April Clarke-Cliveden is The IT Girl. April is beautiful, extremely rich and has started her studies at Pelham College, Oxford. She is generous, gregarious, magnetic, but she is also petulant, spoilt, manipulative and finds pranking people hysterical. To Hannah Jones, a quieter, Comprehensive educated student, this lifestyle and persona are alien. Finding herself sharing accommodation, a fast and unlikely friendship is formed.
The story is told in dual time lines. “Before” being the first year at Pelham, before April’s death, and “After” being approximately ten years later, both time lines feature Hannah as the narrator. The events of that night cast an extremely long shadow for all of the friends within the fraught and tense friendship group. Old emotions are reignited by the death of the man convicted of April’s death. John Neville has always maintained his innocence, despite the conviction appearing to be very safe.
Ruth Ware has written a tense and suspenseful story, which keeps you wanting to read on, turning those pages. Just when you think you will find out a vital clue, the time line changes. So you have to wait a little longer for the plot to expand.
The author made me cast suspicion over all of the group at various times, every one of them has ample motive. Each of these characters are distinctly individual, well rounded, so the story is very easy to follow, with no room for confusion.
I did work out the culprit, before the storyline told us, but not the how; which was very clever. I would never have guessed that. I highly recommend this engaging, well written 4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ read.

Firstly a big thank you to the publishers for my copy to review on netgalley. I’ve read a few of Ruth’s books and this is definitely the best in my opinion.

Read in one sitting in this heatwave and my goodness I couldn’t stop once I started .

Intriguing and intoxicating this is the before and after story of what happened after a murder.

Incredibly written with all the ingredients needed for a thriller.

Gripping and unpredictable with fantastic characters some much more likeable than others

I loved it and reckon this will be a absolute hit this summer!

Published 4th August

The It Girl takes the reader to the elite, competitive world of Oxford University – specifically a (fictional) college at the university, where Hannah Jones, an ordinary girl from a working-class background – finds herself studying ten years ago, amongst some of the wealthiest and most privileged people in the country. One of those is the enigmatic April, her roommate, who she strikes up an unlikely friendship with. Unfortunately, not everyone at the college is friendly, as Hannah soon finds out, and April is horrifically murdered one evening.

We also move forwards in time to the present day, when Hannah is trying to cope with the awful event that caused her to leave Oxford. She’s pregnant with her first child, and her husband Will – who also attended the same college – is trying to keep her life stress-free for the sake of their baby. They hear that John Neville, the man who was locked away for April’s murder, has died. Then a journalist gets in touch with some doubts he has as to whether April’s murderer was actually guilty…

I don’t want to give too much away but, through scenes back in the university days and the present-day uncovering of clues, we start to piece together what really happened all that time ago.

I liked the characters in this novel – they’re entertaining and, though many of them have their faults, they feel convincing. April is never painted to be this saint – all her friends acknowledge that she could be mean, spoilt, and demanding. Hannah really cares for her but can’t help being frustrated with her at various times. However, she desperately wants to know what really happened – the shock of what happened to April and the fact that Hannah’s eyewitness testimony helped convict John means she can’t just ignore the possibility that someone else could have killed April.

I also really enjoyed reading about the world of Oxford University – a setting very unknown to me and one that definitely felt atmospheric and steeped in tradition.

The plot is twisty and has plenty of surprises. I did see some bits coming from quite far off, and I felt like the story wasn’t as tightly plotted as other books by Ruth Ware that I’ve read in the past. The storyline didn’t feel very original but it was well written and I liked the slow build-up as we discover more and more about that night.

I still enjoyed this novel but I think I have a very high standard when I read a book by this author, so it didn’t really ‘wow’ me. I would still recommend it and it’s a gripping read, but I have to admit that I prefer other novels by this author.

Absolutely brilliant! This is my first book by this author but definitely won’t be my last.

The IT girl is a complex tale told in a dual timeline of “before” and “after”. The event in question is the murder of April, a privileged young woman attending Oxford university.

Hannah testified at the trial and helped convict the murderer, but now 10 years on his guilt is in question. Hannah is on a mission to find out if she made a mistake all those years ago.

Brilliant characters form a web of links and as we move back and forth we learn more about the friendships and animosity between the group of students.

A brilliant read with a plot that keeps you gripped from start to finish.

I’m a fan of the thriller suspense genre and Ruth Ware does a really good job of telling a gripping story that has you asking yourself questions and keeps you reading.
This is the story of two people really - April Clarke-Cliveden (a socialite Oxford student) and her suitemate - Hannah Jones. The whole premise of the story is that there is a before to the story and an after and for the majority of the book it darts back and forth between the two. The before being in 2012 and the after being present day 2022. You learn from pretty early on that April is deceased, but Ware has a way of getting you to question all the characters you meet and their relationship with her and Hannah (the story being told from her perspective).
I really enjoyed this novel and found that it had me really interested in both Hannah and April’s stories.

You know you’re in for a treat when you open a Ruth Ware thriller and The It Girl did not let me down! Told in two timeframes, when our lead character Hannah Jones was a 19 year old student at the prestigious Oxford University and 10 years later, when she’s forced to really reflect on the horrific event that has shaped her life… the murder of her best friend, April.

Who is the It Girl? Well… April Clarke-Cliveden. She was the ultimate It girl. Beauty, brains, money: she had it all. A charming and kind personality, not so much. Hannah is the opposite, she does not come from money and becomes close to April simply by fortune of them being roommates at (the fictional) Pelham College, Oxford, where they both study.

It was Hannah’s evidence that helped convict the university porter John Neville of April’s murder. He always protested his innocence and now, 10 years later, Hannah has reason to believe her memory of the murder might be false. She has to put the pieces together to find out what really happened.

While at Oxford, Hannah also made friends with Will, Emily, Hugh and Ryan, who all play a key part in the story, both 10 years ago and in the present day. You see, if Hannah is having doubts about John Neville, it points to someone else who was there, including her closest friends…

Hannah is really risking it all to find out who really murdered April. She is happy now, she’s pregnant, enjoys working at Tall Tales book shop and lives in Edinburgh with her husband, Will. Will who also happens to be April’s ex-boyfriend…

The It Girl uses its slightly longer page count to really develop the heart of the story and Hannah’s character. April is more of an enigma – she doesn’t have as much depth as Hannah but to me, that’s the point, she literally didn’t as a person, her and Hannah didn’t feel things the same way.

I get how April’s character might divide opinion and if you have no sympathy for the victim, do you care who murdered them? But for me, this story isn’t actually about April, it’s about Hannah and you do care very much about her finding out what really happened, to finally get some peace.

A clever, slow burning psychological thriller with more than a few jaw-dropping moments. I very much devoured The It Girl – a fantastic summer read!

This is the first Ruth Ware novel that I’ve read and she can think up a compelling plot! Hannah and April meet as undergraduates at the fictitious Pelham College, Oxford. From a socio-economic perspective they couldn’t be more different but, oddly, they become close friends. However, events occur which means that, by the end of their first year, the girls’ Oxford experience has been and gone. Ten years later Hannah is married to her Oxford crush and pregnant with her first child. She works in a bookshop in Edinburgh. However, her Oxford days have never left her and an event occurs which prompts her to begin to re-examine everything once more.
Ruth Ware has many fans and I appreciate why this is; through well-crafted prose, careful plotting, and the ability to engender a strong sense of place, she is clearly an adept storyteller. Nevertheless, I found it difficult to believe in the relationships within the novel. April really is a very unpleasant person who would be highly unlikely to maintain friendships in reality, and the pity stories of her home life don’t ring true after we have met her sister. Why would Hannah overlook her self-centred, vicious behaviour time and time over? It’s not as if the latter has no friends or comes from an unsupportive background. We are never sure why Will and Hugh are such good friends either. Just going to the same school doesn’t explain this. And why do Hannah and Will abandon Ryan after his stroke? Whatever is Hannah doing attending the funeral of a murderer, particularly after what he puts her through? This episode feels as if it’s just an opportunity for misdirection of the reader which doesn’t work. And, to conclude, there is the rather clunky final correspondence from Geraint, the journalist, presumably to tie up ends neatly.
Ruth Ware has plenty of fans who will devour ‘The It Girl’. Ultimately, it failed to convince me.
My thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster UK for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair review.

A psychological thriller set in the hallowed grounds of an Oxford College. What a perfect combination.
A group of students become friends in their first week at Pelham College. One of them, April, is the IT girl. She is wealthy, beautiful and clever and seems to have it all. However, one evening her body is discovered by her roommate Hannah.
The story is told from Hannah’s point of view and we see events as they happened before April’s death and also what is happening 10 years later as Hannah becomes increasingly worried that her evidence sent an innocent man to prison. I really loved the interweaving of the dual timeline and the way that the characters actions were gradually questioned. I also really liked the emphasis on how the constant media attention had affected Hannah as well as the other characters.
The book did drag a bit in the middle and I began to lose interest however it definitely picked up towards the end and moved to a gripping climax which I didn’t see coming.
Thank you to Net Galley and the publishers for my ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I have loved all of Ruth Ware’s books, but this is the best yet. More than a touch of Sayers and Christie here, with a fabulous atmosphere and marvellous characters. Scrupulously fair with clues, I did work out ‘whodunnit’, but I could have been wrong. Knowing an Oxford college as a parent of a state school child, the detail is all there, as is the feeling of, at first, not truly belonging. Absolutely brilliant, cleverly written thriller.

I am always drawn to a Ruth Ware book and have never been disappointed by one. This one is a slow build of tension, mystery and drama. It will keep you captivated and intrigued right until it knots together for the most perfect ending

This is a well-thought-out plot and I thought the book was well written. I felt like I was wandering the corridors of Oxford, crossing the quad and in the shared lounge of the set with April and Hannah.
Although I was never bored, it did feel like a long read - it maybe has something to do with all of Hannah’s introspection and internal conversations, especially in the ‘After’ chapters, and it may also be because it took quite a long time to get to the main event, due to the way the timeline hopped around.
However, I liked hopping forward and backwards in time to before April’s murder and ten years on from it. This definitely helped keep the pace of the story moving and created more intrigue as you wondered what would happen in both timelines.
Ware had me suspecting almost everyone too, and I liked not being able to guess whodunnit until quite close to the end.
A solid five stars from me.
Big thank you to Simon and Schuster U.K. and NetGalley for the chance to read an ARC.

Unfortunately I think this is the worst Ruth Ware book to date.

I've read all of her other books and pretty much enjoyed everything she has written but this book totally missed the mark for me.

I found the plot to be uninteresting and slow. It seemed to take me forever to actually finish this book because I was just not motivated to read.

It was a very slow and boring concept for a thriller, with little twists. The plot never felt like it was really going anywhere.

The characters were pretty unlikeable and uninteresting.

The writing was okay, nothing special. This book definitely felt longer than it needed to be.

I guessed the ending very early on unfortunately. It was just too obvious and I'm sure people who have read a lot of thrillers would agree.

There was no tense or caulstrophobic atmosphere in this book which her earlier works have.

Overall, this was a big disappointment. I will read her future books but hopefully this was just a blip and not the future of where her writing is going.

April was so hideous that to be honest I couldn't care less who killed her! Everyone seemed to love her but they were really just putting up with her, she could be cruel and vindictive and her pranks just weren't funny in the least. Hannah, her best friend from uni, has been torturing herself as she doubts her own testimony which put someone behind bars for the murder. 10 years on she has to find out the truth.
I did enjoy this book and the ending definitely was a surprise. However, I felt it dragged on a bit too long, with Hannah suspecting everyone and doubting herself over and over. This author is quite hit and miss for me, this one was just ok, I have enjoyed others more. The chase scene near the end was a bit unbelievable and there was one surefire way to leave dna at the scene that wasn't considered.

A decent who dunnit book with a before and after dual timeline throughout taking us through the story.
Author plays the guessing game of which of Hannah’s friends could be the culprit very well. This was a major positive of the story.
Some parts especially with Hannah’s inner monologue was a bit long winded, but a good read nevertheless.

By now you probably know that I love twisty thrillers, especially during the Summer. I can only assume this is thanks to the stacks of Point Horrors, Agatha Christie’s and then Stephen King’s I used to read during the school holidays as a young teen. Either way, if there’s a new thriller out, and especially if it’s a Ruth Ware, you know I’m on it!

The It Girl jumps between a dual timeline; ten years ago when shy Hannah found her outgoing college flatmate April dead in their on-campus apartment, and back to today where she starts to realise her testimony may have convicted the wrong man for April’s murder.
Against the wishes of her husband, who was in fact April’s boyfriend at the time she was killed (👀), Hannah starts to investigate.
She’s pregnant and working in a busy book shop so doesn’t really have the time to get so heavily invested, but the more she finds out, the deeper involved she gets, with terrible consequences for everyone tangled up in this terrible situation.

I enjoyed this one! I like a dual timeline and the dark academia vibes from the Oxford setting were immaculate. I didn’t guess the twist until fairly close to the end so there’s that too! 😅

My only issue with this is the storyline slowed a little bit in places. That said, I think the reveal was clever and had a bit of a Jonathan Creek feel to it, which I’m definitely here for 😅

Have you read any of Ruth Ware’s books?

With huge thanks to @netgalley and @simonschusteruk for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of The It Girl; available to pre-order now.

Oh this book she a big girl coming in at over 400 pages. But i wanted to read another of her books as i enjoyed one by one. I will say if you can sit and binge you get sucked into this story. Its a young college aged book that later spans into their 30s-40s so you don't have that YA angst but you do have dumb teenager shenanigan's. I was fully immersed in this story and those twists and turns were 100% unexpected and i was left speechless each time. The book had a fun and unique nancy drew mystery where they were in the past and future seamlessly. deff recc this book!

Oh! I loved this story!

RW’s gripping psychological thriller completely engrosses the reader. The tension and suspense feel tangible while reading and I held my breath for the ending.

The dark academia vibes of the settings and the two storylines, past and present, create the best riveting atmosphere. The plot is well thought and written, action packed and with a lot of twists that you definitely get wrong guesses!

The characters are lovely too and go well with each other creating layers and depth in the relationships.

If you’re looking for an unsolved mystery vibe of story, this is for you!

I received a copy of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

This is the story of Hannah. Hannah Jones who moves to Oxford University and find herself sharing her room with April who is rich, bright and popular. They become unlikely friends and quickly have a circle of friends. One day Hannah goes in search of April as she hadn’t come back from quickly getting changed. Hannah finds that her roommate has been murdered and eventually a creepy porter at the University was convicted of her murder. Years later April, now pregnant gets approached by a young journalist who believes that the porter who recently died in prison was innocent. The reporter plants seeds of doubt in her mind and Hannah decides to dig further into it.

This story is told in two timelines, present day and back when the murder happened. I really liked Hannah as a character but quite disliked April. April came across as spoilt and selfish which was probably how the author intended her to come across. I found it quite hard given her character to care that April was murdered and needed justice. Although the story did keep me interested not too much happens until the last quarter of the book. I had a fixed idea very early on about what had happened but I was incorrect The explanation of why April was murdered was not the most exciting explanation but I thought it was quite a good one which I haven’t read in a thriller that I can think of.

This was my fourth Ruth Ware novel (I have already reviewed The Lying Game, One by One and The Turn of the Key) and The It Girl is a wonderful addition, one that made me think and rethink about Neville’s involvement and other possible suspects.

I remember being slightly disappointed in one of her novels because the killer was too obvious for me but I promise you that The It girl kept me guessing and guessing some more. I thought I was a super sleuth but this novel certainly knocked me around.

The It Girl was a wonderful mystery to read. It provides an airtight case against Neville, one of the porter’s at the Oxford university. Not only was he a seriously creepy guy, Hannah also saw him coming down the stairs and found April murdered minutes later. He always cried out his innocence though till the day he died in prison and it’s only when Hannah receives a tidbit of new information about April from a reporter that she wonders what was going on with April at the time. Did she know her at all? Why didn’t she tell Hannah, her roommate and best friend? She wants to get to the bottom of it so she visits her old college friends and it helps her to put the pieces together. Oh did I tell you that Will was April’s boyfriend and is now a soon-to-be father of Hannah’s child? I don’t know why I thought that would worth mentioning but I certainly found this an interesting turn of events.

Without divulging too much I can only say that I had a suspect and when this suspect was crossed out I found myself another one and it turned out in the end that I was wrong again. I love it when an author can wrongfoot me and she did so good! She put in several red herrings and the tension ramps up in the final chapters. I think I knew a little sooner than Hannah that she was in some kind of trouble but other than that I was as surprised as she was. There are lots of people who could have a reason to kill her but the real reason and finding out the background story preceding her murder was also an eye-opener for me.

The It Girl is the sort of novel that you just have to know who did it! It kept me turning pages at high speed. If you love playing detective and you enjoy books with multiple suspects then this is definitely worth putting on your readlist!

Wow!! It has twists, it's gripping, it's unpredictable, it has you second guessing, it's everything you could want from a thriller!! Ruth Ware you have done it again!!!

Each chapter is broken down into 2 timelines before and after the crime, both are told by Hannahs pov. I was engaged right from the start. I had so many theories as to what I thought had happened but I did not guess that ending 😳

Thank you netgalley for this ARC for an honest review