Popular author Ruth Ware turns paradise into a new form of hell in her latest novel, One Perfect Couple.

Depending on who you ask, Lyla and Nico have been together for two-and-a-half years or three years. Nico counts their relationship as starting from their first hookup. Lyla doesn’t think that drunken groping was really the beginning since it was at a friend’s party, and they just got together for convenience’s sake. But when they met up again six months later, deliberately? They haven’t been apart since.

The differing opinions on how long they’ve been together reflect how Nico and Lyla view the world. Nico, an actor, has an emotional response to everything. Lyla, a scientist, is practical. Which is why she is in the process of carefully contemplating her future. She and Nico are at a crossroads in their relationship and Lyla, the elder by several years, is thinking it may just be time for them to part ways. She is ready to level up – to start thinking about family and forever. Not just with her love life but with her job, too, since it is looking like she isn’t going to be promoted and may need to change careers.

Then Nico is offered the opportunity to join the cast of One Perfect Couple, a reality TV show featuring authentic partners who must prove on camera why they are perfect for each other. Lyla doesn’t want to participate, but she also has nothing holding her back. And Nico is making all kinds of promises as to why this will be great for them both. She agrees to do two weeks on the show, confident she will quickly be kicked off the tropical paradise where it is being filmed, because audiences don’t want a pedantic nerd. They want someone like Nico – volatile, gorgeous, and emotive. The audition process is sketchy, but neither Nico nor his agent blink an eye at that, and before she knows it and despite her trepidation, Lyla is boating through the Indian Ocean towards Ever After Island.

Once on board, they meet the four couples they will be competing against – Bayer and Angel, Dan and Santana, Joel and Romi, and Conor and Zana – to win a cash prize. While everyone else seems media savvy, Joel and Lyla find themselves bonding over their odd-man-out status. Joel is a lecturer at St. Clements and, like her, is the more boring/normative half of the couple. They have a good laugh over it. Lyla continues to make the rounds, talking to the other contestants and the staff of the show as they prepare for landing. This is how she overhears talk of a dangerous storm potentially encompassing the island. The production crew dismisses any concerns, but she disembarks uneasily.

She is right to be worried. The first challenge proves a disaster for Lyla and Nico. She gets a near-perfect score listing his dreams, favorite foods, and most embarrassing secret, but after living together for so long, he still gets her go-to takeout order wrong, doesn’t know what her dream date would be, nor really much of anything about her. A furious Nico is escorted off the island, while Lyla is left to bask in humiliation. But this will not be the worst thing to happen that evening. The production company departs, taking the boat back to the mainland to deposit Nico and pick up supplies. And then the storm hits, leaving massive destruction in its wake. The contestants quickly find themselves struggling for survival, cut off from any form of communication with the outside world, and running low on food and water. It doesn’t take long for them to realize that starvation isn’t the only thing they have to fear. One couple is still playing the game, albeit under a very different set of rules. And they are determined to be the last pair standing.

This is less a mystery and more an action/adventure/thriller. That a villain is on the island is clear from the outset. Who it is is obvious by the midpoint. The only real question to be answered is if both members of the couple are complicit or if it is just the conspicuous half of the pair, with the other being forced to cooperate. There is a surprising twist at the end regarding why it is all happening, but it doesn’t play into how the plot unfolds until the final chapters.

Readers who love strong female protagonists will adore this story. All of the ladies are resilient, brave, and fiercely intelligent. I appreciated that each and every one of them – even Santana who is by far the most fragile – is grimly determined to survive themselves and help the others to do so. They are very much about doing what needs to be done, even when that is less than palatable.

Lyla is surprising in her ability to adapt. A kind of everywoman with few practical survival skills and only minimal fitness, her struggle to acclimate to the new conditions is very relatable and the author makes her growth believable without ever sacrificing the essence of who Lyla is. It’s easy to believe that the kick-ass version we see emerge as the novel progresses was inside our heroine all along.

There are plot points I found questionable, but the author’s easy-to-read writing style and brisk pacing kept me invested in what was happening. There are deaths here, but the gore and violence are kept to a minimum.

Ware’s obsession with failing machinery actually fits this particular scenario perfectly because it would be natural for an isolated location to have difficulties with technology after a massive, damaging storm. It also gives the characters – especially the women – the opportunity to show their unique skills since they have to be quite creative as they seek to find a way to communicate with the outside world.

One Perfect Couple isn’t a perfect book but it is pretty darn entertaining. I would recommend it to fans of the author, those who love the Reality TV scenario, and anyone in the mood for a heroine-centric adventure story.