• Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2022 May #1
  *Starred Review* April Clarke-Cliveden was the It Girl. "Whatever it was, she had it." She was dazzlingly beautiful, rich, and irrepressible. Her propensity for playing practical jokes knew no bounds. After her roommate, Hannah, finds April strangled in their shared quarters at Oxford, a university porter is convicted of the murder, thanks in part to Hannah's testimony against him. He dies in prison 10 years later, still asserting his innocence. Hannah is now pregnant and married to April's former boyfriend. The media are after her, making her life miserable once again, and then one of their former classmates tells Hannah something that leads her to doubt what she saw—or thought she saw. The narrative is related in brief alternating chapters, from "before" and "after." Ware develops both the reader's doubts about and concern for Hannah as the suspense builds gradually under a masterful barrage of red herrings. Hannah is certainly vulnerable, but how reliable is she? Seasoned mystery readers will ache for a vintage Inspector Morse to magically appear in the vivid Oxford setting, but Hannah must go it alone, determined to learn the truth, through a harrowing conclusion. Like Ware's earlier novels, this one employs another closed setting, although it eventually opens up to a wider world. Riveting. Copyright 2022 Booklist Reviews.

Ruth Ware worked as a waitress, a bookseller, a teacher of English as a foreign language, and a press officer before settling down as a full-time writer. She now lives with her family in Sussex, on the south coast of England. She is the #1 New York Times and Globe and Mail (Toronto) bestselling author of In a Dark, Dark Wood; The Woman in Cabin 10; The Lying Game; The Death of Mrs. Westaway; The Turn of the Key; One by One; and The It Girl. Visit her at RuthWare.com or follow her on Twitter @RuthWareWriter.