One Perfect Couple – Ruth Ware

Lyla is in a bit of a rut. Her post-doctoral research has fizzled out, she’s pretty sure they won’t extend her contract, and things with her boyfriend, Nico, aren’t going great. When the opportunity arises for Nico to join the cast of a new reality TV show, The Perfect Couple, she decides to try out with him.

A whirlwind audition process later, Lyla find herself whisked off to a tropical paradise with Nico, boating through the Indian Ocean towards Ever After Island, where the two of them will compete against four other couples—Bayer and Angel, Dan and Santana, Joel and Romi, and Conor and Zana—in order to win a cash prize.

But not long after they arrive on the deserted island, things start to go wrong. After the first challenge leaves everyone rattled and angry, an overnight storm takes matters from bad to worse. Cut off from the mainland by miles of ocean, deprived of their phones, and unable to contact the crew that brought them there, the group must band together for survival. As tensions run high and fresh water runs low, Lyla finds that this game show is all too real—and the stakes are life or death.

Review

I’ll start off by saying that this one was better than Zero Days, though there was a similarity that may be a spoiler? So I’ll just say that these aspects contributed to my feeling a bit let down by both books. I don’t know if it was intended to be a red herring all along or what, but I was waiting for something interesting to happen with it, and then it just… didn’t.

One Perfect Couple has a wide cast (literally) of characters; we have Joel and Romi, the “why is she with him?” couple; Bayer and Angel, the “they are so gorgeous and cliché” couple; Dan and Santana, the “sweet-oh-so cute” couple; Connor and Zana, the “huh, he’s handsome but something’s weird here” couple; and finally, Lyla and Nico, who they themselves are a bit mismatched as we see in the first part of the book, where Lyla ponders about their future together as she wants a quiet, family life but Nico’s life as an actor that still hasn’t made it makes it a bit difficult to imagine about.

Even as a thriller veteran, you kind of feel at times reaching out for paper and pen to see who is who and what was their designated personality, but once the “one by one” trope starts, there’s not much fuss in keeping track of everything… till the very last chapter where everything “connects.” I’ve read some reviews, and I am glad to know that I’m not the only one who felt like the explanation for everything that went down, the original reason why the show was being made for, and how everyone had a connection with each other was very, very rushed and just there.

Positives though! The tropical and suspenseful vibe that every character gave with their personal affairs that made the survival situation just a bit more difficult was truly perfect. Not talking about the “And Then There Were None” setting, but the writing and vibe took me back to One by One from the same author, a book that I savoured as a whole.

One Perfect Couple was a very bingeable, fast-paced read that ultimately lacked the mystery aspect of a mystery-thriller but still, I’m glad I gave this book a chance after my fiasco with Zero Days.

Click for spoilers!

Conor dude was the one killing people one by one to be the only survivor, though it’s a bit unclear if he planned to be rescued along with Zana to help his image or just him and kill Zana later. Joel committed suicide after finding out the truth about Conor when Lyla subtly accused him of killing Dan and stealing Santana’s insulin.

When the remaining girls realise what Conor is doing, they plan to overtake him by giving him Angel’s sleeping pills and kill him by injecting him with Santa’s remaining insulin. Things go wrong, though, and Angel ends up drinking the drugged coconut, so when Lyla and Santana sneak up to inject him, Conor fights back and almost ends up killing them until Zana defends them and drowns him.

When the girls get rescued, they learn that the boat where everyone was (including Nico) sank. Lyla, Santana, Zana, and Angel are the final survivors.

Why was the show created? Baz was the uncle of one of Conor’s ex-girlfriends, who committed suicide due to him being an abusive POS groomer. He wanted revenge, so he planned to expose Conor on the show for who he is and destroy his YouTube career. Santana had gone to school with Baz’s niece; Angel had a history with domestic abuse; Zana was Conor’s current victim; and Joel was a subscriber to Conor’s channel. These were all the reasons they were chosen for the show. Lyla and Nico were a last-minute resort because the couple they really wanted dropped out, and Baz chose Lyla personally because she demonstrated potential to stand up to Conor and kickstart his plan to unmask him.

At the very end, Lyla reads the final messages Nico sent her before dying, and he really, truly loved her, but he felt like she deserved better and lamented that he couldn’t give her the stable life she wanted.