One by One – Ruth Ware

2.5 stars

Boy, was this SLOW!! My God, sometimes I felt like I was moving backwards.

I didn’t really like the choice of Erin (chalet staff) and Liz (former Snoop employee) as the narrators for the book. Because both of them were experiencing nearly the same things at the same time, it lead to a lot of repetitive feeling descriptions and events. I felt like I was continously reading the same scene just from across the room the second time.

The app itself being the “center” of the plot was also eh. It took me a couple readthroughs of the description for me to understand how it differed from Spotify, and, once I understood, to wonder how that would enhance my listening experience at all. It’s kind of cool, I guess, but not something I could ever see taking off. And what is Choon, exactly?

There were also a rather large amount of characters, mostly cannon fodder. It’s hard to keep track of everyone when there’s so many, especially when they’re mostly cardboard cutouts fulfilling their designated roles. I found it hard to care for anyone outside of Liz and Danny, so I spent most of the book wondering when something would happen to any one of the others.

I will admit, there were some tense, atmospheric moments that had me trying to read a little faster to see what would happen and the very end did make me smile, but One by One took a very very long time to get me there.