by Ruth Ware

Dark academia meets psychological thriller 

“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.

-Ruth ware
the it girl

Genres

Psychological thriller  

Psychological drama 

Mystery  

What’s The IT Girl about?  

Hannah Jones is enamored with her life at Oxford. It is her first taste of being an adult, and soon she meets April Coutts-Cliveden, who invites her into her glamorous world. Hannah and April soon form a circle of friends, including Will, Hugh, Ryan and Emily, but when April is murdered, Hannah’s new world all comes crashing down, and Hannah helps convict the porter, John Neville, of Aprils murder.  

Fast forward to the present day, where Hannah and Will are expecting their first child. A visitor turns Hannah’s life upside down with new evidence that John may not be responsible for April’s murder, but is Hannah ready to look deeper at what happened that night, and admit to herself that the people closest to her might have reasons of their own to kill April?  

 

What did the Book Reviewery think of ‘The IT Girl’? 

Loved this story. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough as Hannah’s magical world at Oxford unfolded, and she explored her new found freedom. As her world shattered at the death of her best friend, the rug came right out from under you, only to be plunged into the uncertainty of wondering whether Hannah got the details of that night wrong, and sent an innocent man to jail to spend the rest of his days there, wrongfully viewed as a killer.    

As Hannah explores the possibilities of what really happened that night, it feels like everyone could have felt they had a reason to murder April.  

Recommended for fans of twisty mysteries with a dark academia backdrop.  

For fans of: 

Jessica Knoll, Louise Penny, Holly Jackson, Riley Sager.