The It Girl

Book Reviews

Jul 14

The It Girl
By: Ruth Ware

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

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

Okay this is my second Ruth Ware book and I’m torn. Just like with The Turn of the Key, it was a really good thriller but it had so many f-words (69 f-words, 39 s-words).

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

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

Brief Synopsis

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

Then one night Hannah finds April dead in their room.

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

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

Did she sentence an innocent man to die in prison?

Is there still a murderer somewhere out there?

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

Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One tiny SPOILER. Look away.

If someone asks you ‘Who have you told this to?’ when you give them dangerous information…. don’t say ‘no one’ They obviously are trying to figure out how many loose ends there are and if they can just kill you right then.

SPOILER OVER

Conclusion

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

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

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

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

Slang UK terminology

dishy: very good-looking
mac: a raincoat… with an Intel Xeon Processor
chuffed: very pleased with/about (like: I’m pretty chuffed with your book review!)
‘Sorry your Christmas was a bit pants’: Sorry your holiday sucked. (Or: ‘Your book review blog is NOT pants!’)
nail varnish: nail polish (maybe US people call it varnish? Am I not sophisticated enough for that?)
‘You’ll do yourself a mischief!’: That’s a bad idea, bro.
on the bog: poopin
pleasure to be rogered by you any day of the week: um. let’s just call this one a booty call.
dons: a teacher or staff member at Oxford
checking his pigeonhole: his mailbox. Because it’s Harry Potter.
She’s having kittens: to be very nervous or upset. (This makes sense that Americans would have a cow but the Brits just have kittens. We’re probably more moo-ers than mew-ers)
chucking-out time: They literally throw you out of the pubs if you’re there when it closes. Wear a helmet.
Jiffy bag: padded envelope they store their peanut butter in
‘It was nothing, just a goose on my grave’: this phrase used to be a ghost walked on my grave but some idiots got ‘gos’ (Old English for goose) mixed up with gast/gost (Old English for ghost) and now those scary geese are walking all over our graves that don’t exist. In short. she had goosebumps, she’s not actually dead okay. This isn’t The Sixth Sense. Oops. Spoiler alert.