This in typical Ruth Ware fashion and is a grand slam. I loved this one. While it isn't what I would typically pick for a mystery, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. I do feel like this one was a little drawn out, but was still immensely well written. I didn't have a real moment where I was bored, but it also didn't become unputdownable until nearly the end.

Although It did not take me long to get through the book it did feel slightly dragged on. It was a good thriller where you can't predict the ending as quickly as you think. I did enjoy the flashing back and forth between before and after. Solid 4 stars in the suspense category.

One of my favorite Ruth Ware novels! A solid 4.5 star book for me - I couldn’t put it down. This was a perfect play on the toxic college friends trope. Up until the last 50 pages I thought I knew who the killer was, but I could NOT predict the crazy ending.

Thank you to Gallery/Scout Press and NetGalley for my gifted advance digital review copy!

Hannah and April couldn't be more different: Hannah is reserved, from a modest family, and trying to find her place in the world while April is self-assured and confident, she treats her Jimmy Choos and Dom Perignon like they're nothing. They are assigned roommates and become fast friends, building up a little clique of misfits (Emily, Hugh, Will, and Ryan) along the way. What they don't realize is that not all of them will make it out of their first year at Oxford and on to their second. Near the end of term, Hannah finds April dead in their set after seeing the creepy porter, John Neville descending their staircase. This is enough to convict John Neville, who is sentenced to life in prison. Neville maintains his innocence until his dying day, and it is only after his passing that Hannah begins to examine her own memories to try to determine the truth.

I am a big Ruth Ware fan, and I definitely had a *moment* when I got approved for her latest release. This brought all of the dark academia vibes (a favorite of mine), and was definitely frustrating in the best possible way because I thought I had it all figured out, and my theory went completely out the window in the last 15% of the book. The setting and tone reminded me a lot of THE MAIDENS.

That being said, this was a bit of a slow burn, and it takes a while for the plot to grind into motion. I wish there had been a bit more rising action, as I did find that it dragged in the middle a bit, and I kind of got frustrated with Hannah's waffling back-and-forth. THE TURN OF THE KEY remains my favorite RW, but this is a solid contender.

If I had to rank, I'd say the following (and mind I rated all of these 3.5 stars or higher):
1. The Turn of the Key
2. Woman in Cabin 10
3. The Lying Game
4. In a Dark, Dark Wood
5. The IT Girl
6. The Death of Mrs. Westaway
7. One by One

3.5 stars rounded up to 4 for Goodreads

This book with its two timelines, going from the "AFTER" the murder 10 years later to the "BEFORE" the college years was a fast read. While I liked it fine, it wasn't all that I hoped it would be.

April is our "it girl", you know the girl with all the money and looks, but not always the nice personality she might show to her daddy... Well, she dies and it's a question of who did it and they caught the guy quick..... But was he the real one?

This was fast paced and threw me for a loop several times. I was able to figure out one part of what happened the night she is killed but not the who.... And all because I forgot one small detail about this person!

April was not such a great person that everyone thought she was when you find out all her secrets. I felt for Hannah, I couldn't imagine the guilt it being the one to put a person behind bars who is innocent.

[Was gonna do 3 stars but the ending put it up one more]

“She has never felt more haunted— by what happened to April, and by what she, Hannah, may have done to an innocent man. And now haunted too by what she’s doing to her old friends.”

“There are messy, wriggling, unfinished ends putrefying beneath the surface of what happened that night— things that she has refused to think about and look at for a long time. And there should not be.”

Okay this is my second Ruth Ware book and I’m torn. Just like with The Turn of the Key, it was a really good thriller but it had so many f-words.

If you don’t care about swearing or you feel like you can handle it, then I think you’ll like this one!

But I’m not a fan of a lot of swearing so I probably won’t read any more of hers. Except I probably will because I’ll probably get access to her next thriller on NetGalley like this one and I won’t be able to stop myself. So stay tuned to see how self-controlled I am.


Brief Synopsis

Hannah attends Oxford and has a roommate named April. She’s the ‘It Girl.’ Rich, good-looking, wild, confident. The opposite of Hannah. But somehow their friendship works.

Then one night Hannah finds April dead in their room.

Hannah provides the eye-witness testimony of the weird porter at the school who was leaving their staircase that night that puts him in jail. He maintains his innocence.

Years later, Hannah is married to Will, April’s boyfriend at the time of her murder. The man she put in prison has just died and a journalist contacts her with new information that makes Hannah unsure of what really happened that night.

Did she sentence an innocent man to die in prison?

Is there still a murderer somewhere out there?

Hannah can’t rest until she gets to the bottom of what happened.


Comments

This is a written in alternating chapters titled either ‘Before’ or ‘After’ April is found murdered. The ‘After’ timeline is Hannah desperately seeking answers to find out the truth of what really happened. The ‘Before’ takes us through Hannah and April’s first year at Oxford and the events leading up to her death.

Also like The Turn of the Key, Ware presents several suspects throughout the book that makes you second guess your theories.

I like this book better than The Turn of the Key because there is no supernatural element as a variable. It’s definitely more of a whodunnit thriller. Kind of a closed-room murder scene. I don’t like books if the explanation behind everything is some sort of evil spirit.

I ended up guessing the murderer pretty early on but my confidence waned as I kept reading because I couldn’t figure out how they had done it or what the actual motives were.


As other reviewers have noted, there are parts in the beginning and middle that drag a little bit. But as I looked back I think those parts have to be there to explain certain parts of the ending and to give the reader clues. Those pages just aren’t as exciting as the ending.

And we probably could have done with less stomach rubbing and baby moving information (Hannah is pregnant) and less internal struggle from Hannah about how worried she was that she was wrong.

I also think that part of why those parts dragged for me was because the first half of the book I was only able to read it in small chunks and kept getting interrupted while I read so things felt choppier and disconnected and that made it feel longer.

One tiny spoiler comment.

(view spoiler)


Conclusion

Well there’s not much more to say than I said at the beginning. The ending was the best part which made the rest of it better. There was too much swearing. (Not really any sexual content if you’re wondering about that)

If you like murder mysteries set at Oxford with a variety of suspects like this, you should also try Alex Michaelide’s book The Maidens. But it won’t make ‘how Oxford works’ any more clear. I’m still very confused about it.

Pretty much I think the only determining factor about if I recommend this book is the swearing. So judge for yourself.


And now enjoy these fun new phrases you can use to sound British.

Slang UK terminology

- dishy: very good-looking

- chuffed: very pleased with/about (like: I’m pretty chuffed with your book review!)

- ‘Sorry your Christmas was a bit pants’: Sorry your holiday sucked. (Or: ‘Your book review blog is NOT pants!’)

- nail varnish: nail polish (maybe US people call it varnish? Am I not sophisticated enough for that? Or actually does polish sound more sophisticated? Maybe I'll just avoid it altogether.)

- ‘You’ll do yourself a mischief!’: That’s a bad idea, bro.

- on the bog: poopin

- pleasure to be rogered by you any day of the week: um. let’s just call this one a booty call.

- dons: a teacher or staff member at Oxford

- checking his pigeonhole: his mailbox. Because it’s Harry Potter. Oh wait those are owls.

- She’s having kittens: to be very nervous or upset. (This makes sense that Americans would have a cow but the Brits just have kittens. We’re probably more moo-ers than mew-ers)

- chucking-out time: They literally throw you out of the pubs if you’re there when it closes. Wear a helmet.

- Jiffy bag: padded envelope they store their peanut butter in

- ‘It was nothing, just a goose on my grave’: this phrase used to be a ghost walked on my grave but some idiots got ‘gos’ (Old English for goose) mixed up with gast/gost (Old English for ghost) and now those scary geese are walking all over our graves that don’t exist. In short. she had goosebumps, she’s not actually dead okay. This isn’t The Sixth Sense. Oops. Spoiler alert.


**Received an ARC via NetGalley**

Thanks to NetGalley and Gallery/Scout Press for the opportunity to read an advanced digital copy of “The It Girl” by Ruth Ware. I must confess that I read this book well before the July 12, 2022, release date but procrastinated on writing this review. “The It Girl” is a mystery that revolves around a decade-old murder at Oxford. Hannah met her new roommate, April, at the beginning of the school year, but April was dead at the end of Term 2. “The It Girl” deals with the aftermath of April’s murder and its deleterious impact on Hannah, emotionally and psychologically. After the convicted murderer, John Neville, dies in prison, a reporter informs Hannah that he may have been innocent of the crime. Hannah, who is pregnant and married to Will, second guesses her decision and sets out to determine if the convicted murderer did or did not kill April or if what she thought she saw the night of the murder was correct or not. She was discouraged by her college mates but is determined to uncover the truth. Did one of her four Oxford buddies kill April? I went back and forth, trying to figure out the killer’s identity. I figured it out, changed my mind, and went back and forth. The novel’s alternating chapters dealing with dual timelines are titled Before, representing the events in college pre-murder, and After, or present day, which was a very effective way to title the chapters. Ms. Ware did an excellent job of creating tension, so the reader experienced the confusion Hannah felt during her quest. There were a lot of red herrings in this saga.

Hannah was an annoying character, but she grew and became more tolerable as she progressed through her quest to unmask the killer. I must say that Hannah didn’t allow any of the college buddies to talk her out of her decision. It took courage for Hannah to realize she had made a mistake and to seek exoneration of a man whose actions she totally misunderstood in college.

“The It Girl” was a quick read and a good whodunit! I plan to recommend this book to my book clubbers.

Ruth Ware does not disappoint in her new book, “The It Girl.” I highly recommend it! The story is about a group of friends who meet freshmen year in college. The It Girl has everything and is the central character in the book. However, the protagonist is her friend. A significant event occurs at the college and each chapter hinges “Before” and “After” this event. “Before, everything was fine. After, everything was broken.” Ware does a great job dropping hints throughout the book. Several times I thought I had solved the mystery but never was quite sure. Read this book!

Thank you to NetGalley and Scout Press (Simon & Schuster) for an advanced reader’s copy. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

Ruth Ware is incomparable when it comes to the summertime thriller for me. I just love her intricately plotted twists and turns, and I become attached to her characters almost immediately. The It Girl is no exception - here, Ware takes readers into the world of dark academia in Oxford to solve a ten-year-old mystery that has supposedly already been solved. But when the man accused of the crime dies, our main character Hannah must go to extreme lengths to find out once and for all if she did the right thing by pointing the finger at him all those years ago. Riveting and fast-paced, this one is a must-read for the summer and beyond.

A big thanks to Netgalley, the author, and Gallery Books for a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review!

Read this if…you like dark academia thrillers and don’t mind a slow burn.

A decade ago, the “it girl” of Pelham University was murdered and no one in her close circle of friends was unscathed by the tragic event, especially Hannah. Hannah’s testimony is largely responsible for putting a man in jail for the murder, but now some people are beginning to question if he’s the right guy. Plagued by guilt that she could have made a mistake, Hannah decides to do some investigating on her own into what happened to her best friend, but what she uncovers will cast doubt on those closest to her and put her life and the life of her unborn baby in danger.

I will start by saying that if dark academia is your thing, then you need to read this book! I felt like I was transported back to my university days while I was reading this. I liked the author’s use of the dual timelines and the ending was great! I really enjoyed the story overall, even though it was slow-moving a lot of the time.

I can’t help but point out that this was unnecessarily long. Perhaps if the author had cut out Hannah’s pregnancy, which added very little to the story, this would have been better. I did guess the twist about halfway through because I caught on to one little clue, but I didn’t know the motive so it still kept me guessing. If you’ve got a lot of time to dedicate to reading this chunker, then you should go for it, but don’t expect to fly through it.

“Hannah came to think of her existence as divided into two sharp halves—before and after. Before, everything was fine. After, everything was broken.”

The “It” girl is April. She is now dead, murdered in her dorm room at Oxford. Her best friend Hannah’s eyewitness testimony put away the guy who she believes killed her. But after he dies in prison still proclaiming his innocence, people start to question if Hannah could have made a mistake.

Told in dual timelines by Hannah as “before” and “after,” this book has everything I love in a thriller. Short chapters. Dual timelines, which I find keeps me flipping those pages more than almost any other style of writing. You get so invested in what’s happening and then BAM! Now you’re back in time. Then you get invested there and BAM! Back to the present. Ahhh I love it!

But I am conflicted. As much as I loved those aspects, and I was sucked in from page one, the story became a bit redundant and stalled for me about midway through. Hannah became a bit annoying with her indecisiveness and if I never hear the word “bump” in reference to a pregnancy again it’ll be too soon.

Overall this was a thriller that had me guessing until the end and I enjoyed the ride to finding out who the real killer was.

“She is—not alone, exactly, for you’re never alone in a room filled with a thousand books.” 💕💕

Thank you so much to Netgalley, Simon & Schuster, Scout Press/Gallery Books, and the author for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you NetGalley, Ruth Ware for the advanced copy.

The story is centered on two college roommates, Hannah and April, who quickly become friends at the beginning of the school year. At the end of the school year, April is dead. And we go back and forth between the past and present day to figure out who dun it.

For me, this was a slow burn and just didn't work for me. It dragged quite a bit. I couldn't believe April played strip poker on night ONE..I guess that's what made her the "it" girl.

A mystery and friendship drama that involves a woman's obsessive quest for closure after her best friend is murdered.

Hannah Jones and April Clarke-Clivedon (as per my copy) met at Oxford and were roommates and best friends as they began their college days in a centuries old institution with a very rich history. The pair become part of a group of other students and they are having a grand time. Until April is murdered. Ten years later, Hannah is married and expecting a baby but has never moved on from that event. A journalist contacts her when the man convicted dies in prison. It all comes rushing back.

What I liked about this book: the setting and descriptions of Pelham College and Oxford.

What I did not like: everything else.

I was so happy to get out of Hannah's head by the time this was over. The narrative is a constant stream of consciousness and so banal and inane and repetitious that I almost DNF. I absolutely could not stand the character and have no clue how anyone else could bear to be around her or in a relationship with her. It took FOREVER to get to the gist of the mystery with all of Hannah's dithering. The story flips back and forth between "Before" (the college days) and "After" (10 years later). The author dangles all the red herrings and it was easy to tell by the order in which they dropped who the bad actor was going to end up being. I was totally bored and this all went on way too long.

I have read most all of this author's other books and this is certainly not her best work. I should have skipped it but I see that all the fans have a different opinion about this novel.

Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery/Scout Press for the advance copy to read and review.

A few years back I decided Ruth Ware was not for me after thinking The Woman in Cabin 10 was absolutely ridiculous, and I have been happy with that path. I was sent this and decided to read it and it wasn't bad, I zipped through it on a beach afternoon and only raised my eyebrow a few times.

Thanks to Netgalley for the free copy in exchange for an honest review

There were parts of this book that I really enjoyed and parts that just didn’t do it for me. Overall, I found the characters to be semi boring and predictable. The story dragged on in parts - some of the book was just not necessary. That being said, Ruth Ware does an amazing job making you question all of the characters. At different points, I didn’t trust them and was not quite sure who was guilty and who was innocent. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to make me love the book though.

10 years after Hannah’s best friend, April was murdered, the killer is found dead in prison. When a journalist reaches out to Hannah with evidence that the convicted killer was actually innocent, Hannah finds herself digging deeper into her past. When she realizes that her close knit group of friends all had things to hide, she starts to wonder if she helped to convict the wrong man.

Thank you netgalley for my advanced reader copy.

Absolutely loved. Ruth Ware is back and with a bang! This one gave me the vibes of The Secret History without the pretentious writing. A great thriller heading into the fall when all you feel like reading is campus novels. One of my favorite Wares to date!

That first magical year of university, who can forget it? Those glorious days of newfound independence from your family, making friends, spreading your wings, picking up a stalker – oops, that last part isn’t typically on your average student’s agenda. But it is the central point around which Ruth Ware’s The It Girl revolves.

Hannah Jones won the roommate lottery. She had planned to have a single room to herself at Pelham College, Oxford, but winds up in a suite with April Clarke-Cliveden. April is as pretentious and demanding as her name would indicate – she takes the best bedroom, strews designer clothes all over their apartment, plays nasty practical jokes on her friends and essentially steamrolls over the quieter, more studious Hannah. April is also lively, irreverent, funny, generous, brilliant and occasionally warm-hearted. She takes Hannah under her wing and the two become the best of friends. It isn’t long before they’ve become part of an established clique which also includes April’s boyfriend Will, his buddies Hugh and Ryan and the acerbic, direct and intelligent Emily.

Hannah loves pretty much everyone she’s met at Uni except the porter John Neville. It doesn’t take long for her to realize that he is constantly around her – dropping packages off at her rooms when he’s supposed to keep them at the desk, interacting inappropriately with her when she picks up the mail, and following her as she goes around campus in order to “help her find her way.” Hannah’s friends tell her she should file an official complaint, and just as she is working on doing so, the unthinkable happens: April is killed and Hannah sees John Neville fleeing the scene.

Fast forward ten years. Hannah married Will and is currently expecting their their first baby. They moved to Edinburgh, far away from Oxford and all the hoopla that surrounded April’s death and John Neville’s trial and conviction. Most days, the two of them go from hour to hour without ever thinking about what happened in the past. But when John Neville dies in prison, a podcast journalist decides to revisit the whole issue. New evidence comes up, throwing doubt on the conviction. And Hannah finds herself once more forced to revisit the darkest moments in her past.

Ms. Ware does a fabulous job of depicting just what life is like when women find themselves being stalked. Hannah has, like most women, been trained to be kind and nice, and she applies that training when she deals with John Neville, initially excusing his behavior as eccentricity and feeling guilt about her own discomfort. We watch Hannah rearrange her schedule to avoid Neville, all while castigating herself for being silly to do so. She really wrestles with whether to lodge a complaint about his behavior, even while her friends urge her to consider his actions increasingly hostile and inappropriate. The story very much captures how women doubt their own instincts in an effort to do the right thing and shows the reality of women twisting themselves into pretzels to accommodate the behaviors/desires of the men around them.

The author also does a fantastic job of depicting the victim, April, who, on the surface, has everything and looks Instagram perfect. Rather than a one-dimensional nice girl or bad girl, we find ourselves faced with a young woman who is a mix of both, a typical human with flaws but also good points who can be equal parts kind and cruel, selfish and generous. April’s characterization demands that we contemplate how we often look at victims and force them to fit into molds that help us determine whether they did or did not, in a sense, deserve what happened to them. April defies those conventions and forces us to see a fully fleshed-out person whose worth comes from being human, not from being a good girl worthy of society’s adulation and protection. I loved that she isn’t perfect but is loved and left plenty of grieving people behind.

The mystery here is solved by an amateur bumbling about and asking all the wrong questions and not coming to the right conclusions until she is in danger. While I liked Hannah and appreciated her loyalty to her friend, I’ll admit at times I got a wee bit frustrated with her. At the start of the novel, she’s a very organized, somewhat thoughtful student but as the story progresses, she seems to be someone who simply plunges heedlessly forward without contemplating the results of what she is doing. She’s a relatable and engaging protagonist but if you are a purist who likes solid detective work in the solving of a mystery, she may irritate you a tad. While the tale has the dark, edgy undertone of a thriller, Hannah is a heroine more typical of a cozy than a suspense novel. That unlikely combination appealed to me because of the pacing and the motivating factors within the plot. It’s clear that Hannah carries a lot of guilt over John Neville’s imprisonment and also questions her role in April’s death a great deal. That emotion makes it seem natural that she would want to reaffirm she’d done the right thing with her testimony against John and reassure herself she hadn’t somehow allowed her prejudice against him to taint what she said about him. The fact that she is working off instinct rather than actual facts/clues makes it natural that she would investigate rather than simply going to the police.

The It Girl is a nuanced, intelligent mystery that is a beautiful showcase for Ware’s masterful storytelling. I thoroughly enjoyed it and believe other fans of mysteries will as well.

Ware is at the top of her game with her latest novel. Great characters and pacing. The tension is palpable.

This thriller is full of mystery, suspense and action. All the cliches- a page turner, couldn’t put it down, kept me guessing. Hannah is a student at Oxford University when she meets her roommate, April (The “It” Girl). April has a magnetic personality that casts a spell on everyone in her orbit. A group of students, Ryan, Hugh, Will, Emily, Hannah and April form a tight knit friendship but by the end of the term- The “It” Girl is dead. This book has an Agatha Christie whodunnit vibe that I loved. 5 stars! Ruth Ware’s best one yet! #NetGalley #TheItGirl #bookreview

Admittedly, I'm not much of a Ruth Ware fan. The books that I've read of hers were misses for me until The It Girl. I loved the atmosphere, the dualing timelines, the characters, and the conclusion. My only real complaint is that it felt too long. At one point, I was sure that I was at least half way through the book if not more, only to discover I had read around 35%. It definitely could have been wrapped up sooner. Ware did an excellent job casting doubt on several characters and in the end, it was the person I least expected and the person, I least wanted it to be. She fooled me pretty well.