Finished this up and coming book by Ruth Ware, one of my favorite authors, last night!

It’s like the game Clue—who did what, where, and when, but it is set in a snowy chalet instead of a mansion!

It was a little slow at first, moreso than most of her books, and there are a lot of characters to keep up with, none of whom I felt super connected with through most of it. It did pickup midway through, but again, y’all know I hate poorly developed endings, and this unfortunately, was of them. It was just kind of...done.

I did love trying to figure out the mystery and the setting for this book and the description of the snowy mountain and the chalet was perfect. I could picture every detail!

Overall, it was a good read and a good mystery!

Thanks to @netgalley for my advanced copy! Publishing date Sept 2020!!

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#netgalley #bookstagram #onebyone

A thoroughly enjoyable read. I raced through this book. A secluded luxury alpine chalet is the setting for an novel reminiscent of Agatha Christie. When the book opens we know how it will end. We know not everyone will not survive but it's a page turner to find out who, how and why. The book hurtles toward the conclusion with a thrilling chase scene.

Eight seemingly untrustworthy, money-hungry employees of 'Snoop"; an app where you can conveniently somewhat 'snoop on people', and one (of the same accord) who used to work for Snoop, are gathered together at a luxurious mountaintop chalet. They are feasting hard until other intentions of the trip begin to be divulged, and suddenly on the first skiing outing, one of them doesn't make it back in before huge snow storm and avalanche cripples the whole thing, and from then on, more and more employees of Snoop start turning up dead...

I was so excited to be approved for this one and couldn't wait to open it up and I was not disappointed! In typical Ruth Ware fashion, there is a phenomenal setting and a whole slew of characters that can't be trusted in this fun locked room mystery! I found this to be a page-turner, and although there are multiple characters, we only have direct POV's from two of them, which makes it quite interesting the whole way through!

Thank you to NetGalley, Ruth Ware and Scout Press for this fun eARC!

Ohhh, I love a new Ruth Ware novel! Something about the locales and the unlikeable characters really blends together to form a solid mystery for me.

During the first few pages, I almost DNFed this book. It introduces an app and the company that runs it---lots of info dropping about lots of people, but as soon as it was over, I was into the story. Not normal for me, I liked the POV switches and picked a character I was rooting for early on.

I adored the setting with the modern, yet old-world chalet and the snobbiness of it all. One by One moves to my number one Ware thriller. Escape at its finest. And the ending?? Whoooooa!

Thanks to the publisher & NetGalley for my copy!

This was a gripping mystery/thriller that I couldn't put down! The starting exposition was a bit long but the remainder of the book was amazing! The twists and turns of the mystery kept me guessing throughout and the final reveal, and back story, were phenomenal. Highly recommend this book if you want a fun mystery with similar vibes to Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None” .

Ruth Ware does it again! With each chapter I became more and more invested in the characters development, with an edge of the seat slow build. Couldn’t recommend more!

Ruth Ware has done it again-- this book was amazing! Kept me on the edge of my seat and guessing through the entire thing. I am working in a closed store due to Covid-19 at the moment, but have told all my soworkers how great this book is!

3.5 in actuality - this book was quite gripping once the action got started, but what dragged my rating down was the fact that it took 30% of the book for the action to start.

The app function being visible at the head of each chapter was cool in theory but the app wasn’t functioning for over half of the book so it kind of made it pointless.

I liked the storytelling with dual narrators and I liked how fully the ending wrapped up. The thrilling parts were really thrilling and there were some pretty smart characters in this. I recommend it for a fun murder chalet mystery if you can trudge through the boring beginning.

Love love love this. Ruth Ware is a prolific suspense writer and I’ve enjoyed many of her other books. This one almost took on a whimsical quality however with its setting. The only thing I could have done without was the connection of Erin to the rest of the group. It just felt really unnecessary to the plot as a whole. Even the tension it created between Erin and Danny only lasted a few pages, nothing that considerably affected the plot in anyway. I docked a star off for this because, after writing so many complex mysteries/crime novels, this should have been an easy and obvious thing to eliminate.

When I started to read the book it immediately reminded me of Agatha Christy’s Then There Were None. What better mystery can you read than a story of being cut off and lsolated with a house full of people and one is a murderer? I think this is the best Ruth Ware yet

I loved last year's THE TURN OF THE KEY so I was excited about the author's new book. It is entertaining but not quite up to the suspense of the earlier work. The setting is superb - a chalet at a ski lodge in the Alps, very isolated and fancy. Erin and Danny are the staff, serving a group from an online app company, on a retreat to decide whether or not to sell for a monumental profit. The story is told in alternating chapters from the points of view of Erin and Liz, a company staffer with a mysterious background. The action ratchets up when someone goes missing during a ski outing just before a major avalanche hits. The mystery is sometimes hard to follow because of the large number of characters involved. There is a unique chase scene that I enjoyed reading, but overall the mystery just doesn't reach the height of the previous work. Thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books for providing an ARC.

Let me start off by saying that Ruth Ware is my “safety” author; I can always trust that her novels will entertain me and I’m glad to say “One By One” did not disappoint! This book has the same vibes as Agatha Christie’s acclaimed “And Then There Were None” - a secluded setting, morally bankrupt characters, and a murderer hiding among them. I was kept guessing right up until the final reveal (the slow revelation of who the killer actually is blew me away) and was rewarded with an extremely satisfying ending. In “One by One”, Ware is continuing to cement her rightful place as the heir to the Queen of Mystery.

5 well-deserved stars!

Ruth Ware always has an engaging, twisty plot. The characters needed more development, and I felt like there was too much exposition of the murderer’s motivations. However, I have been in a reading slump, and I devoured this book. Ruth Ware knows how to keep her audience captive!

Another fantastic thriller by Ruth Ware! She must also be a fan of Agatha Christie, because I see so many similarities in their works.

This novel follows a group of shareholders in a popular app as they travel to the Alps on a business trip. But there is an avalanche, and while trapped and waiting for help, the group starts dying, one at a time.

I loved the multiple viewpoints in the storytelling. I thought that the characters and their motivations were pretty well defined. I also enjoyed that some of the characters’ backstories were hinted at, but we don’t find out full details of until late in the novel. Ruth Ware continues to impress and thrill me.

I LOVE Ruth Ware’s books! They are creepy, mysterious and they always have a great surprise ending. Her newest book One By One does not disappoint. With a gorgeous but deadly locale in the French Alps, a waitstaff with a past and a bunch of guests who each have their own agenda, this book was destined to have more twists and turns than the ski slopes they are on! Another great read!

I really like Ruth Ware but this was a little too much of a slow burn for me. I was dying to find out what was going on but I feel like it was teased out for a little too long. Very suspenseful though.

One by One by Ruth Ware was a huge disappointment for me, the characters were not like able, not enough tension or build up. Ultimately I gave up reading about halfway in.

This book left me unsettled and awash with some conflicted feelings (still giving it 5 stars b/c despite that I think it's at least a 4.5!). I zipped through it in two days flat and really really enjoyed it, yet I have some Thoughts. But they're all spoilery so they'll live on Goodreads.

One by One utilizes multiple of my favorite thriller tropes, including an especially the isolated with a murderer trope. It was done especially well here and the book is almost an answer to the itch that An Unwanted Guest mostly but didn't completely scratch last year. We have a cast of colorful characters who work for a hipster-y startup/app called Snoop, a music streaming app predicated on "snooping" on other listeners in real time. They have a buyout offer and so are on a corporate retreat to go over everything before the board votes.

We have dual POV narrators: Liz and Erin. Liz is the insider, kind of, and Erin is the outsider. Liz used to work at Snoop and it back because she's an investor, so has a voting share. She is the swing vote for the buyout, so is feeling enormous pressure between the two founders, Topher and Eva, who want opposite things. Both want Liz to vote their way. Erin is the chalet girl, there to keep the place clean, and operate as a makeshift local guide and ski instructor. She's running from a tragic accident in her past, of course.

Then, on day one when everyone goes skiing, Eva goes missing. Back at the chalet, the tech guy uses some sneaky software to track her phone via the Snoop app--only to find she's off the side of the mountain. Eva's dead. This sends everyone reeling... then an avalanche hits, knocking out the power and all access to the outside world. They're trapped. And then people start dying. Since the book opens with a newspaper article in the future, you know that a bunch of people end up dead.

Liz and Erin are compelling narrators--Liz gives you the deep background on the cast of characters/interpersonal relationships that you want/need, and Erin is observant of things that only an outsider would see. Though the book does reallllllly stretch things a bit, re: Erin overhearing things and quickly putting together everyone from Snoop and their connections to each other. She's ultimately the primary "detective" character and at times I found it too convenient how quickly and deeply she globbed onto everything. Thus there were times I had to check which chapter I was in b/c there was a depth of knowledge/analysis I expected from Liz.

I did finish the book with a minor plot hole lingering, so that did bug me. I also did a double take toward the end when it was casually mentioned that Erin was 22. She felt MUCH older, and frankly I think she should have been older. But regardless, great book. Since I've every read Ruth Ware book, this one felt the most tight in terms of the literal plot (other than that plot hole), but less close in terms of "deeply idiosyncratic POV MC that you feel super in the skin of." Maybe it's b/c the narrative is split between two POVs... I never felt quite as close to either Liz or Erin as I have to past Ware heroines. But that said, that may indeed make this one MORE accessible to a lot of readers, given many are not fans of the Ruth Ware Hyper Anxious Protagonist. (That said, Liz is very anxious, but you're only in that POV half the time so it's fine.) That is to say: the plot and suspense work was A+ for me, but the character work wasn't my favorite of her novels.

Ruth Ware has done is again! This book is set in Swiss vacation cabin high up in the mountains. A tech company has rented the cabin for work and play, but quickly realizes that there is a murderer among them. The guests, and cabin employees, start to question one another as more and more of the guests are found dead. I was left wanting to know more and guessing along with the characters. I thought I had figured out who the murderer was, but I was very wrong.

Ruth Ware is one of the best mystery/thriller authors these days, and so I was completely ecstatic to see that she had a new book coming out! "One by One" is based on the following premise: coworkers from a new, up-and-coming tech company are taking a business bonding trip to an exclusive ski chalet in the sky. Along the way, hijinks ensue, and the team has to work together to determine who is behind all the bad things that keep happening. I enjoyed reading about the two employees who worked at the chalet. Unfortunately, that was about all that I enjoyed. The author chose to use a different viewpoint for each chapter which became confusing for me. Also, it took my about 4 tries to get interested enough to keep reading the book, and I had a hard time really liking any of the characters. While I will still read Ware's novels, this one missed the mark for me.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions are my own.