I wanted to do a quick review of Ruth Ware’s mystery novel partly because they were handing out free copies at San Diego Comic-Con and I want to encourage that kind of thing (seriously, getting a preview pamphlet is fun, but for a book nerd getting handed a whole free book is like winning a mini lottery.) But also because the movie by Reese Witherspoon is tentatively scheduled to come out in 2018. It’s being touted as “The Next Gone Girl” and I wanted to see how close to the mark they got.
I can see why they made the comparison: there’s a mystery, betrayal, slowly revealed history, and a twist ending. In some ways I thought the plot here was more straightforward than Gone Girl, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The main character, Nora, is invited to a bachelorette weekend (“hen party” is what they call it, since it’s in the UK) for a school friend she hasn’t talked to in years. Why was she invited? What secret plan is in place, and who’s planning it? When things get violent (as they always do in this kind of book) who’s responsible? There’s pieces of Nora’s past that could help us understand her confusion, but we’re only fed that information little by little.
The major similarity between this book and Gone Girl is that it’s told from a first person perspective (though just one person in this book, instead of bouncing back and forth between two) and the main character has a lot of information that’s withheld from the reader. It’s a tricky line to walk, because if you give too much away you spoil the reveal, but if you withhold too much for too long it’s just annoying (leading the reader to go “Yes that’s interesting but you’re dancing around the information I need to know so just tell me already!“)
I think Ware hit a good balance: as the reader we knew we were missing pieces that the main character hadn’t “thought” about yet, but it was an interesting enough story that we were willing to wait for it. Plus there’s some convenient (but logical) post-accident amnesia that lets the mystery get drawn out a little longer.
Ruth Ware is really good at making every character you meet, even briefly, very interesting. I never felt like we were weighed down with a ton of exposition, but we still got a very detailed painting of each person.
As for the “twist,” I guessed what was coming a little early, but somehow I wasn’t disappointed. Ware leads you down a garden path of several different possibilities, all of which are plausible. I was willing to suspend disbelief and let myself wonder if maybe I was wrong. I wasn’t, but I didn’t mind, and that’s the key.
The story is just plain interesting. Every scene feels like it has a purpose, either to give us information, or some details on a character we hadn’t seen before, or to start the main character on a path down memory lane to give us a few more clues. No one was perfect, not even the main character (who came across as annoyingly self-pitying sometimes, but in a way the reader could identify and sympathize with.)
Everyone came across as believable, and the story stays logical with very few plot holes. I have a minor quibble with a couple things in the ending, mostly with people conveniently being right where they need to be and suddenly accepting people’s word as truth even when there reeeeeeallly wasn’t enough proof to support what they were saying. But it wasn’t enough to ruin the book.
I think it’s at least as interesting as Gone Girl (though I read Gone Girl long after it’d almost been hyped to death, and while I enjoyed it I was never that huge a fan: I think some of Gillian Flynn’s other books are better, but I digress.) I think in the end it’s several steps up from a beach read: its flaws are minor and it will definitely keep your interest. Whether or not the movie does as well (or even gets made: a year after the movie was announced it’s still “in development” over at imdb) remains to be seen.