If you’re looking for another summer read to lazily sink your reading teeth into, Ruth Ware is usually a pretty good choise, and this one is no different. With a beachy setting, lots of intrigue and vapid people it’s a recipe for grand escapism.
For anyone who is a mindful consumer of reality TV (i.e. you know it’s fake but you love it anyway) this is a fun peak behind the fictional curtain of a British show set on a tropical island meant to showcase the “perfect couple” gone very very wrong. Lyla’s career as a post-doctoral researcher is on the skids and her boyfriend Nico’s dream of being an actor has never taken off, but this show seems to be a chance to springboard is fledgling career. She relucntantly agress to participate, pushing past her reservations and feelings of not fitting in amongst the sleek and beautiful. Saying “all is not what it seems” is wholly insufficient to explain where this book goes.
Things are suspicious from the start and go from bad to worse to “you’ve gotta be kidding me” quite quickly. There are so many twists they twist back around again improbably like an Escher painting but it’s all in good fun. You certainly won’t see it all coming. My willing suspension of disbelief was definitely nudged beyond its outer boundaries but I gobbled this book up in about two days.
This one was packaged up in a much too convenient bow for me at the end, but never you mind: I really liked the journey.