and the girls' past is paramount to the plot, yet none of the characters were really fleshed out.

RUTH WARE is the international bestselling author of In a Dark, Dark Wood and The Woman in Cabin 10.

Ware lives near Brighton with her family.