I’m going to count this one a win for Ruth Ware fans. I know me personally my faith had be wavering. This is storytelling perfection. She brings us into Hannah’s world past and present. She makes her fear, angst and mistakes so palpable. The way it is written in past and present each chapter alternating keeps the reader intrigued and constantly guessing. Honestly I can’t wait to get my hands on the audiobook version.

Wow! Ruth Ware has done it again. Honestly, I wasn’t sure who killed April. The suspense jumping between “before” and “after” kept me up all night. What an amazing story teller. This is a thriller and mystery rolled into one with fantastic story telling along the way. Once again Ware surprised me. The plot evolves at the perfect pace. The characters are perfectly normal college kids without too much transparency because we all hold something back. Brava!

Ruth Ware's thrillers can always be relied on for solid storytelling, and The It Girl is no different. Frankly, I enjoyed this tremendously. It's longer than it needs to be (mostly for the sake of pacing; the before & after chapters alternate evenly for the first half of the book, until "before" reaches the actual murder, but the "after" timeline doesn't have quite enough to do in the first half, to stay on track), but it moves smoothly, and I did like getting to know Hannah and the other characters thoroughly. The plot hangs together well, and while I did figure things out before the end, it's always so satisfying to work out a mystery just a step or three ahead of the protagonist, isn't it? Great atmosphere, both in the Oxford uni days of the before timeline and the rainy autumnal Edinburgh of the present one, and compelling characterization & dynamics among the group of friends. 4.5 stars (really just knocking it down a bit because it is a smidge bloated), and highly recommended to fans of dark academia and campus thrillers.

Content warning: Aside from the obvious of murder & violence... Borderline sexual assault & general creepiness, including between a teacher & students; authority figures disbelieving assault accusations; drug use; various pregnancy traumas.

Thanks to Scout Press for the advance copy!

A small town girl, Hannah, is delighted to be accepted to Oxford, where she feels like a fish out of water but soon makes a cluster of good friends, including her best friend, a glamorous and rich roommate - who is murdered, and a creepy porter who seemed to be stalking Hannah is found guilty, largely based on Hannah's eyewitness account of seeing him leave her lodgings at the time of the crime. Years later, Hannah has been traumatized by the publicity around the murder, is expecting a child when she learns the guilty man has died in prison, still protesting his innocence. Was her testimony flawed? If so, who could have committed the murder?

This novel didn't work for me. While it's pleasant to spend some time at Oxford, the drama among a cluster of friends, it all felt artificial to me, and the drama of pointing the finger at various old friends got old. The denouement seemed manipulative - which may be a feature of thrillers, but I found myself rolling my eyes.

Evidently mine is a minority opinion, but I was disappointed and glad when I finished the book.

If there's one thing I know to be true about myself as a reader, it's that I am an absolute SUCKER for a school drama - throw in a little murder and you've got me.

I have to say, The It Girl really did keep me guessing and I enjoyed the back and forth between the murder and the present tense and the reveal surprised me due to a variety of circumstances (one was a slight eye-roll). I am giving this 4 stars because it could have been 100 pages less and still told the same story, but overall, I really enjoyed it.

Wow Ruth Wares best book yet in this readers opinion!!!!!!!!!!!! This book is slow to start out with but it quickly sped up & when it did this story was off like a missile & didn't slow down until you reached the end. I am a huge Ruth Ware fan & she had given us another bestseller to dive into.

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.

If you liked Greenwich Park, I think you will probably like this one as well. They both have main characters who are expecting babies who are working their way through mysteries set in England.

Overall, if you have to buy either Upgrade or The It Girl, buy Upgrade.

*Thanks, NetGalley, for a free copy of this book in exchange for my fair and honest opinion.

This is a Psychological Thriller/Mystery Suspense. This book took me awhile to get into the story, and the characters took awhile to learn them. Once, I got into the story I could not put it down because I needed to know what really happened. This story is told in two storylines (After the Murder-present day and Before the Murder-College years). I did not guess the reveal. I really loved the ending of this book because I did not see it coming at all. I was kindly provided an e-copy of this book by the publisher (Gallery/Scout Press) or author (Ruth Ware) via NetGalley, so I can give an honest review about how I feel about this book. I want to send a big Thank you to them for that.

Ruth Ware expertly melds a chilling psychological crime thriller and academic mystery into a compelling story of revenge and grief—THE IT GIRL.

PERFECT SET UP: Could there ever be a better or more perfect fitting title than (THE IT GIRL), a more academic setting than the historical and nostalgic Oxford University campus or the ideal locale for an atmospheric edge-of-your-seat chilling murder scene in Oxford, England, and modern-day Edinburgh—penned by the master of psychological crime thrillers, RUTH WARE? This book was customed-designed for her!

Ruth Ware is a masterful storyteller labeled the Agatha Christie of her generation. Ware writes suspenseful and mysterious gothic novels that all have fantastic plots and truly vivid characters.

SPLENDID!
All the ingredients for an addictive thriller and campus-lit at its finest!
A clear threat
High stakes
Twists
Dynamic characters
Memorable locations
Action

You can always call upon Ruth Ware when you need an atmospheric and twisting tale. A blending of gothic historical premise...with mysterious modern contemporary twists.

Freshman year at Oxford University's famous Pelham College. Let the games begin.

Meet April Clarke-Cliveden. She is the "IT GIRL." An extrovert, beautiful, confident, vivacious, privileged, intelligent, wealthy, sophisticated, and sexually active, comes from a well-to-do family, designer clothes, and friends. Everyone wants to be her friend, but she can also be a mean, cruel girl, so she will soon have some ENEMIES.

Everyone wanted her life.
Someone wanted her dead.

Meet Hannah Jones. Introvert, boring, and new college roommate of April. She is excited about her life at college but very intimidated by her roommate and comes from a different class and world. Being April's roommate affords her borrowed clothes, party invitations, and an "in" to April's friends—Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily.

However, before the end of the second term, April is DEAD.

Flash forward ten years later, the person sent to prison for April's murder was the former Oxford porter, John Neville, who claimed his innocence until his most recent heart attack in prison and untimely death at age 63.

Now a journalist is claiming new evidence that John was innocent. Hannah is now second-guessing herself since her testimony was the critical one that sealed his fate. Did someone else go into the dorm room before John and sneak out?

Hannah now works for an independent book store and is married to Will —Yes, the same Will that dated April, and they all were friends and bonded over grief after April's death. They are expecting a baby.

Instead of planning for the baby, Hannah is too caught up in sleuthing, trying to retrace all the steps and tracking down all the friends from their former college group to determine the actual killer. She is obsessed and cannot think of anything else. If it was not John, could it be one of them or someone she knows? Is the killer still out there?

Hannah feels a compelling need to revisit the murder with the three Oxford friends that knew April best, even though her husband, Will, is against it. He is acting strange. The doctor Hugh, the mathematician Emily, and Ryan, who has suffered a stroke since their college years.

EVERYONE IS A SUSPECT.

Foreboding and moody, the author keeps readers on a razor-sharp edge in a race against time from before and after.

Utterly propulsive, vivid, and atmospheric. For fans of Lisa Jewell, Carol Goodman, Lisa Unger, Shari Lapena, Megan Miranda, and B.A. Paris.

A special thank you to #GalleryBooks and #NetGalley for an ARC to read, enjoy, and review.

Blog Review Posted @
www.JudithDCollins.com
@JudithDCollins | #JDCMustReadBooks
My Rating: 5 Stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Pub Date: July 12, 2022
July 2022 Must-Read Books
Top Books 2022

April’s murderer has passed away in jail. This starts a whole new frenzy about her murder. But, when a journalist blindsides Hannah at work and informs her of some new evidence, Hannah immediately begins to question everything she knew about that horrible night and everything she knew about April.

I will always read this author. I love the chase in her books…The who done it! She is a master of manipulation of the reader. I swear! I changed my mind 5 times. But, I do find her books a bit on the wordy side. She could cut a good bit out of all her books and I would be happy!

Now, that I got that out of the way…Hannah is a character I just loved! I found her warm and cautious at first. Then, when questions started to arise about the murder of April, I discovered she had intelligence and courage to possibly correct an egregious wrong.

I also enjoyed the format of this book. The chapters were labeled Before and After. Before was when April was alive and they were all in college. The After chapters are what all of them are experiencing in present time, after April’s murder. This really helped to understand some of the thought processes and why it all happened.

This is definitely a story I will not soon forget!

Need a good whodunit! THIS IS IT! Grab your copy today

I received this novel from the publisher for a honest review.

Hannah Jones was a good student at a public school in Scotland. But when it was time for college, she found a way to get into Oxford. She had to fight off her imposter syndrome, but she made it. And when she showed up on campus, she met the group of people who would change her life forever.

Her roommate, April Clarke-Cliveden, was wealthy and entitled, but she was also generous and charming. She introduces herself and pops open an expensive bottle of champagne for the two young students to share. At dinner, she reconnects with an old friend or two and they meet another couple of students, and Hannah’s first night at college ends with a group of them playing strip poker in Hannah and April’s common room.

There is Will, who used to date a friend of April’s, and his good friend Ryan. Emily is an intense math genius, and Hugh is studying to be a doctor, and after that first night, they are forever bound together in laughter, alcohol, and friendship.

As the weeks of school go by, Hannah feels more and more home on campus. But life’s not perfect. There is a porter, John Neville, who works there that Hannah finds creepy. And when she comes back to her room one day and finds the door open and Neville standing in the middle of the common room, Hannah is genuinely scared. But even worse than feeling stalked is the face that April is dating Will, and Hannah cannot stop thinking about him.

But the night that Hannah comes back to the room and finds April on the floor, killed, changed everything, and Hannah was never the same.

Now it’s ten years later, and there is news about the case again. In the past decade, Hannah changed the way she looked, moved to Edinburgh, and changed her name. She married Will and they are expecting their first child. But when she was finally released to go home after April’s murder, she had never gone back to Oxford. She never finished her degree. She works in a bookshop, where she feels safe. But when the news comes out that Neville, in prison for April’s murder, died in prison, Hannah finds herself ducking from reporters again.

But one reporter, a friend of Ryan’s, believes that Neville may not have killed her. Hannah had been the one to see him leaving their building that night, and it was her testimony that helped convict him. But Neville had always claimed he was innocent, and his DNA had not been found at the murder scene. Hannah does talk to the journalist, and he reinforces the fears she’d had since the trial. What if her testimony against Neville had put an innocent man in jail? All her anxieties are coming back.

But here is the question: if it hadn’t been Neville, then who could have killed April? There was only one staircase to get to the door of their room, and Neville had been in their room—he did admit to that. He’d been dropping off a package for Hannah from her mother. How could someone have killed April in the time between Hannah seeing Neville leave the building to the time she got up the stairs to find April on the floor? There were others in the building who would have heard or seen anyone else.

As Hannah revisits all the old questions, she can feel the anxiety in her body. Her blood pressure is up, worrying her doctor, and as Hannah can finally feel her baby moving inside her, she can also feel when her stress is affecting the baby. She needs to know if she helped convict an innocent man, she wants to know the truth of that night, but she can only take so much stress or she will jeopardize her family. How far will Hannah have to go to find the truth and find a sense of peace?

The It Girl is the latest masterful thriller from Ruth Ware. It’s a twist on a locked-room mystery, with a twist that comes late in the story to turn everything you thought you knew on its head, in classic Ware style. The story is beautifully written, with the setting of the college adding such texture to the story. The mix of characters offers a wide point of view, from those who spend a lot of time studying to those who spend time partying, from those who come from money and privilege to those who have to struggle to make ends meet. And adding in the romances, fulfilled and unrequited, adds so much more drama to this small group of friends.

I was pleasantly surprised by this novel. When I think of Ruth Ware’s books, I think of tension and suspense. But most of this story was a lovely unfolding of Hannah’s life, both at school and ten years later, with that suspense building slowly until the last part of the book. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in these characters that the mystery of who killed April almost takes a backseat to the drama of Hannah’s pregnancy. But once she decides to find the answers she’s been hiding from, then things happen quickly. Everything ratchets up quickly, and all those questions get answered, putting Hannah and her family in grave danger. The It Girl is a really beautiful book. It’s one of those books you can’t wait to finish, so you can learn the truth, but you also don’t want it to end because reading it is just such a perfect experience. This is one of the It books for this summer, and you don’t want to miss out on this one!

Egalleys for The It Girl were provided by Gallery Books through NetGalley, with many thanks.

Thank you NetGalley for my ARC!

Always a thriller and mystery from Ruth Ware. This had dual story timelines with going back and forth between college days and present time with a group of friends. It follows Hannah mostly whose “best friend” and roommate was found murdered in her dorm room. The person that is responsible is in jail or so you think. This one kept me guessing till the end!

Ruth Ware’s novels are one more reason to look forward to summer. I’ve read four of her mysteries, and this is among my favorites. My thanks go to Net Galley and Gallery Press for the review copy. This book is for sale today.

Our protagonist is Hannah, and the setting is England with alternate time periods about ten years apart. In the past, we are in Oxford, where Hannah is a poor-girl-making-good. Today she works in a bookstore, is married to Will, whom she met in school, and she’s pregnant with their first child.

Hannah doesn’t graduate from Oxford; she is too traumatized by the murder of her roommate, who was also her best friend, and whom she found that night. The flashback scenes—not only the night of the murder, but the close friendships that she developed there, along with her relationship with Will, and an assortment of memories, some of them good ones—are so well depicted that I feel as if I am there with her. The group in which she travels consists of herself, Will—who was her roommate April’s boyfriend at the outset—along with Emily, Ryan, and Hugh. These last three aren’t as intimately developed, but that doesn’t matter much, because the two that count for the most in terms of her memories are Hannah herself and April. I feel as though I could pick either of them out of a crowd.

April comes from a ruling class family, and she tells other students that she has been admitted largely due to her family’s money. Eventually Hannah realizes that this isn’t entirely true; yes, her family is rich, and they’ve been generous with the school, but April is also a highly capable student and a diligent one. In fact, April seems to be very everything; today we might say that April is a lot, that she sometimes sucks all the air out of the room. She’s effusive, she’s generous, and she’s given to pulling pranks that are nasty enough to cross a line. Perhaps it’s true that opposites attract, because though Hannah is a more low-key person from a working class household, the two of them bond immediately, and Hannah considers her friendship with April more important than her attraction to Will.

The night April is murdered, Hannah and Hugh see a security guard leaving their building. He’s not supposed to be there, but he is a sleaze bucket, that guy, sometimes using his passkey to enter Hannah and April’s room, and who knows what he was doing this time? When April’s body is discovered, freshly killed, it doesn’t take long before Neville, the creepy security guard, to be arrested, convicted, and put away for life. (A note: there are a lot of Britishisms here that I had to look up. Apparently, a security guard is called a proctor, at least at Oxford.)

Now, in the present day, a friend of Ryan’s that is also a journalist contacts Hannah. All of the students in their group have been overwhelmed by press requests since the murder, and usually, they avoid them like the plague, but Ryan thinks this pal of his is onto something. The friend, Durant, believes that Neville, who has died in prison, was innocent. Now Hannah is moving heaven and earth to find out whether her evidence has sent the wrong person to prison. But who might have done it? Not Hugh, since he entered with her that night; what about the others in their group, including her own husband?

I must confess that I have a bit of trouble accepting Hannah’s sense of mission, and the extent to which she pursues it. This man was not exactly a pillar of rectitude; today he might have been fired or even charged for his misbehavior toward the girls he was supposed to be protecting. And the fact is, he’s dead. He’s never coming back, no matter what Hannah’s amateur detective work reveals. Why upset the apple cart like this, especially when she considers her own husband might be implicated? But she is pregnant, and I know from experience that when our hormones are jumping, we can sometimes have over-the-top reactions. So okay. I guess.

The other thing that gives me pause is Will’s puppyish devotion. During the last half of the book, Hannah does something that I would think would be a marriage ender. That toothpaste is never going back into the tube. Why does Will come panting back to her? This one is harder to accept.

Nevertheless, I was riveted. By the forty percent mark it was impossible for me to read anything except this book until the last page was turned, and so I recommend it to you.

This was a a quick fun read. I enjoyed the setting back and forth from the past and present between Hannah's first year of college at Oxford and present day Edinburgh. The story has been done many many times before- beautiful, mean, filthy rich college girl and her entourage of frenemies. No real surprised but I was still quite sucked in to the story. The characters were not fresh or unique and Hannah definitely irritated me- she was just too naive and dumb at times but I guess that was the point. I enjoy Ruth Ware's books and will definitely read her next one

Ruth Ware is back!

Hannah Jones’s college roommate, the ultimate It Girl, was murdered and Hannah helped put away her murderer… or so she thought. A journalist enters with new questions and details about the past that Hannah has tried so hard to leave behind her.

Told in dual timelines, this twisty thriller will keep you guessing until the end. There are so many secrets that it’s just delicious.

I loved this, and I love all of Ware’s work, but the pacing felt a bit slow. I was anxious for things to move a little faster than they did, but I still love this novel.

Thriller fans, if you loved In My Dreams I Hold a Knife, you’ll also love It Girl.

This was a four star read for me because of the pacing, but that may just be my own personal nitpicking.

**Thank you so much to #NetGalley and Gallery/Scout Press for the digital ARC in exchange for my honest review. My opinions are my own.**

Ruth Ware has been called the modern Agatha Christie, and it’s definitely an apt comparison. I know I devour her books with the same enthusiasm with which I tore through the Agatha Christie books in the local library when I was in sixth grade. And much like Christie’s novels, not every Ware novel is riveting, but The It Girl certainly kept my attention, as I ripped through it in one day.
The It Girl is a dual-timeline novel centered around the murder of April Clarke-Cliveden – the “it girl” of the title -- in her Oxford dorm room in 2012. Her roommate, Hannah Jones, provided testimony that led to the conviction of John Neville, who was a porter at the University. Ten years later, Hannah has put the events behind her until she receives news that Neville has just died in prison. New evidence suggests that Neville was actually innocent of any wrongdoing, putting Hannah in emotional turmoil when she should be resting up for the imminent birth of her first child with her husband Peter – who just happened to be April’s boyfriend when they were in college.
Unfortunately, Hannah doesn’t remember much from when she found the body – shock erased the details of that night, so, with the help of a journalist who is putting together a podcast about the murder, she sets out to uncover the truth of what really happened that night. The story unfolds in “Then” and “Now” chapters, mostly from Hannah’s point of view. The “before” chapters begin with Hannah’s arrival at Oxford and her relationship with the ultra-rich, gorgeous April and their tight group of friends, while the “Now” chapters deal with Hannah’s present investigation, in which she reconnects with those friends in order to find out the truth.
The action is steady, and the book is well-paced. Hannah is a mostly likeable character – some of the things the younger Hannah does are a little cringey, but understandable due to her age and situation. The character of April is alluring, and it’s easy to see why she was able to wrap so many people around her fingers, even as her manipulative ways are on full display. Ware is skilled at both plot and character development, and the alternating between “then” and “now” heightens the tension with each page-turn until the end reveal.

I was drawn in by the premise of this novel as I'm a huge fan of thrillers and love a novel set in an academia world. While I enjoyed The It Girl, and ultimately would recommend, I wasn't entirely blown away by the book but I would rate it as a very solid thriller that was entertaining.

Hannah is accepted into Oxford University and is immediately thrown into a world that she is unfamiliar with, full of glamour and formalities. Luckily for Hannah she is roomed with a posh socialite, April, who is more than willing to bring Hannah along with her. Flash forward 10 years and April has been murdered in her and Hannah's room and Hannah is now pregnant with their friend/ex-lover's baby. Hannah was happy, until the suspected murderer of April has been announced dead and some suspicions have been raised if he really was the killer at all.

I personally loved the scenes set at Oxford as I felt they were descriptive and set the scene. I did question a few times if they actual ever went to class though and the only class mentioned is Hannah's tutorial time with an inappropriate professor. (Which the twist of him being married the whole time did make me scoff). Other than that they did homework and drank basically. The forward scenes occasionally felt a little repetitive in the beginning but as the story progressed and merged with the past they did get more speed to them. I thought the ending was well done... until it felt that the author was trying to wrap everything up into a happy ending. For some reason that just felt ingenuine to me after everything that happened. Like attending the killer's funeral? I guess. Otherwise, the story kept me interested, I enjoyed it and would read another of Ruth Ware! Many thanks for the ARC!

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.

** “She has stopped running from the monsters. She has turned to face them. She wants the truth.” **

Ruth Ware delivers another incredible thriller with “The It Girl.”

When Hannah Jones attends Oxford’s Pelham College, she meets her new roomie April Clarke-Cliveden, an “it girl” social media influencer when social media was just starting out. But when April is murdered and Hannah believes she knows who committed the act, her world is forever rocked.

Ten years later, when the convicted man — whom had always claimed his innocence — dies in prison, Hannah finds herself drawn back into her friend’s death. Could she have been wrong and blamed an innocent man? If so, was one of her friends guilty instead?

Ware is excellent in developing a plot filled with twists and turns and lots of misdirections to keep the reader guessing until the very end. Told in a Before & After format — 10 years ago at Pelham and now, 10 years later — “The It Girl” deals with the ripple effect of actions and decisions; friendship and loyalty; trusting one’s own instincts; and overcoming fear and doubt.

She has also once again developed an intriguing and perplexing cast of characters that will fascinate the reader.

Disclaimer: this novel does include quite a bit of course language and inferred intimate moments.

Five stars out of five.

Gallery/Scout Press provided this complimentary copy through NetGalley for my honest, unbiased review.

I have read many of Ruth Ware’s books and this is my favorite so far. The characters in The It Girl are far more interesting and well developed than in her other books. The plot line is good as well as the format, switching back and forth between the murder and the present, ten years apart. While I determined who the murderer was, and pretty much how, sooner than I thought I would, I did not determine the motive - and that was a twist. Sufficient red herrings to make me question my initial determination. Well written.