Rating - ⭐⭐⭐
"Getting snowed in at a beautiful, rustic mountain chalet doesn’t sound like the worst problem in the world, especially when there’s a breathtaking vista, a cozy fire, and company to keep you warm. But what happens when that company is eight of your coworkers…and you can’t trust any of them?
When an off-site company retreat meant to promote mindfulness and collaboration goes utterly wrong when an avalanche hits, the corporate food chain becomes irrelevant and survival trumps togetherness. Come Monday morning, how many members short will the team be?"
One by One is a standalone mystery thriller novel by Ruth Rare, the author of The Turn of the Key.
This is one of those books that most people either love or hate, but I am firmly in the middle. I didn't mind reading this but it was also kind of lackluster. The only good thing was that it was easy to read and it wasn't boring. The negatives outweigh the positives though.
First of all, I don't think the format of including Snoop pages was very beneficial to the reader experience. It pulls you out of the book right away before it can even begin and it's just not a good way to introduce characters. Liz's point of view was disorienting, which may be fitting considering her mental state but it does not translate well into text. Little bits of information keep popping up and I don't really care about how that expands her character or what it meant for the plot.
There were some plot inconsistencies that bothered me. For one, why did everyone presume that someone was dead, they could have been out there alive freezing to death. Secondly, for a place that seemed to get a lot of severe weather, why are they not prepared enough for a blackout? It's not a very good thing when you're thinking about this instead of focusing on the story.
The biggest flaw of this book, however, would be the ending. The book was entirely predictable and the final scene was boring and kind of ridiculous. This also did something in the epilogue that I now know that I don't like.
Negatives aside, I still didn't hate the book as much as other people seem to.
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