63 pages • 2 hours read
Ruth WareOne Perfect Couple
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3, Chapters 33-38Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3: “The Reckoning”
Part 3, Chapter 33 Summary
Lyla wakes, coughing up water, and sees a worried Zana bending over her. Zana tells her that the others are safe and that Angel is caring for Santana’s head wound. Zana thanks Lyla for rescuing her, but Lyla thinks, “I hadn’t saved her. She had saved herself. She had saved all of us” (339). The survivors regroup at the cabana, and Lyla notes that Zana seems detached, as if she is still processing the trauma of Conor’s death. She and the other women discuss Zana’s mental state, and Lyla observes that Conor’s abuse “doesn’t change the weight of what happened” (341). Angel insists that their actions are entirely justified, but Lyla worries about what to tell any police officials after a rescue. Angel recently found Joel, who has died by hanging.
They turn to the topic of restoring the radio battery. Angel explains that there may be a way to repair the lead battery to restore the chemical reaction that charges it. She explains that the radio battery is similar to a car battery. Lyla tells her that she is likely the key to their rescue.
Part 3, Chapter 34 Summary
The next day, Lyla and Zana care for a feverish Santana. Angel unsuccessfully tries to repair the battery, spilling acid on her hands. Lyla struggles to sleep and notices Zana weeping. The next day, Lyla helps Angel with the battery. The goal is to get it open and expose the lead that has not been covered in sulfate so that it can react with the remaining acid. After Lyla opens the battery, she leaves Angel to work. She returns to the villa to find that Santana is in a blood sugar crisis. Lyla goes to look for the glucose tablets, as they no longer have any useful food. A stricken Zana explains that Conor stole the tablets. She insists on atoning for Conor’s actions by going to the water villa to get them. Angel returns first, announcing that the radio is working and that a boat is sending help.
Part 3, Chapter 35 Summary
The survivors briefly celebrate Angel’s news before rushing to give Santana her glucose tablets. They discuss how long it will take help to come and are certain that only hours remain before they are rescued. Zana’s elation fades as she explains that she will now face trial for Conor’s murder. She points out that the cameras will be enough evidence to convict her and that it may not be legally exculpatory that Conor “cut up [her] credit cards and made [her] resign from [her] job and burned [her] with spent matches” (357). Lyla suggests creating a written account that offers alternative explanations for every death and reshapes Conor “into a man no one would want to kill” (357). She offers Zana a paper and pen and tasks her with the role of narrator. In the present, as the others watch, Zana writes the ending about staying strong in hopes of rescue. She is in tears.
Part 3, Interlude 20 Summary
Zana’s diary describes Conor’s death as a rescue effort. In her fictionalized version, Conor saves Santana when she trips on the rickety boardwalk and pulls Lyla under. He drowns, and Zana saves Lyla. Zana finds life without Conor unfathomable.
Part 3, Chapter 36 Summary
Zana hands over the diary to the others, sobbing, and runs off to be alone. They read it closely so that they can corroborate her account. Lyla describes reading the diary as “picking up the wrong glasses. Everything [i]s familiar, but wrong” (363). They are discussing how wrenching this must have been for Zana when she calls to them, announcing that the boat has arrived.
Part 3, Chapter 37 Summary
Lyla describes the joy and luxury of regular access to food and water. However, her relief at being rescued is marred by the confirmation that the Over Easy was never found, so Nico and the others are likely dead. Lyla, Zana, and the others continue to share an apartment together as they process their ordeal and emotions. Santana shares memories of Dan, while Angel talks about her abusive former boyfriend and her love for Bayer. Lyla admits her doubts about Nico and hopes that he did not resent her when he died. Zana describes her early relationship with Conor and admits that joy soon gave way to horror. She feels intense guilt for her role on the island, but Angel tells her that they all know that she did her best to survive Conor’s abuse.
Lyla asks the others what their information from the production company said about the contestants that she and Nico replaced. Zana recognizes the man’s name as one of Conor’s longtime enemies. Lyla explains that she understands Baz’s motives now. All the contestants that he brought together either had experience with abuse or knew Conor personally. Romi had been attacked by his fans online, and Santana knew his former girlfriend. Lyla reasons that she herself must have been a suitable replacement because of her feminist stance and leftist views, as she would be likely to argue with Conor.
They research Baz and realize that his niece was Conor’s girlfriend, who died by suicide after their relationship ended. The women realize that the entire show was a revenge scheme designed to end Conor’s career. Zana bursts into bitter laughter, realizing that they have undone this entire goal by making Conor a heroic figure in Zana’s fictionalized diary entries. Zana blames herself for this, but the others insist that they have no regrets.
Part 3, Chapter 38 Summary
Lyla returns home to her empty apartment, relieved that her cell phone has arrived with a new sim card that contains her old calls and text records. She begins contacting the friends of hers that her parents could not reach. As she sorts through old messages, she finds one from Nico, dated on the day of the storm. She realizes that his phone must have been returned to him in his final hours. In the message, Nico apologizes for his anger and admits that Lyla deserves a family if she wants one. He tells her that he admires and loves her and warns her to be careful of Conor. Lyla receives a text from Santana, who asks, “Are you going to be ok?” and Lyla responds with a simple “yes” (380).
Part 3, Chapters 33-38 Analysis
In the novel’s final chapters, the four women engineer their Survival Under Extreme Conditions by using their knowledge and expertise in the service of collaboration rather than competition. In this light, Angel, who was previously underestimated as a woman who relies only her looks, emerges as a strong and savvy personality when she sees Conor as the threat he is, and she also displays considerable ingenuity when she uses her childhood memories to repair the battery and summon a rescue party. The theme of willing cooperation continues as Lyla helps Angel with this task rather than leaving her to struggle alone, while Zana rushes to save Santana. These indications of teamwork illustrate that the group’s survival is due not to Conor’s brute strength but to their refusal to abandon one another. Tellingly, Joel’s death is left ambiguous; there is no evidence to prove that he died by suicide, just as there is no evidence that Conor murdered him outright. By refusing to clarify this point, Ware implies that either way, Joel died because he accepted Conor’s vision of the world rather than engaging in the genuine camaraderie the others offered him.
Ironically, this show of genuine good faith among the surviving women leads them to become manipulators to guarantee their own long-term survival in the world beyond the island. Thus, their collaboration continues as they craft their counternarrative to prevent Zana from suffering further at Conor’s hands, even after the man’s ignominious death. By engaging once more in manipulation and deceit, the women work together to craft a narrative that will protect them all, as they have learned through hard experience that they cannot trust existing institutions to take abuse and misogyny seriously. This manipulation is not for profit or power but for endurance. Their traumatic ordeal has caused them to become more devoted to each other than to abstract ideals of justice that will serve no one.
As the women recover together in the novel’s denouement, Ware uses these chapters to indicate that the only way to heal from trauma is to engage in an honest reckoning, and to this end, the four survivors confide in one another about their pasts before returning home. Lyla’s final epiphany illustrates the idea that manipulation has been fundamental to their entire adventure, even when they did not realize it, as upon bringing them together for the reality show, Baz saw them not as people but as tools in a broader scheme of revenge against Conor. A bitter element of irony is revealed in the fact that although they have escaped from the islands with their lives, they have made a hero of the villain who threatened their very lives. Zana finds this reality particularly galling, but Angel emphasizes that none of them should regret their survival, and their final toast—the third such toast in the novel—is an authentic one as they celebrate their complex triumph.
As the protagonist, Lyla is prominently featured in the novel’s final scene, which brings the narrative full circle and resolves her remaining misgivings over her damaged relationship with the now-deceased Nico. In a moment of tenderness and closure, his final message to her establishes that he did truly care about her, and his words prove that the animosity he momentarily displayed was not his authentic self. Nico’s final warning about Conor effectively confirms Lyla’s hypothesis about the producer’s true agenda, ironically validating her scientific self as Nico failed to do when he was alive. As the novel concludes on a positive note, it is clear that the island’s survivors are now ready to shape their own destinies, free from the brutality of the island or the gendered manipulations of reality television.
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