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.

This review was originally posted on <a href="https://booksofmyheart.net/2022/07/12/%f0%9f%8e%a7-the-it-girl-by-ruth-ware/" target="_blank"> Books of My Heart</a>
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<i>Review copy was received from NetGalley, Publisher. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.</i>

4.5 hearts

I have to tell you I was worried for Hannah from the start.  She's pregnant and all the stress isn't good for her, plus she is digging into the past and bringing up things other people want to be finished.  It's not she's TSTL but she pushes it.   She lets her emotions take her dangerous places when she needs to be working in her head, because she is naive but very smart.

When the convicted killer dies, there are reporters and others who come forward to ask questions because he always claimed his innocence.  He was creepy and did some questionable things but was he a murderer?  Hannah keeps talking to people and learning more about that time.  She misses April and cared about her.  But she continues to learn more and more about April and why some people didn't like her and how she might have ended up dead.

As usual for this author, it's a twisty journey and emotional journey as you root for characters and their totally natural responses to good and bad situations.  It's great because not everyone is all good or all bad.  Which makes it harder to know what's true and what's deflection or outright lies. It's another winning read to boggle the mind and drag my heart around.

Ruth Ware does it again! This was one of her longer books but it was worth it! I always love her protagonists, & this was no exception! Great story!

Historically I have found Ruth Ware's books to be absolute hits or just okay. This one fell more towards just okay for me. I loved the dark academia vibes and setting of this book. However, I found that most of the characters fell a bit flat for me. I do think that the jumps from "Before" to "After" were done well and definitely made it more interesting.

Thank you to the publisher via NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for my review.

BOOK REVIEW: The It Girl by Ruth Ware
2022 Publication Date: July 12

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐⭐️

T.I.M.E. Favorite Books To Read
T.I.M.E. Best Books By Genre | Thriller
T.I.M.E. Most Anticipated Books Of 2022

CONNECT WITH A BOOK | T.I.M.E. SIMPLE LIVING TIP
The clues are there... If you are willing to see them... ✨😎✨

T.I.M.E. BOOK REVIEW: I always enjoy — and look forward to — a new book from Ruth Ware, who is often referred to as the "Agatha Christie of our time." Quite a high bar to achieve — and maintain — amongst avid thriller/mystery readers. If you read her previous book, One By One, you can easily understand the comparison. And there is an absolutely thrilling skiing sequence that left me breathless!

But with The It Girl, Ruth Ware breaks free of any comparison and left me breathless with every story element making this book my favorite Ruth Ware book to date... And securing a spot on my T.I.M.E. Favorite Books To Read list too.

With the strong female protagonist at the center of the story, there is also the added complication of her pregnancy that raises each scene's tension meter to the extreme.

Solving the mystery becomes like building a house on shifting sands as I found myself absolutely convinced I had this one figured out... Only to find the rug pulled out from underneath me with each new chapter. And if there is one thing I love to find in a thriller, it is a "rug" that is constantly being pulled away from underneath my mystery-solving feet!

For underlying story elements, I particularly loved the conflict of exploring the multi-dimensional issue of prosecuting criminal behavior with circumstantial though damning evidence.

Perfect for readers who are looking for a book with a page-turning mystery, thrilling sequences and love a good Hitchcock-like storyline!... ✨😎✨

Pages: 432
Genre: Thriller
Sub-Genre: Crime Fiction
Time Period: Present Day
Location: England (Oxford University) | Scotland (Edinburgh)

IF YOU LIKE THIS BOOK THEN TRY…
Book: One By One by Ruth Ware
Movie: Midnight Lace (with Doris Day)

BOOK SYNOPSIS:
How will you remember the girl who took your breath away?

Meet April Clarke-Cliveden, a beautiful and dazzling force of nature... And Hannah Jones, who always felt a bit behind the trends, off the mark, and generally the opposite of April.

Ten years ago, Hannah and April were roommates at Oxford University — and quickly April took Hannah under her wing pulling her into a world that was both exhilarating, thrilling, and more than a bit risky.

But to be within April's exclusive world was too seductive to refuse.

Their inner circle of friends also included Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily. And as with most college relationships, the loyalties and the complications tighten around and amongst the circle.

By the end of the first year... April was dead.

And Hannah's testimony helped bring her convicted murderer to justice, John Neville, a campus porter at Oxford who had a history of unusual behavior.

Jump to ten years later... Hannah and Will are now married and expecting their first child when she receives an update that John Neville (who always maintained his claim of being innocent) has died in prison.

She's thrilled to finally put the past behind her. Until a reporter approaches Hannah with new evidence that John Neville may have been innocent after all.

This new evidence has Hannah questioning facts she was once sure about. So she reconnects with each of her old friends to find out what really happened to April all those years ago.

But with each encounter, that familiar tug of loyalties and the subsequent complications start to tighten again around and amongst the circle.

A mystery unfolds within these pages that will have you guessing until the very last page! With deliciously surprising twists throughout every chapter, there is something new waiting around each corner.

--------------------

All my book reviews can be seen at This Is My Everybody | Simple Living | Denise Wilbanks at thisismyeverybody.com/blog/what-book-should-i-read

♡ Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. I voluntarily chose to review it and the opinions contained within are my own.

This story will be familiar to you: college friends, murder, trial/conviction but what is the truth? Was the man convicted of April’s death innocent? Hannah, the narrator, is haunted by the death of her friend, dazzling “it girl”, April. When the man convicted of killing April dies in prison, a series of events set Hannah on a path to unravel the truth.

What I liked: the atmosphere and setting. I love an Oxford setting, especially when there are secrets and murder. It’s why I love the tv show Inspector Lewis so much. Ware sets the novel brilliantly.

Unfortunately, I did not care for much else. There are many plot holes and much of time I kept wondering why no one was acknowledging the stalking and assault that plays a big role plot wise but is brushed away in terms of its psychological impact. As a narrator, Hannah’s insecurities and doubt mean she is constantly telling us that she needs to know what happened. And there’s so much repetition in her p.o.v. that I found myself losing interest. She puts herself in bizarre situations given her pregnancy.

The podcaster didn’t add very much in my opinion and I felt like he was focused on the wrong questions. As someone who watches a lot of true crime stories, I was continuously annoyed by the kinds of details being emphasized. The plot holes become glaring to me, here.

Ware has moments of really great writing throughout. I’ve always liked her writing style but it feels a bit lost among the threads of a whodunnit that misses the mark, for me. If you are expecting a thriller, I would say modify your expectations and prepare for a suspenseful mystery instead.

Fans of academic settings, friend group drama and Ware’s previous books may find this more compelling. The tension and sense of foreboding is strong throughout and I appreciated that “what is going to happen feeling” but the mystery itself is well-worn territory. I just wanted and expected more. 3 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

April Coutts-Cliveden was known as the "It" girl in her class at Oxford. She had it all, money, looks, charisma, and charm that could turn nasty fast. Hannah Jones, her roommate, soon became good friends with April, as did Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily. The group did a lot together that first term at university when young people spread their wings, explore new things, and begin to come into their own. April was murdered during the second term.

Ten years later, Hannah is still living with the psychological repercussions of April's death. Now married to Will, and pregnant, she learns that the man convicted of murdering April (based in large part on Hannah's testimony) has died in prison. John Neville, an Oxford porter, maintained his innocence from his arrest until he died. Now, instead of his death bringing closure to Hannah, she wonders if she got it wrong, and is responsible for the death of an innocent man. To the dismay of her husband and friends, she begins to look closer at the case. The more Hannah looks into the murder, the more she discovers about April and others. Turns out, April had a fair amount of enemies for one so young. If John Neville didn't kill April, then someone else did, and it looks like it's someone Hannah knows.

This psychological suspense/mystery is a good read with each chapter containing Before and After sections which give the reader more information as to the happenings leading up to the murder and after it. Ware does a good job of keeping the reader invested in the story writing in twists and turns and tossing out believable red herrings throughout the tale. She got me -I was not expecting the ending!

My thanks to Gallery/Scout Press for permitting me to read an e-copy of this book via NetGalley. All opinions expressed in this review are my own and are given freely.

4.5 stars
Hannah meets April when they are paired up in a suite at Oxford. They are chalk and cheese, Hannah being the shy naive one of the duo, but she is soon pulled into the dazzling lights of April's world during their first term. April's light definitely shone bright, but as with all lights that are bright, their longevity is cut short, as was April's as, by the end of the second term, she was found dead. Murdered.
Back in the present and we catch up with Hannah, living with Will (April's former boyfriend) and expecting their first child. They have sort of managed to put the past behind them but that past is about to come hurtling into their present as the man convicted of April's murder has died in prison, having protested his innocence right up to the bitter end. And then Hannah is approached by a journalist who claims to have new evidence which makes Hannah doubt what she saw that night, what she spoke up about in the trial...
And so begins Hannah's quest to find the truth... But will she live to regret it...?
This was a bit of a slow burn for me initially but once it got going, once the foundations were all laid, it did go off like a train. Flitting between the past and the present, we see how the friends met and their relationships developed in the weeks and days leading up to the murder in the past. In the present, we follow Hannah as she goes about her investigative endeavours. The both timelines complementing and being fed by each other.
I am not sure quite why but I really didn't take to many of the characters in the book which meant that I didn't care as much as maybe I ought to have done. Reap what you sow was a phrase that I kept homing in on pretty much all the way through! I also guessed early what would have happened but that was probably cos I read so many books of this genre that I maybe cottoned on to something...
Pacing was slow initially but matched the narrative well enough all the way through. And there was pretty much no waffle or padding so the story got on with itself well. And the ending, although not a complete shock to me, did leave me satisfied... and a bit smug!
All in all, a good solid read that I have no hesitation in recommending to fans of the genre and the author. My thanks go to the Publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book.

So addictive and I did not see the ending coming. It did sort of remind me of in my dreams I hold a knife but in a good way. Loved all the college secrets. Hannah wanting to her married in a library was very relatable. I can’t wait to read more from Ruth.

This is a solid read from Ruth Ware. Probably not my all-time favorite, but still very solid. Having studied abroad at Oxford for a trimester, I absolutely loved the setting, so that was a highlight for me. I also liked that I was constantly changing my mind about who the culprit was, and that while I didn't see the end coming, it made sense and wasn't totally out of left field.