Contributing writer and book reviewer for The Wall Street Journal Tom Nolan has included international bestseller Ruth Ware‘s  The It Girl as part of his ’25 best mystery novels of the past 25 years’.

In the article, he praises Ruth for blending ‘the mechanisms of Agatha Christie with the psychological acuity of later writers such as Ruth Rendell’.

Read his comments on Ruth and The It Girl in full here.

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 realises that the friends she thought she knew all have something to hide… including a murder.

Prefer a hard copy? The It Girl is also out now in paperback. Grab your US copy here and your UK copy here, or, better, via your local bookshop or Bookshop.org.

Follow Ruth on Bluesky @ruthwarewriter.bsky.social.