DNF at 73%. Ugh. This book really didn’t work for me at all and I should have stopped much earlier. I was curious to see how it would end so I tried to make it through but ultimately decided I don’t care enough to spend another hour in this story. It’s way too over the top and Jack is too smart to be making all the dumb decisions she’s making. I’m fine just leaving her out in the world and not knowing how it ends. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for the advance reading copy.

This one was different than I expected from this author, but I really enjoyed it. It was about a woman who was on the run from police while trying to figure out her husband's killer. I liked the main character, Jack. She was bad assed in every way. It was fast paced and the tension was high throughout. Even though I figured out the who, but not the why, it still held my interest. The ending was satisfying as well. Another hit by an excellent author!

Jack Cross and her husband Gabe break into buildings and hack security systems for a living. Companies hire them to do these things in order to find holes in their security. When Jack returns home from one such job, Gabe is dead. Quickly enough, Jack is the number one suspect. She is on the run, determined to find Gabe's true killer and save herself in the process.

This fast paced thriller takes us through the 6 days from Gabe's murder to the breath taking finale. I liked how quickly it moved and all the twists and turns. There's a lot going on all the time and never a good place to put this down!

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing me with an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Available June 20, 2023.

Great read! Definitely enjoyed this book from start to finish. I particularly loved the ending. Glad I was given the opportunity to preview it.

Married couple Jacinta (Jack) and Gabe do everything together, including their jobs. They are security professionals, hired to penetrate companies, looking for weaknesses. Their hopes and dreams are wound up in each other. Then the unthinkable happens and Gabe is murdered. Before she knows it, the evidence seems to be pointing at Jack, and the police do not seem to be looking at anyone but her. Suddenly, Jack is racing against time, trying to find Gabe's murderer and prove her innocence.

This is a fascinating thriller with many twists and turns. The characters are well-written and Jack is a compellling protagonist. the plot is well thought out, although it does move slowly at times. The red herrings are successful in this story, and the personalities of the characters come to life. The resolution of the story is shocking and unexpected.

One thing that I want to point out is that there are many, many ways to express shock, surprise, anger, and frustration. It does not always have to be the "F" word. The overuse of that one word in this story made it somewhat less creative.

Overall, fans of mysteries and thrillers will enjoy this "on the run" story that will keep them guessing.

I received a free copy of this book from Gallery Books via Netgalley. My review is voluntary and the opinions expressed are my own.

Jack and her husband Gabe are pen testers- they break in and hack buildings to test their security measures. Jack does the physical stuff (breaking in, dropping flashdrives, gaining access) and Gabe handles the computer stuff (hacking, looking for vulnerabilities, and testing cyber security). After an assignment goes wrong and Jack ends up in custody for awhile, she returns home to find Gabe has been murdered. After the police start looking into the murder, they begin to suspect Jack. And when she gets an email confirming the million dollar life insurance policy "she" took out on him, she knows she is about to be wrongly arrested. She slips out of the "voluntary" interrogation and is on the run for nearly the entirety of the book while trying to solve who the killer really was.

Ruth Ware is very hit or miss for me, but I will continue to read every book she releases. This one was very different than her usual books, but it was not my favorite. In general I feel her books tend to be about 60 pages longer than they need to be. She adds in a lot of fluff and this one felt like it had more than usual. Two pages describing her crying into pillows when she was supposed to be on the run? Too much. I also knew who the "bad guy" was nearly immediately after he was introduced. Jack made a lotttt of questionable decisions, but I also think I over judged a lot of her interactions with the person at fault for Gabe's death since I had a feeling that they were at fault all along.

Thank you Netgalley for an arc of this book in exchange for my honest review.

This was my most anticipated book this month. But unfortunately, it was kind of boring. The characters and subject did not interest me and I just could not connect to it enough to enjoy it.

In a "Fugitive"-like book, Jacintha "Jack" Cross becomes the number one suspect in her husband's murder and flees to try to prove her innocence and find out who actually killed Gabe. Fortunately for her, she's a security expert and great at her job, so avoiding notice (and CCTV), climbing walls, and picking locks are all in a day's work for her.

Interestingly, a lot of what drew me to want to read this book was also what annoyed me about this book. Jack wants to find out who killed her husband because the police are taking the easy and obvious way out- her. But she has no idea what to do to prove her innocence or figure out who did kill him because she has no idea who would want Gabe dead. She becomes a bit of a classic amateur sleuth flailing around- which I generally can't stand. We get lots of painstaking details about how Jack breaks into places and gets things to work for her (presumably to show that Ware has done her homework) that got really old for me really fast. Jack is in her own head pretty much the entire book, which could work on screen because you'd see other things happening, but didn't do it for me in the book. It also didn't help that while I saw the bad guy from the beginning, she didn't figure it out for more than 60% of the book. I get it, real life vs book, there's a small pool of suspects, she's focused on other things, but she practically needed it drawn out for her, as well as the motive. So I was annoyed with her as well as the cops for being dumb. But high marks for her being stubborn! Also, the times when she stops to think about Gabe, you really feel her grief. The emotions really pour off the page there in a throat-catching way that was quite well done. I think Ware made a good call by letting us get to know Gabe a little bit before killing him, he wasn't completely an unknown figure, but someone with a sense of humor who clearly loved his wife and in the little bit we had of him I liked him. So his death was personal enough I wanted to see how it was resolved. Whether the resolution was satisfying or not I guess depends. The way things were set up means it probably worked out as well as it could. No more to say there since that would be spoilers!

I was definitely conflicted about this book. It was what it said it was- a take on THE FUGITIVE (personally I didn't see any MR & MRS SMITH). Fast-paced, non-stop, run from the cops all the way. I liked the theory more than I ended up liking the reality of the book, but each reader will have to judge it for themselves.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

So much fun! I love that Ruth Ware always mixes it up, and she's moved completely away from her gothic style to write a twisty, suspenseful, female-forward thriller.

I loved Jack as a character and thought the book did a great job setting up the plausibility of her as an action heroine.

Zero Days is a real summer page-turner, and I highly recommend it!

I really enjoy Ruth Ware's books generally, so I was thrilled to be given a copy of her most recent work. Thank you to Ruth Ware, Netgalley, and publisher! While this felt very different than her other books and was not a favorite, it was still well-written and was a four-star read for me. The guilty party was very obvious, given how few characters there were that could possibly make any sense so that was just something I had to know and be OK with. A little disappointing, but her writing otherwise makes up for it.

Which author made you fall in love with a genre? I read The Woman in Cabin 10 six years ago and fell in love with the mystery/thriller genre. Zero Days is my 7th Ware book, and they’ve all been 5⭐️ reads 🖤.
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Jack and her husband are penetration specialists who break into buildings in order to test security systems for different companies. But when one of her jobs goes wrong, Jack returns home to find her husband murdered. Someone has framed her for the murder, and she’s now racing against the clock to find the real killer before the police catch up to her.
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I think this might be the most fast-paced suspenseful Ware book I’ve read. I love a strong kick a*s female MC who can hold her own. This book is heavy on The Fugitive thriller vibes, except throw in some edgy dark web cyber hacker stuff. Loved it 🖤.
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Thank you to @scoutpressbooks @gallerybooks and @netgalley for this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.
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Zero Days - Ruth Ware
5/5⭐️
Pub Date: 6/20/23 🎉Out Now!🎉

For those who loved The Last Thing He Told Me, this is for you. A professional “pen tester,” Jack Cross lands herself as the suspect of murder. This was a quick read that was twisty enough to keep me engaged. However, I found myself able to skim- read it. It was a lot of running Jack running away, which was certainly fun, but it was a missed opportunity to not go more into the seedy underbelly of the dark web. I found my self doing my own research on the subject. Thank you to NetGalley, Gallery, and Ruth Ware for the ARC!

I really enjoyed this one. The story felt a little played out, but Ruth aware excelled at making this one better than the rest. It was so good and I was completely caught up in this. I finished in under 24 hours.

Video Review: https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8JHkGmU/

Zero Days starts out at about a hundred miles an hour. And it feels like a big departure in style for Ruth Ware, shifting from her more close-quartered mysteries into the wide open sprint of corporate espionage and deception.

Jacintha “Jack” Cross is part of a two person “pen” tester team with her husband, Gabe. Pen testers are penetration specialists, who are hired to break into companies and hack into their systems to determine whether said systems are truly secure. As the book opens, Jack and Gabe are working a job — she on site, he remotely — and the expertise, respect, and chemistry between the two is palpable. Job complete, Jack heads home — to find Gabe dead, his throat slit open and the hard drive from his computer stolen.

What follows is a story in the vein of The Fugitve, in which Jack, mostly alone, and on the run, must clear her name of her husband’s death — especially after a damning life insurance policy turns up. Someone, clearly, has framed Jack. But why? Heartbroken, seriously injured, not knowing who to trust, and evading the police even as they always seem to be a step behind her, Jack begins to put the pieces together with the help of her sister, Hel, and Gabe’s best friend, Cole. But as the pieces do begin to fit the picture they reveal is shocking. Jack must overcome her dwindling resources and ever-worsening injury to gather enough evidence to show the police who the real killer is.

The perfect, high-energy read for summer.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an e-galley in exchange for an honest review.

This book read just like an action movie with the main character Jack hitting the run ground running from the start as she searched for the truth about her husbands murder and trying to save herself. I liked the action and pacing but never really connected with her as a character. This is a departure from Ruth Ware’s normally writing and I liked it but after a string of great action thrillers it was lacking a little.

Ruth Ware has always been one of my favorites and I really enjoyed this one! It felt different than her other books, but I like to be on the edge of my seat for mysteries/thrillers and this definitely had me there!

Summary: Jack and her husband Gabe are penetration specialists hired by companies to break into buildings and hack security systems. When one of their assignments goes wrong, Jack returns home to find her husband is dead and she ends up as the number one suspect. She decides to run and tries to find Gabe’s killer on her own before the police close in on her.

I understand why this fell flat for some people (some repetition of events, bad choices made by the main character, very few twists, etc.), but from the very first scene, I was hooked and couldn’t wait to find out how Jack was going to get herself out of the mess she created. This murder mystery/thriller was a good one and I will continue to be a huge Ruth Ware fan!

Jacintha (Jack) Cross and her husband, Gabe, hack security systems for a living. Gabe is a computer hacking wizard, and Jack can get in and out of buildings without being seen. Together, they make a great team. But when a penetration test goes wrong, Jack arrives home to find Gabe dead. Jack doesn't have the healthiest respect for the police at the best of times, but the way she's treated after her husband's murder leads her to believe she's a suspect, and she runs.

For me, it's not always about the mystery in Ruth Ware's books, but about the cunning of the character to get out of their situation. Jack is smart, savvy and brave, but as time goes on her resolve (and body) is weakened and she has to rely on her smarts more, and more. It's a cat and mouse game, with Jack as a kind of female Jason Bourne. I loved Gabe and Jack's relationship, loved how the character grew to believe in her abilities far beyond what she thought she was capable of, and of course, the heart-pounding action throughout.

I’ve been more impressed with Ware’s previous books. The tech jargon in this one made me glaze over. I wasn’t invested in Gabe and Jack’s story, and the whole ending felt weird and vague. My least favorite trope is **spoiler ahead** dead husband leaves behind pregnant wife, so that was the final nail in the coffin.

Zero Days is a fun read! This follows Jack(Jacintha) as she tries to solve her husband's murder while also on the run from the police, who believe she may have a role in his death. Ruth Ware can be a hit or miss for me, and this one hit the mark. While not a full 5 star, it still was a quick read, difficult to put down wondering what may happen next. Zero days steps away from Ruth Ware's other novels, in that it more of a cat and mouse, who did it plot, not her usual locked door or Agatha Christie genre blends. Reading this book reminds of a high thrill action movie, and I can picture it perfectly on the big screen. I highly recommend Zero Days for those beachy afternoons!

I loved this! Fast paced thriller with a strong female lead. Different than many of the murder mysteries that are out there-it reads less like a domestic thriller and more like a spy novel.