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.
