A review by thecandlelightlibrary
One by One by Ruth Ware

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

2.0

I LOVED the first 40% of this book, but the rest didn’t quite live up to my expectations and I had a few problems with the book as a whole:

  1. While I enjoyed the employee “bios” at the beginning, once the narrative actually begins I don’t think the characters were introduced effectively. Too many characters introduced in the first few pages and I spent several chapters with one of the POV characters trying to determine if the author either forgot about a character or suddenly changed the name and the editing process didn’t catch it.
  2. I really didn’t appreciate who the murder turned out to be; in fact, the theories I had imagined in my head would have probably been more exciting as twists to the story. Additionally,
    I felt the murder’s character relied on too many tropes specific to people who have social anxiety/feel like outsiders in any situation with a group of people. It REALLY read like “Hey! Outsiders/the quiet ones/people who don't fit in are always the murderous psychopaths! Didn’t you know this?”
    This was SO disappointing, especially since several of the other characters *could* have had better motives.
  3. This may be oddly specific, but the French parts didn’t work for me. Despite having several characters who spoke French, random words were in French, but when the characters actually spoke in French it would say “so-and-so said in French”. I found this really clumsy to read and feel it could have been integrated better.
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