Is there an audiobook of The It Girl?

Yes. The It Girl has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Imogen Church.

How long is the The It Girl audiobook?

The The It Girl audiobook runs 17 hr 9 min.

Is The It Girl on Kindle Unlimited?

No. The It Girl was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on July 23, 2026.

The It Girl by Ruth Ware book cover for the Book of the Day thriller book review

Our score

4.2/ 5

Excellent

Listen to The It Girl free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

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EDITION PUBLISHEDJuly 2022

Genres

Fiction Thriller Suspense

Themes

Friendship curdling into suspicionThe unreliability of settled certaintyCharisma as a form of controlJustice delayed and its cost

The It Girl

Name: The It Girl
Price: 9.99 USD
Availability: InStock
Author: Ruth Ware

Ruth Ware

Ruth Ware's The It Girl reopens a decade-old Oxford murder when new evidence suggests the man convicted of killing Hannah's charismatic best friend may have been innocent all along, forcing her to question everyone who was actually in the room.

The Review

Our take

The man went to prison. He died there. The case was closed a decade ago, which means Hannah has spent ten years believing a settled version of events: her best friend April is dead, the college porter who killed her is punished, done. Ware opens with a journalist knocking on that closed door, and the effect is immediate. Every certainty Hannah's built her adult life on, her marriage, her pregnancy, her ability to sleep at night, depends on a story that might be wrong, and Ware is ruthless about making her sit in that discomfort rather than resolving it quickly.

The structure alternates between Hannah's present, heavily pregnant and reconnecting with old friends who all have their own reasons to want the case left alone, and the Oxford past, where April's magnetism and cruelty get equal page time. Ware doesn't romanticize the dead girl. April was vicious in specific, believable ways, the kind of charisma that curdles into control, and that complexity matters because it means everyone in her orbit had a real motive, not just proximity to a murder scene. The book plays scrupulously fair with its clues; nothing that lands in the final act comes from nowhere.

What Ware does best here is turn old friendship into suspicion without cheap tricks. Hannah's reunion with Will, Hugh, Ryan, and Emily should read as nostalgic, and for a chapter it does, before the weight of the reopened case starts pressing on every interaction. You start reading warmth for performance and old jokes for evasion, which is exactly the paranoid state a book like this should put you in. The pacing tightens considerably once Hannah starts actively investigating rather than just reacting, and the back third moves with real urgency toward a reveal that reframes several earlier scenes without cheating the reader.

The pregnancy plot device, ticking clock and physical vulnerability layered onto amateur-sleuth danger, works better than it has any right to, giving real stakes to scenes that might otherwise feel like standard reinvestigation. Where the book runs a little long is in the middle stretch of campus flashbacks, which occasionally repeat beats the reader has already absorbed before the plot moves forward again.

Why you should read

Readers who want fair-play clues they can actually track
Fans of cold-case reinvestigation plots
Anyone who likes campus-set psychological suspense
Readers drawn to complicated, unlikable victims

What to expect

Dual timeline between Oxford past and pregnant present
A tightening pace as the investigation progresses
Fair-play mystery clues planted early
A slower middle stretch of campus flashbacks

The ending honors what the setup promised: a solution that was always available to a careful reader, delivered without a last-minute cheat, and a gut-punch understanding of who April actually was underneath the golden-girl surface. Ware trusts the reader to have been paying attention, and that trust is the mark of a mystery built with real control.

Reviewed by Quinn · How our reviews are written

Our verdict

4.2/ 5

Excellent

Listen to The It Girl free with an Audible trial Narrator, runtime & our audio review

Buy on Amazon

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Prices may vary.

Where to read or listen

Is there an audiobook of The It Girl?: Yes. The It Girl has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Imogen Church.
Listen to The It Girl free with an Audible trial
We earn from qualifying Amazon purchases.
How long is the The It Girl audiobook?: The The It Girl audiobook runs 17 hr 9 min.
Is The It Girl on Kindle Unlimited?: No. The It Girl was not included with Kindle Unlimited when we last checked on July 23, 2026.

Filed underThriller Suspense Browse the archive →

More by Ruth WareSee every Ruth Ware book we've reviewed, with our scores.All Ruth Ware books →

Common questions

What is The It Girl about?: The man went to prison. He died there. The case was closed a decade ago, which means Hannah has spent ten years believing a settled version of events: her best friend April is dead, the college porter who killed her is punished, done. Ware opens with a journalist knocking on that closed door, and…
Is The It Girl worth reading?: We scored The It Girl 4.2 out of 5. Ruth Ware's The It Girl reopens a decade-old Oxford murder when new evidence suggests the man convicted of killing Hannah's charismatic best friend may have been innocent all along, forcing her to question everyone who was actually in the room.