Reviews tagging 'Cursing'

One by One by Ruth Ware

20 reviews

julienicole1106's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


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beca_reads's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I am a fan of Ruth Ware's writing and this did not disappoint. This was a fast paced Thriller ( I ended up reading most of this in one day) that had me from the first page. We see a company called Snoop go to a ski chalet to discuss the potential buy out of the company. As always everyone has their secret's and isn't who they say they are. On the second day they go off to ski and one of them ends up dying. To begin with they think this is a fatal accident but then slowly one by one they start dying. It is a race against time to find out who is the killer, and the best bit is that they are all stuck together after an avalanche blocks them into their chalet. This makes for great tension. I think that if you are a fan of "and then there were none" by Agatha Christie or "the guest list" by Lucy Foley then your probably gone to like this. 

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_chelseachelsea's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

One by One has a claustrophobic premise and a pleasantly diverse cast of characters, but veteran thriller readers will likely unravel the whodunnit mystery long before the killer is revealed.

I really, really like Ruth Ware’s writing style - she’s great at layering meaning behind dialogue and spreading exposition so her books don’t feel like a dumping ground. So when I started One by One, I was expecting a little more than what I got, which is a basic Orient Express-style story with characters who, while certainly more diverse than your typical thriller, were also pretty predictable.

I want to start with what’s good, because this is a perfectly good book. Ware has clearly spent time researching the history and language of her chosen setting, and it shows in both her descriptions and the dialogue between characters. The novel is quite immersive, so that by the end I nearly felt chilly myself.

The pace is just medium enough that I couldn’t rush through, but it rarely felt like it was dragging. Just when you think the pace is slowing, Ware gives a much-needed push to the next piece of action.

The other thing I liked was the setup of a young tech company grappling with financing, privacy, and morality against the backdrop of a luxurious ski resort. The best thrillers, in my opinion, provide stakes beyond the murder mystery. Our characters aren’t just threatened by a killer, or even the avalanche that’s trapped them - they are also threatened by the pressure of what waits for them back in the real world. These are people who just want to live the millennial dream and were clearly unprepared for the reality of running a business, and as their pristine, curated identities begin to crack, there are real people underneath. This, I think, sets Ware’s writing apart from other thriller authors. It’s hard to write likable jerks, but she manages to create humanity in even her most intolerable characters.

I think my dislikes really just boil down to narration problems. Ware writes this novel from only two POV’s. In a whodunnit, I think that’s a mistake. You know that your readers (especially those well-versed in thrillers) are going to cross examine every interaction, every internal piece of narration, looking for double-meaning and misdirects everywhere. With only two narrators, the magnifying glass is placed squarely on everything they say and do. This, I’m afraid, makes the killer’s identity glaringly obvious and the plot unpleasantly easy to predict.

I was about halfway through the novel when I figured it out - a single line of narration from one of the POV’s made it clear. If there had been more POV’s to get lost in, I might not have identified the “twist” so easily. I think thrillers with this kind of plot really need either ONE narrator (which Ware does very well in her first novel, In A Dark, Dark Wood) or they need several POV’s so you’re not inside the head of a single character for too long (Lucy Foley’s The Guest List is a recent read that achieves that goal in a really fun way).

Plot twist issues aside, I think this is a nice, moody read for those who like a mystery without too much gore or violence. And even though I knew who the killer was with over half the book left to go, trying to figure out the how and why was significantly harder and enough to keep me reading.

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taleofabibliophile's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5


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morganperks's review against another edition

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dark mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0


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closelywatchedfilms's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0


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flik's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

 One by One is an adult mystery-thriller by the excellent Ruth Ware. Far from the Christie pastiche some have billed it as, this is a gripping twisty novel full of people you won't mind being bumped off.

Ware evokes the beauty and danger of this snowy retreat with mastery, and it was no surprise to me to read in the acknowledgements that she had visited and skied upon the mountain for her research. (Oh, to be a gifted and recognized author!)

Against this threatening background are the members of Snoop, once a Spotify with extras start up, now a multi million pound company. Each character is well fleshed out, and there are plenty of motive and history reveals dotted throughout the storyline, leaving me feeling that I really knew each person by the end of the book.

It soon becomes apparent that the remote location and the weather aren't all our characters need to worry about, as they start dying off.... one by one. The plot takes as many twists and turns as a salem skier, and whilst you might guess whodunnit, the most compelling chapters arrive after their identity is revealed.

Like any creative thriller there are a couple of leaps in logic or motivation to enable the plot to bear fruit, but Ware handles and explains these with a deft touch.

I very much enjoyed the heart pounding ride One by One took me on, and have rated it 4 stars. I would recommend it to anyone looking to escape into a snowy thriller full of contemptible characters.  

For ages 15+, content warnings for (major) Death, (moderate) Blood, Cursing, Murder, Grief, (minor) Bullying, Sexual Assault, Sexual Content. 

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patricia_epub's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I greatly enjoyed listening to this book. The introduction immediately caught my attention and got me hooked, and made me even scramble for my reading journal to take notes about each character profile so I could piece together their "personalities" based on the music they listened to, and maybe link them up into some archetypes as well. 

I also enjoyed the back-and-forth POVs between Erin, the chalet worker, and Liz, the oddball in the group of guests. I knew there was a reason why they were chosen as the "eyes" of the story and I am quite proud to say that I pieced that together early in the story.  I loved the epistolary-like sections at the start of each chapter, which ultimately showed me the author's hand long before she was ready to give the readers the twist. Despite this, I am happy that knowing the identity of the killer did not put a damper on my enjoyment of the remaining 70% of the book. 

I have my reservations with the fleshing out of some of the minor characters, who felt at times like caricatures with their brief comments or opinions. But considering how short their 3-day interaction was (not to mention the tragedies they faced on after the other), I think it's easy to get over with and just enjoy the ride. They were all definitely archetypes, as I had suspected right from the beginning, which did not give me much expectation in the character development area. My biggest issue was how some parts felt a bit draggy or even unnecessary. When I realized the entire ordeal only happened within 3 days, I was shocked because it felt like they've been in the cabin for a week at least.

The ending for the "villain" felt a bit anticlimactic for all that build-up, though. But I do appreciate Ruth Ware's attempt at parallel imagery. I would say that despite the twists and turns of the plot, the ending definitely cemented to me that this was a character-driven story. Overall, it was a good story and an equally-as-good execution. 

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readerette's review against another edition

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mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

Definitely felt I was being bashed over the head with the details as the plot unfolded. If you're not interested in software development or startups this may not be the book for you, as a great deal of the book goes into the app this group of people support and the politics around it. I did not enjoy the "hints" that got dropped about who the killer ended up being; it was very obvious. 

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kecresser's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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