The It Girl by Ruth Ware

It’s been ten years but Hannah Jones has not recovered from the tragedy that ended her first year at Oxford – when her beautiful, charismatic roommate, April Clarke-Cliveden, was murdered. 

She is married, expecting her first child, working at an Edinburgh bookstore when her mother calls to tell her John Neville, the man convicted for April’s killing has died in prison. Soon after, she is contacted by a reporter who believes Neville was innocent. This sends Hannah into a maelstrom of emotion and guilt because her testimony was critical in sending Neville to prison. Everyone tells her not to agonize about the past but Hannah can’t think about anything else, even when it interferes with her health:

“Han, love, we’ve discussed this. It’s over. Neville is gone. It’s time to move on.”

It isn’t over, Hannah wants to say through gritted teeth, if I made a mistake. It isn’t over if Geraint Williams is correct and my evidence left the wrong person to rot in jail. If all that’s true, it’s very, very far from over. But she doesn’t say that. She can’t bring herself to say those words aloud, to make the possibility real.

Told in flashbacks from the present to the days at Pelham College when she was part of a close group of friends, The It Girl is an entertaining story of friendship and suspense. Hannah was the one who found April’s body so it is understandable that she suffers from the enduring horror of the event (including the harassment by the media who wanted her story and have pursued her intermittently for years) and wants to know the truth. What the reader realizes, long before Hannah – who is very slow on the uptake – is that if Neville did not murder April, the real killer might be someone she knows, possibly even her husband, who was originally April’s boyfriend. If she persists in her quest to find out if Neville was the real killer and actually uncovers new information, she could bring suspicion on everyone who knew Rachel then and put herself in danger.

This is the fifth book of Ware’s I have read and they are definitely absorbing and full of twists while one is reading/listening but they aren’t really memorable and I am not sure I’d go out of my way to recommend them. The killer in this book was fairly obvious and I got tired of Hannah’s endless angst and inability to put things together (admittedly, I realize such cluelessness can be necessary for the plot). I’ve listened to other books narrated by Imogen Church and I think she is eloquent; however, I’ve noticed all her heroines come across as very overwrought: is that the way the author writes these characters or does Church manage to make them all sound perpetually anguished?

Title: The It Girl
Author: Ruth Ware
Narrator: Imogen Church
Publication: Simon & Schuster, audiobook, 2022
Genre: Suspense
Source: Library. This is my 32nd book for Carol’s Cloak and Dagger Challenge.