"The It Girl" grabs you and doesn't let go, bringing you along for an emotional battering. Ruth Ware brings us a story of friendships, jealousy, grudges and fresh hopes. Hannah and Will are expecting their first child. The mom-to-be is excited, but she can't forget all that she and Will have been through. Their time together in college -- a time cut short by the death of their friend April. The man accused of murdering the coed is dying in prison, but Hannah keeps replaying the murder in her mind. After all, she was the witness that got the former college porter convicted. As memories play out, and school friends reconnect, Hannah discovers friends can be enemies wearing smiles.

The mesmerizing story is available as an ebook, hardback novel and audiobook. The narrator for the audiobook brings Hannah to life, adding the British nuances to her speech and life. Kudos to a job well done!

Thank you to Ruth Ware, Net Galley, and Gallery Books for the Advance eReader Copy. This book has a lot of twists and turns and requires the reader to keep up with a bunch of characters. I enjoyed the Oxford boarding school setting but felt like the story is overwritten and none of the characters are likable or clever. The ending isn't satisfying or redemptive either.

It has been ten years since April died and Hannah has always had a nagging fear that she missed something that night. Did her testimony put the wrong person behind bars?

This novel is told from Hannah’s perspective and goes back and forth between two time periods: before and after April died. The author does well painting a picture of the setting and of each character, making it easy to visualize what is taking place. I became vested in Hannah’s story and her need to discover the truth about that night.

I loved all of the red herrings and plot twists making it difficult to solve the mystery before Hannah does.

Thank you to #NetGalley @NetGalley and @ScoutPress @Simon&Schuster for the opportunity to read an ARC of #TheItGirl by #RuthWare - 4.5 stars

I couldn't put THE IT GIRL down! Ware did a great job of the "before" and "after" and takes us through Hanna's life. Every time I thought knew how the book was going to end I was wrong! I highly recommend this to all mystery fans.

The It Girl
⭐️⭐️⭐️/3.5 stars
by: Ruth Ware
Genre: Thriller/Mystery/Suspense/Psychological Thriller/Psychological Fiction

Hannah Jones tragically lost her college roommate and best friend, April Clarke-Cliveden, her freshman year at Oxford. The night of April's murder, Hannah saw the creepy porter, John Neville, leaving the staircase of where their room was located.

Because of what Hannah witnessed that evening and previous encounters with John Neville being in her and April's room, he was convicted and sent to prison.

Now 10 years later, John Neville has died in prison and there are those who believe he was innocent. John himself swore on his innocence and continued to appeal his case up until he died.

When Hannah is approached by a journalist, Geraint, he shares new information that sets her on a new mission to find out if Neville was guilty or innocent. Hannah soon finds out that April had more enemies than she originally realized. Definitely has a twist ending!

I will read anything Ruth Ware writes, and The It Girl is one of her absolute best. I love a spooky academic setting, and the discovery of April Clarke-Cliveden’s body in her Oxford room atop a stone staircase means we have a classic locked-room mystery as well. When John Neville, the porter convicted of April’s murder, dies in prison, an intrepid reporter sets out to clear his name, which means contacting all of April’s old friends, especially her roommate Hannah. Understandably, Hannah does not want to discover that she helped to convict an innocent man, but as she peels back the layers, it becomes clear that everyone in their friend group has something to hide, along with a motive for killing April. Ware’s plot twists are particularly ingenious, clever without being unfair (It was a ghost! It was someone the reader never met or even heard of! There’s time travel!) With a relatively small group of suspects, you might think that guessing the killer would be easy, but I did not see this one coming (full disclosure: I stink at solving the mystery, but that’s another story). Like I said, the reveal is smart without being unfair, which is so rewarding. If you felt burned by One by One, set those feelings aside and give The It Girl a try. I think you’ll find Ware is back at the top of her game.

Hannah and Will have moved on from the tradegy they endured in college when thier friend was brutally murdered. But as the person convicted dies, questions without answers start plaguing Hannah and she decides to travel back to Oxford to investigate. Unfortunatley, those closest to her become the suspects. Ruth Ware has done it again...creating a suspenseful page turner that leave you guessing until the end.

I am a huge fan of Ruth Ware and the It Girl is just another of her hits. April Clarke-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford. April was everything that Hannah not. April is a vivacious, bright, sometimes vicious, and she quickly pulled Hannah into her world. The roommates developed a group of devoted and inseparable friends—Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily—during their first term. By the end of the year, April was dead. A decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing April, former Oxford porter John Neville, has died in prison. Hannah struggles to deal with Neville's death and the thoughts that maybe Neville is innocent. As Hannah reconnects with old friends and looks to find answers, she realizes that the friends she thought she knew all have something to hide, including a murder.

I always enjoy Ruth Ware novels. This particular novel was rich with detail and I enjoyed the alternating “before” and “after” chapters. I felt the progression was a little slow for my taste. The novel doesn’t really have any major plot twists until almost the very end. I would still recommend!

A whodunnit that takes place on a college campus. Definitely not an academic thriller, although we do follow the characters as they meet and become close friends during college. April is murdered and Hannah is the one who identifies her killer, John Neville. Neville dies in prison many years later and doubts creep in about his guilt. If John didn’t do it then a killer is still at large. As Hannah delves deeper things get tense and twisty. A perfectly readable mystery.

** I received an electronic ARC from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review of this book.

Ruth Ware is one of my favourite authors. I honestly didn’t even read the description when I started to read this one. But I kind of felt this was just another run of the mill thrillers, and it’s nothing special. Ruth is so good at writing slow burn thrillers, but there is a difference between unravelling things slowly and dragging the instance slowly without much happening. Sorry to say, but this book was a miss for me.

Thank you Scout Press via Netgalley for the e-arc.

Ruth Ware is an always reliable read and I enjoyed The It Girl for the most part. It didn't feel terribly inventive, but I have been reading a lot of books in the "college friends with a terrible secret" vein recently so I might just be burned out. This was a little too long and repetitive in parts, especially the middle, but it picked up steam and I was hooked at the end.

I liked this! Did it blow my mind with a million twists and turns? No. But it was enjoyable and I was always eager to pick it up!

Ruth Ware earned the moniker of “modern Agatha Christie” with her perennially bestselling riffs on locked-room mysteries.

She’s set novels in forbidding houses (In a Dark, Dark Wood; The Turn of the Key), a cruise ship (The Woman in Cabin 10) and a snowed-in ski resort (One by One). The walls figuratively close in on her characters as her plots unwind.

Her beguiling new novel is fresh and appealing new territory, with just a kernel of the locked-room trope. The It Girl ponders false accusations and facile appearances in a contemporary dark-academia story with, naturally, a murder to kick things off.

In flashbacks, we learn that a decade ago, scholarship student Hannah Jones met wealthy and glamorous April Clark-Cliveden when they were suitemates at Oxford’s fictional Pelham College.

April seems to be everything Hannah isn’t – confident, well-dressed, flirtatious, a prankster. April is also dead, strangled the night of her star turn in a performance of Medea.

Hannah’s testimony put creepy residence-hall porter John Neville behind bars, after she told police that she saw him leaving the hall the night of the murder: “Afterwards, it was the door she would remember. It was open, she kept saying to the police. I should have known something was wrong.”

Ten years on, Neville has died in prison, and a reporter is sniffing around inconsistencies in Hannah’s story. Now married to former Pelham classmate Will, Hannah works as a bookseller as she awaits the birth of their first child. She’s avoided any discussion of that night, but newly fueled by the fear that she identified the wrong man, she starts digging.

Ware eagerly plumbs the disconnects between her characters’ public and true selves. April evinces a spoiled party-girl exterior that masks her intelligence. Neville blunders past social boundaries, stoking all the students’ suspicions that he’s dangerous.

Young Hannah is prone to fits of insecurity. She’s hyper-conscious of her social status compared to many of the other students, with April pouring Dom Perignon to toast the new school year and hallmate Hugh’s posh accent broadcasting his cosseted upbringing. As an adult, Hannah worries about passing muster as a mom, and then worries about her worries.

But where Hannah shines is her persistence. The knowledge that Neville had mounted yet another appeal just before he died drives her to query their former classmates and travel back to Pelham for a look at their old stomping grounds and a chat with teachers.

“It isn’t over, Hannah wants to say through gritted teeth, if I made a mistake. It isn’t over if Geraint Williams is correct and my evidence left the wrong person to rot in jail. If all that’s true, it’s very, very far from over.”

There’s never a real indication that Hannah might be a Gone Girl-style unreliable narrator, but nearly everyone else seems to fall under reasonable suspicion. We expect red herrings in a Ware novel, yet it’s impressive that each potential culprit feels credible, even as the reader’s braced for misdirection.

And Ware’s expansion from the confines of a university residence hall in time frame and location lets the novel’s central whodunnit occupy the heart of a thriller that also plumbs trust, memory and the bonds of friendship. It’s an exciting direction for her books, and one that breaks promising new ground.

(Gallery/Scout Press, July 12, 2022)

Intriguing plot that kept me guessing about what would happen next. I always enjoy a good campus novel and this did not disappoint. I also enjoyed the dual timeline and digging into the relationship between the characters.

I received a copy of The It Girl from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

I always await Ruth Ware's next book with great anticipation and she rarely disappoints. The It Girl didn't disappoint.

When Hannah Jones meets "it" girl April Coutts-Cliveden as her roommate at Oxford, they form a fast friendship. Hannah vicariously enjoys life through April's ability to not take anything too seriously, at least until April's murder. And when the man whose testimony Hannah sent to prison for April's murder dies in prison protesting his innocence until the end, Hannah begins to rethink her conviction in his guilt. Hannah begins to investigate April's murder and comes to some chilling and stunning understandings.

Ware creates a character that is simultaneously sympathetic and frustrating in Hannah, who, as she tries to unravel the web of occurrences in April's murder, bumbles her own life decisions. The twists and turns in The It Girl are unexpected and even though I thought I had it worked out more than once, Ware still confounded me. The book had me second-guessing myself the whole way through and in that, I felt connection with Hannah.

I recommend The It Girl for lovers of murder thrillers and for those who love a taste of England (thorough Anglophile here!).

I love a book set in boarding school or college and really liked this peek into life at Oxford. However, I did think this book was about 100 pages too long. How many times can one husband tell his wife to stop obsessing over the past. (Dude, her roommate was murdered, I'm pretty sure that's something you never get over.) The reveal of the murderer came as a complete surprise to me, so well done once again Ruth Ware.

Ruth Ware’s The It Girl is a mystery centered on two friends/roommates: Hannah Jones and April Clarke-Cliveden. The girls meet up at Oxford and quickly team up with a group of friends: Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily. However, by the end of the year, April is dead.

Now, ten years have passed. Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and April’s murderer, John Neville, has recently passed away. Then, a podcaster comes around asking questions. What is the truth? Does Hannah really know her friends as well as she thinks she does?

The It Girl was on my list of July most anticipated books, but it tanked. And it tanked hard.

To be completely honest, I might have rated this book higher if I had not just read Upgrade by Blake Crouch which was so completely awesome. Reading that book and then going to this is like eating the best meal of your life and just eating a regular meal.

Where to start?

This book is boring. It dragged over forever. I did not enjoy the ride. There are a few reasons.

One, the writing style of this book just did not work for me. It is way, way, way too long. I would read and read and read and read and I would hardly make a dent in it.

Second, the writing style of a thriller is important. Let’s go back to Upgrade for a moment, a writing style that just worked. It had short paragraphs and short sentences. This is important. When you read a thriller and you are madly flipping through pages, you have a physical experience. It actually feels that you are running and catching up to the bad guy, increasing your blood pressure, almost as if you are part of the story. In The It Girl, the paragraphs, sentences, and chapters are just too long.

Third, the storytelling needed to be refined. If the author was sitting on a corner, relaying this story, I would have walked away. It didn’t capture my attention. The ending did not surprise me at all. It also was very boring and unremarkable.

Thank you to @NetGalley and @scoutpressbooks for gifting me a copy of The It Girl in exchange for an honest review.

💵 Mini Review 💊
I absolutely loved the Turn of the Key by @ruthwarewriter so when I saw The It Girl on NetGalley I had to have it. I was sooo excited to get approved for it. I needed a good thriller in my life and this one didn’t disappoint.

I had to be really careful because I ended up listening to this book while reading another arc thriller and the MC was very similar to this MC. But I ended up flying through The It Girl. I couldn’t stop listening. I had to know what happened next.

This book went from past to present and I really loved it. There was no confusion and I loved getting the back story slowly. Our MC, Hannah Jones is a sweet girl who gets April as her roommate at Oxford. April is the complete opposite of Hannah. She is insanely rich and uses it to her advantage, she is loud and rude and doesn’t care. But Hannah and April becomes best friends and I think Hannah sometimes overlooks the bad in her.

In college one night April turns up dead and Hannah finds her. Years later the convicted killer dies and Hannah starts wondering if she made a mistake and maybe someone else killed her best friend. There are so many twists and turns and a few times I literally trusted no one. I suspected everyone as the killer lol, even April herself.

It’s been a while since I read a thriller that I really enjoyed and wanted more of. This story kept me going and I was actually shocked a few times. If you are a thriller love this book is for you! I gave it ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

This was one of my most anticipated reads of the summer so I was excited to have the opportunity to read this with new friends. I loved hearing everyone’s theories while reading - I’m not sure there was a single character who wasn’t suspected at some point 🤪

As always, I loved the writing and pacing of the story, and was caught off guard by the final reveal (even after suspecting literally everyone in the story). Definitely an enjoyable read that kept me guessing.