I was excited to read Ruth Ware’s One by One (2020, fiction, 369 pages). Ware is well known for laying out a well-paced mystery with twists that keep you engaged and guessing. This story reads like a modern-day CLUE, minus the mansion that is replaced with a picturesque posh ski resort in the French Alps. A British tech company, appropriately named Snoop, is on corporate retreat. From the moment of their arrival there is a great deal of tension among the group. The tension intensifies when one of the partners springs a lucrative buyout on the other members that will require a yes or no vote. If this is not enough drama, the corporate weekend is disrupted when an avalanche cuts off their access to the outside and a member of the group is found dead. The body count is high in this book, as there are a total of four. This is not a spoiler, as Ware shares the death toll at the start of the book in the form of a newspaper clipping. I found this to be a poor decision as it takes away the suspense and it becomes predictable who’s next. I figured out the murderer in the first two hundred pages, leaving me to believe there would be more plot twists because “All sorts of things are going to come out of the woodwork” (249) Sadly, that is not the case. I wouldn’t recommend this one. I would say, if Ware had to make a page count, she should have written a playlist of music for each of the characters. Since Snoop is a (fictional) app that allows its users to “Snoop” (listen in on) what others are listening to on their music accounts. Have you read this book? What were your thoughts?
