The It Girl by Ruth WareMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I received an ARC of this book.
This book just kind of fell flat for me. The story should have been interesting, but there was very little sense of tension, suspense, or even mystery. Told in dual timelines, this is the story of Hannah and the defining event of her life--the murder of her roommate and de facto best friend, April. The two bond in their first weeks at Oxford, along with a small group of other classmates. When April is discovered dead several months later, Hannah believes she knows who killed her, but all of April's "friends" seem to be affected by the murder in one way or another. Many years later, the man convicted of April's murder dies in prison, and Hannah begins to wonder if she pointed the finger at the wrong person.
This book just felt disjointed and a bit uninteresting. In the "Before" timeline, I just really got bored: we know that April will end up dead, but there was absolutely no feeling of suspense or doom. It just seemed full of anecdotes about how terrible of a person April was--were we supposed to think she deserved to die? The creepiest part of that timeline was John Neville, the man in jail for April's murder. I didn't have any sympathy for him, either, and so Hannah's quest in the "present" timeline to find out if he was really guilty seemed weird because John was so unsettling.
And then in the "After" timeline Hannah seemed like a completely different person than "past" Hannah. Not to mention the fact that she seemed to be dealing with debilitating PTSD-like symptoms. I really wondered how she had survived this far in life without having some sort of complete break-down.
When the tension finally picked up towards the very end of the book, it was too little, too late. I really didn't care what happened to Hannah, and was really only interested in who had actually murdered April and how they did it.
I don't think I would recommend this book. The pacing needed to be tighter and the book suffered from a lack of tension.
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This book just felt disjointed and a bit uninteresting. In the "Before" timeline, I just really got bored: we know that April will end up dead, but there was absolutely no feeling of suspense or doom. It just seemed full of anecdotes about how terrible of a person April was--were we supposed to think she deserved to die? The creepiest part of that timeline was John Neville, the man in jail for April's murder. I didn't have any sympathy for him, either, and so Hannah's quest in the "present" timeline to find out if he was really guilty seemed weird because John was so unsettling.
And then in the "After" timeline Hannah seemed like a completely different person than "past" Hannah. Not to mention the fact that she seemed to be dealing with debilitating PTSD-like symptoms. I really wondered how she had survived this far in life without having some sort of complete break-down.
When the tension finally picked up towards the very end of the book, it was too little, too late. I really didn't care what happened to Hannah, and was really only interested in who had actually murdered April and how they did it.
I don't think I would recommend this book. The pacing needed to be tighter and the book suffered from a lack of tension.
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