I sure do hope Ruth Ware doesn’t have a ghost writer out there, because it seems almost impossible that she’s cranking out four hundred page novels around the same time every year. I certainly know it’s possible to write that much, and with an author as popular as she is, I know the publishing house would probably drop everything to get it out as quickly as possible, but still. I suppose I will remain in awe, because Ware delivers again with One Perfect Couple.
Now, I am not one for many reality competition television shows. Like at all. There is The Challenge on MTV, but even that I am not beholden to every season they drop. I also know that reality television is scripted a lot of the time, though I don’t know how exactly that plays out in the competition format with prizes at the end. Either way, lacking a lot of knowledge about that still made this an engaging read. We meet Lyla, a virologist struggling to keep her foot in the door to get some proper funding, and in her thirties, is finding her dream of operating her own lab dying. She’s been in a relationship with aspiring, yet equally struggling actor, Nico, for a little over two years. He corners her with the chance to go on an elimination style reality competition show and she reluctantly agrees.
She agrees because she thinks it will be good to take a proper vacation, but she also thinks this might help out her relationship with Nico. Lyla thinks that maybe Nico needs some success in order for them to start talking more seriously about the future. With that being said, this show sounds a little sketchy from the get-go. The man in charge is Baz and he can’t seem to keep his story straight or his answers very clear. He claims a network already has it lined up, but then it sounds like it’s never been sold yet. Then he brushes off Lyla’s questions like she’s never asked them. All of this and they’ve signed the contracts in no time at all. I was a little mad at Nico for pushing the matter, but if Lyla really was that concerned she should have read everything over herself.
The couple find themselves on a nice-ish yacht taking them to some remote island off the coast of Indonesia where things almost immediately go awry. They lose their cell phones, which even I knew was a staple of shows like this, but then they have improper working cameras, a bare bones staff that can’t even be bothered to feed the couples properly. In an unexpected twist of fate, Nico is the first eliminated, which seems kind of wild given they’d only been on the island for a few hours. Most of the crew leaves with Nico for a bigger island where he’ll be picked up an taken home, but in the middle of the night a huge and destructive storm hits.
It’s from this point that things get really interesting. Not only do the remaining contestants have to fight for survival on the island, but also likely from each other. People are dropping like flies, and it’s a wake up call for me that I would never want to do a show like this. Even if the production was properly put together. My sister said her biggest complaint was knowing the twist with a hundred pages still to go, but there was plenty of conflict resolution to fill those pages entertainingly. I think I liked this one better than Ware’s last, so give it a shot!