I just love Ruth Ware and she has done it again! The It Girl is a slow burn, brooding and atmospheric with many red herrings and a truly satisfying ending. Ms Ware’s characters, as usual, are rich, complex, flawed and believable. What a joy to be granted an ARC of this wonderful thriller!

The IT Girl by Ruth Ware is a story that I will soon not forget. The book starts with Hannah, our main character, entering Oxford University. Coming from humble means, Hannah is nervous about entering such a prestigious and wealthy community of peers. However, her worries soon disappear with the introduction of her roommate, April Clarke-Cliveden. April is the epitome of the It girl; rich, beautiful, smart, funny, and endearing. It did not take long for Hannah and April to become best friends. Within her first few days at Oxford, Hannah is fortunate to meet Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily. This group of six friends do everything together and form a friendship that many strive for during their time in college.

But everything is not perfect. Oxford courses present new challenges for many of the friends, friendships are tested, and love can be tricky when there is a love triangle amongst the group. Although the group has their highs and lows, nothing could prepare them for the unfortunate and untimely death of April. The most vivacious and vibrant member of their group.

Ten years pass and each member of the group has dealt with April’s death in his or her own way. But Hannah has taken it the hardest. Her testimony during the trial put a man, John Neville, in prison. But as time has passed, and as new information has come to the surface, Hannah is wondering if she put the wrong person in jail. Did she get it all wrong and John Neville is innocent? As Hannah tries to uncover the truth, she is also uncovering memories from the past. Memories some of her friends would rather keep in the past. Should she keep digging and discover the true murderer, or should she accept what is done and move on?

Ruth Ware does an amazing job telling the story of this group of friends. You get to know each of them so well through the story, so much so that you wish you could be a member of their group. What I love most about this story are the twists and turns. The moment you think you have it all figured out, Ware gives you a curve ball and you’re having to rethink everything again. You are rooting for Hannah to solve the murder mystery, but at the same time you are worried about her and how she will come through it all. Another aspect of the book I enjoyed was how it was told. Every chapter is titled “Before” or “After.” This format allows you to puzzle piece all the events together and remember along with Hannah. A great read I would encourage any mystery/thriller lover to pick up!

Thank you to NetGalley and Gallery Books/Scout Press for the opportunity to read this book and give my honest review.

In my opinion this is one of Ruth Ware’s BEST! It was hard to put it down and it kept me guessing all the way to the end. Fantastic characters and development. Loved it!

This was a fun ride. I've read a whole bunch of Ruth Ware's books and this had a different vibe. It was well-written - more so than her other books, which read more like typical thrillers. This one had a lot of characterization. That said, parts of the book dragged quite a bit - there was maybe too much attention to world-building during their campus days. The ending was also pretty far-fetched - the main character is supposed to be incredibly intelligent, standing out from her peers at home as well as at her very prestigious university, yet she was dumb enough to do some incredibly idiotic things. Kind of hard to wrap my mind around that one. Overall, a fun thriller that was an enjoyable read. 2.5 stars rounded up to 3.

I'm going out on a limb here🙂....this may have been my favorite Ruth Ware book and I have read most, if not all, of them.

The cast of characters is a close-knit group, now 10 years out of Oxford. The star of their clique is April, the It Girl. Flawlessly beautiful, rich, nice but with a mean streak. Her murder breaks the spell that she cast over her clique of friends.

Ten years later, now-pregnant Hannah is having second thoughts about the resolution of April's murder and starts digging into past events.

Loved it!

I wanted to love this book but something just seemed off about it. The characters were not likable and the plot was a bit predictable. It almost seemed like I had read this book before. 3/5 stars

One of my favorites by Ruth Ware. The It Girl is a twisty, entertaining novel told in “before” and “after” chapters. Before = college at Oxford and After = 10 years later. The reader follows the life of Hannah and her It Girl roommate, April in the before chapters and concentrates on Hannah’s life 20 years after April’s murder in the After chapters. You’ll think you knew who did it, and then think again you know who did it, but things keep twisting in this great book!

Ruth Ware always comes up with surprises and The It Girl is full of them. She skillfully moves back and forth between the past and the present, using the breaks in the timeline to successfully build tension, making it a book that's hard to put down. Just as I thought I knew the who, what, and why at the heart of the story she came through with the ultimate plot twist. Very enjoyable.

This book was an enjoyable read. Reading about Oxford was fun. Somewhat predictable but still a good read.3.5 rounded to 4.

I definitely enjoyed this one but I felt like it didn’t live up to the other books she’s written. I thought the plot was a little predictable for Ruth Ware but I still felt like I was entertained.

I really enjoyed this book! I thought I guessed something but I ended up being totally wrong and I loved the entire twisty journey to finding out that I was wrong. I flew through this while traveling. Highly recommend it!

3.5/5 While this was an interesting thriller and fans of Ruth Ware will probably still love it, I kept thinking that I'd read this book before. It definitely had that boarding school/ dark academia vibe going on.

I also found the protagonist to be too delicate (the story starts off when she hears that a convicted murderer has died in prison and that sets off her anxiety- why? he's dead now). The author points out the protagonist's own "unbearable, inexcusable stupidity" it one of the final chapters. In that, I would agree and found myself wondering, well, why write her that way then?

Overall, not in my top Ruth Ware reads and I'll definitely still read her future books.

10 years ago, Hannah’s roommate April was murdered in their dorm room. After the convicted killer, dies in prison, Hannah starts to question everything she thought she knew about April and her murder.

This was another great mystery by Ruth Ware. The characters were interesting and well developed. The story was told in both the past and present, and is full of twists.

Thank you NetGalley, Author Ruth Ware, and Gallery Books for this Advance Reader’s Copy.

The It Girl drew me in by its name. I immediately was wondering who WAS the IT girl? It made me think of the popular girl in high school.

I wasn't far off the mark: April is her name, and she was the one everyone gravitated to at parties. She had it all. Until, one day, she didn't. Years later, her best friend and college roommate is still trying to put the pieces together from that horrible night. At its core, this book is a thriller. But it is also a story of following through and finding truth.

I thought this book was right on par with Ruth Ware's others, and was pleasantly surprised with the ending. I really wasn't sure who the bad guy was until it all came out!

Thank you to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.5 stars rounded down.

It must be tough for an author of twisty psychological thrillers to keep coming up with new and different plots. Ruth Ware has done a pretty bang up job so far of consistently creating interesting plots to hang on the skeleton of the thriller, so this one, while definitely a solid thriller/mystery, is a little disappointing in its ‘I’ve seen this before’ factor.

Ten years ago, Hannah Jones was at Oxford University when her roommate, April, was killed. Hannah’s evidence put one of the porters, creepy John Neville, behind bars. But now Neville is dead and a journalist is asking questions that call his conviction into doubt.

The ‘before’ and ‘after’ structure pivots around April’s murder. In the ‘before’ we get to know April, the glamorous and charismatic “It Girl” of the title, Hannah, who lives in her shadow, April’s boyfriend, the dishy Will, his friend posh Hugh, and a couple of other first year students. I enjoyed these sections as we see the gown side of Oxford through Hannah’s eyes, though this feels like pretty well-trodden ground following Lucy Foley’s The Hunting Party with a similar group of friends at Oxford. (Btw - why is it always Oxford University? Why not Cambridge or Bristol or even my alma mater, Coventry?)

The ‘after’ sections are more interesting as Hannah starts to re-investigate what seemed like a pretty straightforward case at the time but now seems to have many gaping holes in it. Sloppy policework and a poor defense account for these holes, but, in order for the book to work, it seems to have been extraordinarily sloppy policework and an outrageously poor defense. Pretty much everybody we’ve met becomes the possible murderer at one point or another, with our suspicions tickled and then quickly dismissed. It all leads to an inevitable and exciting climax with a satisfying if not entirely surprising resolution.

Ms Ware is often compared to Agatha Christie and while this is clearly meant to be a positive comparison, spoiler alert [I’ve found that she’s working with Ms. Christie’s ‘who is the most unlikely/least possible suspect’ modus operandi, and while there isn’t a vicar in this novel, if there were, he would have done it. (hide spoiler)]

These are merely grumbles of someone who’s read more thrillers than is probably good for them, so for me, even if it lacks the freshness of some of the author’s earlier novels, it was still an engrossing way of whiling away an afternoon on a sunny deck.

Thanks to Gallery Books and Netgalley for the digital review copy.

Another winner from one of my new favorite authors! The mystery is intricate and involved, with the story moving from the past to the present and back again. 10 years ago, Hannah and April became roommates at Oxford during their first year of college. By the end of that year, April was dead and Hannah had left school to try to cope. Now, in the present day, Hannah is married to Will, and expecting their first child. The imprisoned man who was found guilty of April's murder, based primarily on Hannah's testimony, has died, and the case is again in the news. The story is a bit too long, and somewhat repetitive in the "Past" sections, but the plot is intriguing and the entire murder scenario unique. Thanks to NetGalley and Gallery Books/Scout Press for providing an ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of The It Girl.

I didn't enjoy The It Girl as much as I had expected, which was disappointing since the premise was intriguing.

There are plenty of standard tropes in The It Girl:

The It Girl refers to the victim, Alice, a beautiful, privileged, party girl at an exclusive school who was viciously murdered by a man who went to prison for the crime, but has maintained his innocence for over a decade.

Hannah, Alice's room and BFF, is shy, provincial, and instantly intrigued and swept up by Alice's beauty, charm, and wealth.

Years later, Hannah is married happily to Alice's ex-Will, a former classmate, whom she had a long standing attraction to.

The narrative is long and dry, wordy and mostly filler; split into the past and present timelines, readers are introduced to Hannah's first year as a student, how she first meets Alice and became a member of her social circle; in the present, Hannah is six months pregnant and the sudden death of the man convicted of Alice's murder sends Hannah down a rabbit hole of investigation, which is just as tedious and humdrum as Hannah is.

There's no drama, no suspense and no urgency.

I appreciate the opportunity to read The It Girl before its release.

Giving a generous rounding upwards, to four stars, because of the Oxford setting, likable protagonist, and dark academia theme, which I haven't seen much of in the adult thriller space. I wanted so badly to love this book-- it is Ruth Ware, after all, and she's back after a bit of a hiatus. While authors in the genre so often crank books out, it's clear this one took Ware some time, and I don't want to downplay her efforts. That being said, this could've been chopped significantly.
While I enjoyed getting to know Hannah and April and having the dual timelines, it didn't need to take more than half the book to 'uncover' that the creepy porter was not the killer. We all knew that was going to be the case and that the real story here was about finding who did kill April and why. The biggest annoyances for me, which kept popping up, were the odd use of Instagram in its early days, which felt weird and out of touch, like a Boomer writing about 'newfangled technology', and April's pranks, which felt like a contrived device meant to place blame on the victim and to expand the list of potential killers by giving more people "motive". Ugh. Not necessary. Ultimately, plenty of people did have legitimate motive, without April's pranks. (Also, why is this called The It Girl? No one seems to really like April, nor do they admire her or revere her as one would an actual It Girl. In fact, they're constantly questioning her intelligence and insisting she only got into Pelham because of her family connections.)
The end is decent, though. Ware heavily forecasts who the killer is by repeatedly mentioning that <i>it couldn't be [this person] because they had an ironclad alibi that Hannah could confirm herself</i>. But even still, there are two other suspects who are also made to look so obviously guilty that it seems impossible it's not one of them, so there's still a question of who did it until about 80%, and then there's another little slight of hand Ware does in the end that I quite liked. It angered me, then impressed me that she would be so ballsy, and then when the truth of the deception is revealed a few pages later, I thought it was quite clever of her to toy with her reader in that way.

Based on its premise, had this book been written by any other of the myriad of popular thriller authors out there I likely wouldn't have bothered with it. But as I've thoroughly enjoyed most of Ruth Ware's novels, reading The It Girl was done deal. Her writing was stellar and compelling as usual, and for a good chunk of the book she keeps you guessing as to who the actual killer might be. However, while I'm not sure at exactly what point I figured it out, I did guess who the killer was relatively early on, at least once the story began sussing out who could or couldn't have done it. Though the story was fairly compelling and kept moving along and building steadily, I found myself getting anxious to get to the end simply because it eventually felt like it was taking too long. There were definitely parts that could have been trimmed as all they did was prolong the book. And once the murderer was revealed, the story actually became eye-rollingly trite, as a full chapter or two was dedicated to the heroine pretending not to realize who they were, and then the killer egging her on to fully describe how the murder took place. I've seen Columbo episodes that were more believable than that. Overall, the writing was as good as I would expect from Ware, but the somewhat generic plot and silly reveal knock it down half a star to 3.5/5*

I loved The It Girl! I look forward to all of Ruth Ware's new releases and this one did not disappoint. I enjoyed the shifting timeline of this mystery while the characters re-visited a murder from their past. It was a very suspenseful novel that kept me intrigued and guessing the entire time!