One Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware is a very highly recommended closed circle thriller that follows five couples, the cast of a new reality TV show, who are trapped on a remote island in the Indian Ocean.

Virologist Lyla Santiago is frustrated that her postdoc research is not providing the expected results, so when Nico Reese, her actor boyfriend, wants them to join the cast of a reality TV show called "One Perfect Couple" she reluctantly agrees. She can take off a couple weeks from work and assumes she can write up the disappointing results while on the island. Hopefully this opportunity will be the break that Nico needs and help their relationship.

Their audition leads to a quick approval and Lyla and Nico quickly find themselves on a boat in the Indian Ocean heading toward Ever After Island with the four other couples: Bayer and Angel, Dan and Santana, Joel and Romi, and Conor and Zana. After the first challenge, things go wrong very quickly. This is followed by a powerful storm which slams the island, leaving the contestants isolated, without any support from the show's crew and assistants and with limited resources. Since they had to turn in all electronics, their hope is in reaching someone via the two-way radio. These are strangers who must band together for survival.

One Perfect Couple has strong And Then There Were None merges with Survivor and reads Lord of the Flies vibes and the plot held my complete attention throughout. Once they reach the island, the tension rises quickly and, after the storm hits, stays high as the stakes are life or death and their expectations for survival lower with each passing day. There are new issues occurring daily that will challenge each individual.

The writing is excellent. The narrative unfolds through Lyla's point-of-view, with brief pleas for help on the radio and later diary entries between the chapters. Lyla is an exceptional character and an appealing character to experience the drama through her observations. The characters are all written as unique individuals with their own strengths and weaknesses and it is easy to follow who's who while reading.

Ruth Ware is a writer who always seems to deliver an excellent novel. This one would make a heart-pounding movie. Thanks to Gallery/Scout Press for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

The review will be published on Edelweiss, X, Barnes & Noble and Amazon.

I enjoyed this book a lot, even though it was quite unrealistic and hastily written at times. Definitely a quick and easy popcorn thriller that I finished within a day.

Even though there is a pretty large cast of characters with 10 contestants on the reality TV show, the author did a good job distinguishing them all so I was never confused. This is helped by the fact that the book is written from only one perspective, Lyla. There are also diary entries from another contestant, Zana, every few chapters to add a different take on the events that occur.

The weakest parts of this book were the prologue and the ending while the rest of the book was really good at setting up the finale, building conflicts, and slowly revealing information.

The prologue feels out of place and really ruins a lot of the suspense because it basically reveals how the final showdown with the main antagonist occurs. So when the characters devise a scheme later in the novel, the reader already knows that it’s not going to work.

The ending of this book was quite strange and left a lot of unanswered questions. The main one is why they were suddenly able to make contact with a boat through the radio after all their previous attempts went unanswered. It felt so convenient that right when they had wrapped everything up on the island and were close to running out of food, they got one last shot at calling for help and it worked.

Another half-baked aspect of the novel is the cameras that were set up to record everything for the reality TV show and keep recording after the storm strands them on the island. For some reason, these cameras are the main drivers for a lot of the tension/drama in the final act of the story. It’s explicitly stated that there’s no wifi connection on the island so the video recordings would either be uploaded to a central drive (and thus not an issue since all the equipment except a single radio was destroyed in the storm) or stored on the cameras themselves. But the survivors inexplicably decide that it would be too suspicious for them to take down all the cameras so they have to let them keep recording everything.
What?! I think it would actually be extremely reasonable for them to take down all the cameras after they’re stranded in a storm.

Even if we accept the whole camera thing, it’s still really baffling why all the remaining survivors were so convinced that they were going to be prosecuted for the murder of the main antagonist after they were rescued from the island. They insist that they would never be believed if they claimed self-defense but the explanation/solution that they come up with is even sillier.

But overall, I thought the characters were compelling and I enjoyed the survivor/Lord of the Flies aspect of the book.

Five couples set off to film a reality show seeking to find the perfect couple. Filming takes place on a private tropical island on the Indian Ocean. The story is told from the main character, Lyla’s point of view. She is a scientist at a crossroads in her career and agrees to do the reality show with her boyfriend Nico, a struggling actor, who hopes the show will catapult him to fame. Shortly after they arrive, a strong storm hits the island and a game of love turns into a game of survival. The couples are trapped, faced with injuries, and limited food and water as they find out if they can survive the island as well as each other.

This book turned out to be a great thriller but it did take me a bit to get into it. Ruth Ware is a must read author for me and I was so excited to read this one. I don’t love how the ending all tied up and a few other things but I don’t want to give away any spoilers. If you love thrillers and tons of suspense you will love this book. It was very captivating and entertaining!

Thanks to Gallery and NetGalley for the digital ARC.

With her post-doc research going nowhere, Lyla agrees to go on a new reality tv show with her boyfriend Nico, an aspiring actor. On One Perfect Couple, Lyla and Nico must compete against four other couples on a remote island in the Indian Ocean. After the first challenge leaves everyone angry, a storm cuts off the contestants. At first, everyone is grateful when a leader emerges, but they quickly begin to wonder if they made the right choice.

Ruth Ware shines with a fun beach read that mixes the cutthroat survival of Lord of the Flies with an Agatha Christie-style isolation thriller. With Lyla as a narrator, the large cast wasn't too hard to navigate and I loved that the characters reflected a typical reality tv casting, primed to have grating personalities that place stress on everyone. Lyla's levelheadedness, realistic plot twists, and page-turning pace keep you glued to the page in this psychological thriller that belongs on all the summer reading lists.

This is one of my new favorite book tropes - reality shows! 8 strangers come together for a sketchy reality show on a secluded island to find out who is the one perfect couple. After a horrible storm, things start to get dark. Ruth Ware does an excellent job of making you feel like you are really THERE on that island. It was hard to put this one down and had my heart racing through every chapter! A must-read for the summer.

I enjoyed this book. I thought the characters and the narrative structure were very interesting. I would recommend this book to those interested in this genre. I would be interested in reading more from this author.

Thank you #Netgalley for the advanced copy!

This new thriller from Ruth Ware follows Lyla, Lyla is in a relationship wit Nico, a man trying to break into stardom. When he is approached about a reality competition show involving couples, he pushes Lyla into participating. When they arrive on the island, things do not go as planned to say the least. When a storm hits, their world is turned upside down, a real survival of the fittest. We watch as those left on the island unite and in some cases fight to stay alive. So many twists and turns and love how it all ties together in the end.

I received an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a review.

I've read pretty much everything Ruth Ware has put out, and I don't think it's her best (not her worst either, though). The set-up was interesting, but it was slow going for the first part of the book. About halfway through, there are things that don't line up and the action really started going for a quarter of the book before really slowing down again. Overall, it was just 3 stars for me. I liked it, but didn't love it.

I loved the nonlinera timeline and I kept guessing what was actually happening through the first two parts. I figured it out by part 3, but I think that was the point. Overall engaging story!

I'm kind of disappointed. I used to really love Ruth Ware's books but her last few haven't quite hit the mark for me. I was really excited for this one because I love a book centered around a reality T.V. show but this wasn't even really about that after about the 15% mark. The storm hits and then it's primarily a survival story with rationing of water and food and all of our female characters fighting off dehydration. There wasn't really any mystery element either as we basically know who is to blame from moment one after the storm.

What I did enjoy was that all of the women band together to come out on top at the end and I really love reading about women supporting other women. I also enjoyed the atmosphere. This felt like a true summertime read. I could practically feel the heat radiating off the page as the book went on and with all of the descriptions of the Indonesian island this book is set on, this truly was giving tropical vacation gone wrong vibes.

Overall, this was an okay thriller. It was a fun, entertaining read and while the pacing is a bit slower than I wanted it to be, I did still enjoy my time with it.

Thank you to Gallery Books and Netgalley for the e-arc of this book!

This book was a slight departure from what I would normally expect from a Ruth Ware thriller, but it had me hooked all the way through. A woman agrees to join her boyfriend in a reality tv competition for couples, set on a remote island. It becomes clear fairly quickly that the production company has not been forthright with the contestants about the show's premise. Then things take a dark turn after a natural disaster strikes, leaving them stranded on the island, relying on each other to live. The competition was never meant to be life or death, yet bodies keep piling up. How will they contact a rescue boat, and who will be left when they come?

There is a lot of interesting material here about reality tv, how people lean into what is expected of them, and how differently people behave based on whether they are being seen or heard. My main critique is that the ending is too neat and tidy to suit the events that took place.

First read for me by Ruth Ware and I liked it! This was such a good twist on survivor and bachelor in paradise turns wrong and thrilling. Though there were multiple characters, having one narrator lead the story was very helpful in keeping everything intact and understandable. I loved the the journal diaries and radio transmissions being intertwined within the first two parts, it really kept the suspense and mystery going for me.

I thought this was also a beautiful representation of survival and the bravery that many women represent today.

This book is a nice twist on reality couple TV shows. Combined with the drama of 5 couples being stranded on an island you come to realize one of these couples will make it out alive.

While this book has multiple people involved, it’s easy to keep up with what’s happening because there is only one POV.

This book kept my attention the whole time and I found it to be very captivating. However, the ending felt very anticlimactic for me. However, the ending had big shoes to fill given how immersed I felt throughout the entire story!

Thank you to Ruth Ware and Gallery Books via NetGalley for the eARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I was thoroughly entertained while reading this book. The beginning didn’t pull me in right away, but once we were on the island I was hooked. I appreciated Lyla, the main character, and thought she was a great POV to read from. I also loved the friendship that grew between the characters. The suspense was great and I thought the villain was perfectly awful.

I think this would be a great thriller for anyone who likes reality tv. It’s the perfect blend of a reality dating show… that quickly transforms in Castaway.

This was only my second Ruth Ware book, but it won't be the last! This one is a little Love Island, Survivor, and Lord of the Flies all mixed together. It is super fast paced and kept me invested and wanting to know how it all was going to end.

This is my favorite Ruth Ware book yet. Great premise, great characters, great tension and suspense. Shades of Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies for sure. I loved how Ware tied it all together in the end, making sense of the who and why of the book. A great thriller of a read.

“We were being eliminated - all of us, And by someone who was determined to win this game at any cost.”

Another edge of your seat thriller from Ruth Ware, who never disappoints.

Love Island, meets Survivor, meets Lord of the Flies.

Thank you to Ruth Ware, Netgalley and Scout Press, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC, for providing this ARC..

🏝️The Perfect Couple by Ruth Ware OUT MAY 21st, 2024🏝️

Thank you NetGalley and Scout Press for the advanced copy!

Ruth Ware is a well known author in the thriller community and ends up being an auto read for me. I didn’t love her last book, but I was pleasantly surprised after reading The Perfect Couple!

Lyla’s boyfriend Nico wants to make it big in the acting world. When they both get the opportunity to go on a reality couple dating show located on a remote island, he wants to jump at the chance. Lyla is not too sure, but since her doctoral research isn’t going well and she’s not even sure if she wants to spend forever with Nico, she decides to agree to do it. That’s until a storm comes in and Lyla along with the other couples are stranded on the island.

I felt like this was a classic Ruth Ware book! Danger happens, one by one each character goes missing or winds up dead, with a twist at the end. I found this book at times rather repetitive and it was hard to keep track of all of the characters in the book. 4 out of 5 stars!

To me, this book started a little slow, but having read Ruth Ware's books before I stayed the course and kept reading. I picked it up a little bit here and there and like clockwork, there was a point where I couldn’t put it down. That’s when I found myself at 3 am finishing this book. In my opinion, that’s when you know it’s good. It’s a good attention grabbing mystery.

I was initially drawn into the gripping world of One Perfect Couple, a survival thriller that promised intrigue and excitement. Set against the backdrop of a dating show gone awry, the story follows several couples grappling with the aftermath of a devastating storm that traps them on an island after the film crew leaves.

For the majority of the book, I found myself engrossed in the fast-paced narrative and intrigued by the characters' struggle for survival. The tension was palpable, and the plot seemed to be hurtling toward an exhilarating climax.

However, my enjoyment was marred by the final third of the book. As one character assumed the role of island leader, the story took a sudden and jarring turn that left me disengaged. What was once a thrilling adventure became muddled and less compelling.

I was disappointed by the unresolved plot holes that peppered the latter part of the book. Questions lingered without satisfactory answers, leaving me feeling unsatisfied and disconnected from the story.

While I've enjoyed other works by Ruth Ware in the past, One Perfect Couple fell short of my expectations. Despite its promising premise and captivating beginning, the lackluster conclusion ultimately left me wanting more.

Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books for this advanced reader copy. My review is voluntarily my own.