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Book Review: The It Girl by Ruth Ware
Summary:
April Clarke-Cliveden was the first person Hannah Jones met at Oxford.
Vivacious, bright, occasionally vicious, and the ultimate It girl, she quickly pulled Hannah into her dazzling orbit. Together, they developed a group of devoted and inseparable friends—Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily—during their first term. By the end of the second, April was dead.
Now, a decade later, Hannah and Will are expecting their first child, and the man convicted of killing April, former Oxford porter John Neville, has died in prison. Relieved to have finally put the past behind her, Hannah’s world is rocked when a young journalist comes knocking and presents new evidence that Neville may have been innocent. As Hannah reconnects with old friends and delves deeper into the mystery of April’s death, she realizes that the friends she thought she knew all have something to hide…
Review:
I’ve read about half of Ruth Ware’s books and enjoyed them all, so I was excited and surprised when the publisher approved me for a review copy of her newest book on NetGalley. Most of her other books I’ve read part of the thrill is the characters’ tie to a place – like a ski chalet or weekend hen do rental. This one, though, the thrills come from everyone’s tie to an event that happened a decade ago – the death of April Clarke-Cliveden.
To me, the most important part of a thriller is that at least one of the twists (preferably the last one) both surprises me but also strikes me as fair. In other words, that it’s not only a twist because the writer withheld something from the reader that other characters we closely follow know. The twist must also not have been immediately possible for the main character to figure out. This book definitely ticks that criterion. Although, I thought I’d guessed the twist about 18% of the way into the book, I was definitely wrong. I hadn’t guessed the twist even moments before it happened. And I didn’t feel cheated because the twist did make sense. So if a surprising twist that makes sense if what you’re after, this read is for you.
Now, I will say, I nearly wore my eyes out rolling them at the main character Hannah. She just struck me as quite emotionally/psychologically weak and easily influenced. I don’t need to love a main character to enjoy a read, though, so I wasn’t bothered. Something about Hannah that some readers may enjoy, partially because it’s unusual in a thriller, is that she’s about six months pregnant for the meat of the story. I’ve never been pregnant myself, so I can’t say how necessarily realistic the portrayal is, but it did make for some different and interesting scenes.
The only thing that does bother me, which is why this is four stars, is I just do not understand why Hannah ever considered April her “best friend” or why she’s still so enamored with her years later. From the first moment we meet her when Hannah does on move-in day at Oxford, I was like…man this girl is the WORST. Did I know people like her in college? Sure. Did I befriend them? No. Am I aware of someone who had a roommate like her? Yes. Did she befriend her? No, they just hung out in separate groups and lived their separate lives. But I will say, Hannah is characterized as weak and easily swayed, so, in a way, it makes sense she’s friends with her. But I never felt sympathy for Hannah about any of it.
Overall, this was a fun thriller. For me it took a little bit to pick up speed, but once it did, I was definitely motivated to find out the final twist.
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4 out of 5 stars
Length: 432 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: NetGalley
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
Friday Fun! (Camping and Where I Have Been!)
Hello my lovely readers!
Yes, I realize it’s technically Saturday, but things have been rather quiet around here the last couple of weeks, and I didn’t want to leave you hanging any longer! So why have things been so quiet?
Well, first, it was Labor Day weekend here in the States, and I actually for once went on vacation for it. Shocking, I know. I went camping in the Green Mountains. This was the view from my tent:
Gorgeous, eh? And it was such a great break! Zero technology. My cell phone didn’t even have reception. I got disgustingly filthy, and I loved it. I went for a swim in the pond and for a hike and cooked over a campfire.
Oh, yes, and the boy I’ve been dating asked me to be his girlfriend, and I said yes. 😀 He’s an awesome boyfriend, and I love him.
Beyond the vacation and personal development, it’s the start of the semester at work, so I’ve been incredibly busy with beginning of the semester library classes, orientations, and just general helping out the new students. Also, the audiobook I’m currently reading while completely *awesome* (Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi), is also super-long. The other book I was reading on my kindle that will be reviewed next week was kind of dullsville, so had trouble holding my interest. All of these things came together to make for a bit of silence, BUT! Never fear. I will always return! With bells on. 😀
Happy weekends all!
On Writing in Books
Growing up, I was taught that books are precious objects that we do not make any marks in. Of course, most of our books were borrowed from the library, so this made perfect sense.
Then university came, along with my two very text-heavy majors–American History and English and American Literature. I was encouraged to mark up my books, both the primary texts of my history courses and the literature of my English courses. At first I was hesitant, using post-it notes stuck to the pages to mark my ideas. After the course was over, I’d remove the post-it notes, leaving just a few highlighted passages.
Along came the year when I took two courses in a row that taught Paradise Lost. The first course was about heresy in history and literature (freaking amazing class, dudes). The second was on the Western Canon. I opened my copy of Paradise Lost in Western Canon and found myself devastated that all of my heresy observations were gone. Gone and never to return. To this day I wish I had the notations I made during the exquisite heresy lectures. Nothing taught me the vast possibilities in good literature like approaching Paradise Lost in these two different manners did. And nothing showed me better the value of writing in a book.
My experience reading isn’t just for shits and giggles, as the saying goes. I learn things about myself, about the world. My perceptions and ideas flux and change. There are the books that I read as a teen that I’ve re-read in my 20s, and I’ve wished that I could see on the page my reaction to the writing as a teenager.
The experience of reading a word or a phrase and having it strike you. Of wanting to underline it. Of wanting to note what it means to you right then. Expand this to include notations of things you’ve learned in relation to this word or phrase, such as the fact that you googled it and discovered it was dangerous for the author to write such a thing at the time. Or even just the definition of a word you didn’t know.
I know many people think it sullies a book to write in it, but I think it expands the book. I know people who are disgusted if they check out a book from the library and it’s written in, but I find that to be a wonderful treasure. I love seeing how someone else reacted to the same book. Someone who I will never know beyond the fact that they were so moved by a passage that they felt the need to write “omg!!” alongside it or that they knew so much about Greek mythology that they noted which goddess a passage is referring to.
Reading should be interactive, and books are necessarily a part of that. When I die and people clean out my personal library, I want the copies of my books to show the wear and tear that comes from truly interacting with the books you love. I want them to be worn from multiple readings and covered with notations and highlighting made in different colors throughout the course of my life. I want my books to reflect the impact that they’ve had on me, so I’ll continue to write in them. Even if it means that when I decide in my minimalist way to let a book go that I have a more difficult time finding someone to swap with.
This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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