⭐⭐ 2/5 Stars – “Thriller” if you’re very generous but there is no mystery in this entirely predictable plot.
Read: March 2025
Format: Audio (BorrowBox)
After loving Lisa Jewell, then not loving Claire Douglas, I thought I’d try Ruth Ware as another Thriller author I see a lot in my Library’s catalogue. I picked this one just because it was available!
The basic plot is around a couple-based reality TV show but everything quickly goes horribly wrong and it becomes about real-life survival for the 5 couples as they’re stranded without food or water on a remote island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. Could be interesting?
Well, you can probably tell from my 2-star rating that “spellbinding thriller rife with intrigue and characters that feel so true to life” description on the cover was rather generous! I found the whole thing very predictable – everything that I thought was going to happen happened and the twist was that there was no twist. Well, I guess there is half-hearted twist right at the end but it doesn’t have any consequence by that point!
The characters were OK but pretty stereotyped, which is standard for a reality TV cast, but for a novel, this was to the degree that it made the plot completely predictable. Lyla is the main point of view character and I didn’t really connect with her, I struggled to understand her motives given her (obviously dead from the first chapter) relationship with Nico. It wasn’t clear why the two of them were even in a relationship as they had nothing in common and couldn’t communicate at all, particularly as Nico just ignored her wishes and concerns. I did like Angel, she was given the most depth of the cast aside from Lyla but that isn’t saying much. The rest of them were barely sketched, I remain confused about Joel and Connor was a pretty one-note too.
It tries to say something about toxic masculinity and the influence of the “manosphere” on social media but then it just drops that in a frustrating way.
I will say Imogen Church is a good narrator, though the intonation she used for Lyla I found quite annoying and is maybe partly why I struggled to warm to her!
It takes a long time to get going at the start but once it is it’s pretty fast-paced. It’s also not terrible, it’s an easy enough listen – except for an abusive relationship – but it’s not “ingenious” as the cover would like you to believe. It’s just fine.
If you don’t read a lot of mysteries, or you don’t mind your “thrillers” having predictable plots, you’d probably enjoy this but I like a little more challenge!
REVIEW SUMMARY
I LIKED
- After the frustrating slow start, it does really pick up the pace even if I didn’t find any suspense in it.
- It’s easy to listen to as an audiobook – I wasn’t bored but I wasn’t very engaged either.
I DIDN’T LIKE
- Everything that you think will happen happens, with no twists.
- Characters have little dimension.
- Struggled with understanding the core motivations of the main character.
