The It Girl by Ruth Ware

October 3, 2022

The It Girl by Ruth Ware

When Hannah Jones was a student at Oxford, her glamorous uber-rich roommate April was murdered. Hannah found her body. The college porter was arrested and convicted and received a life sentence in prison. Ten years later, the ex-porter dies in prison and instead of being relieved that a really bad person is gone, Hannah decides to have a lot of drama over it. Then it comes out that the porter may not have been guilty after all.

For the last 10 years, there have been a bunch of suspense/psychological fiction books with "girl" or "woman" in the title, featuring unreliable narrators who drank a lot and had bad habits (which were at least fun). Now they all have mommies or about to be mommies as the main character, which is a trend I'm not loving. Too much time is spent focusing on being a mommy and not on the mystery. One of Ware's previous novels, The Lying Game, was about four school friends who did something bad while they were in school - one of them has a baby now and a lot of time is spent feeding the baby, changing the baby, walking the baby, looking for the baby's stuff, etc. Maybe the author is fascinated with being a mommy. Me, not so much.

Nothing new here - the storyline was predictable except for the ending. I skimmed the last half of the book. Lotsa drama. I don't recommend this one. I think I'm done with Ruth Ware.

The set-up also reminds me of The Secret History by Donna Tartt, a much better book, about a group of brainy wealthy college students who adopt a scholarship kid into their group, and one of them ends up dead. Same situation but more interesting.

April is THIS kind of girl