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A review by _chelseachelsea
The It Girl by Ruth Ware
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
This book is okay. I’m not sure there’s much to say beyond that. The central story is a familiar one for anybody who’s read a thriller: a decades-old murder comes back to haunt the people who were closest to it, and one woman sets out to find the truth about the people she thought she knew. In classic Ruth Ware style, we swap back and forth between the past and the present, slowly unraveling what really happened the night April Clarke-Cliveden was brutally murdered.
You’ve read this book before. And while The It Girl is a perfectly fine locked-door (sort of) mystery, it’s hardly thrilling. Because we already know what’s coming, the tension never really swells in the Before timeline, and the search for The Truth™ in the After is bogged down by its unnecessary length.
Pacing becomes an especially big issue when the past comes to a close and we remain in the present for the remainder of the novel. Hannah is a decently interesting protagonist, but her friendship with April isn’t quite compelling enough to make you care about it. Perhaps if we’d gotten more insight into April beyond Hannah’s descriptions, which are often focused on how vapid and cruel she is, we could have felt greater sympathy. But April is just not a person most readers will relate to, and there’s very little emotional connection to her friendship with Hannah (or anyone else) because of that.
Ruth Ware has been very hit-or-miss for me ever since I read (and adored) her debut novel In a Dark, Dark Wood. I loved One by One, hated The Lying Game, and found myself so bored during The Woman in Cabin 10 that I put it away after a few chapters. I think Ware is at her best when writing in a limited setting - when the world of her novels becomes too open, or stretches across too broad of a time period, they lose a lot of intensity.
The It Girl doesn’t break any new ground, and it’s a little too long, but if you’re looking for a beach read this summer it’s a perfectly adequate choice.
You’ve read this book before. And while The It Girl is a perfectly fine locked-door (sort of) mystery, it’s hardly thrilling. Because we already know what’s coming, the tension never really swells in the Before timeline, and the search for The Truth™ in the After is bogged down by its unnecessary length.
Pacing becomes an especially big issue when the past comes to a close and we remain in the present for the remainder of the novel. Hannah is a decently interesting protagonist, but her friendship with April isn’t quite compelling enough to make you care about it. Perhaps if we’d gotten more insight into April beyond Hannah’s descriptions, which are often focused on how vapid and cruel she is, we could have felt greater sympathy. But April is just not a person most readers will relate to, and there’s very little emotional connection to her friendship with Hannah (or anyone else) because of that.
Ruth Ware has been very hit-or-miss for me ever since I read (and adored) her debut novel In a Dark, Dark Wood. I loved One by One, hated The Lying Game, and found myself so bored during The Woman in Cabin 10 that I put it away after a few chapters. I think Ware is at her best when writing in a limited setting - when the world of her novels becomes too open, or stretches across too broad of a time period, they lose a lot of intensity.
The It Girl doesn’t break any new ground, and it’s a little too long, but if you’re looking for a beach read this summer it’s a perfectly adequate choice.