Loved The It Girl? Ruth Ware‘s “fiendishly twisty” (Elly Griffiths) mystery thriller has been longlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year 2023, and you only have a few days left before voting closes!

Vote here before 23:59 on Thursday 18th May.

The winner of the award will be announced on 20^th July, on the opening night of the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival, which this year celebrates its 20^th anniversary.

Described by bestselling author Daniel Silva as “a perfect, perfect summer beach read by the reigning queen of British crime fiction”, The It Girl follows a woman on the search for answers a decade after her friend’s murder.

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.

The It Girl is 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 Instagram @ruthwarewriter and Twitter @RuthWareWriter.