Story for the Week
The first day on my college campus was exciting and chaotic, fun and crazy, intimidating and a whole host of other adjectives. At the time, I embraced it. After my parents finished helping me move in, my mom waited in the car (never confirmed, but I suspect she was crying). My dad stood with me in the alley behind Marian Hall and said, “You know what you want, and you know what it will take to get it.” Then he hugged me, got in the car, and drove away. (Thanks, Dad. No pressure. 🫤)
As I think back to what was one of the most amazing experiences of my life, I also think about how absolutely bizarre it was. There I was moving into a very small room with a total stranger, expected to share a space for the school year with someone I didn’t know. (Can you say Real World or Married at First Sight? Confessions of a Reality TV Junkie)
My first trek to the cafeteria was with this complete stranger, making conversation with her and getting to know her. I was completely out of my element, and for some reason, it felt perfectly normal.
The microcosm of college life allows you to befriend people you wouldn’t typically interact with out of sheer proximity. You’re no longer surrounded by people from your neighborhood or people who share all the same interests. You’re attending classes together like you did in high school, but you’re also living together, working together, eating meals together. You’re almost all “going home” to the same place. I met my very best friend in college.
When I look through my Facebook friends, so many college memories kick in. Squeeze—a band I had never heard of but my first concert because someone had an extra ticket. Backgammon at the security desk. Roaming the silent campus in the middle of the night on security duty. W.C. Flick’s for Ladies Night. Deadlines in the journalism lab fueled by pizza, Mountain Dew, Twizzlers, Oreos, and gummy bears. Hotel parties. My first exposure to The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Media Law. Sub Diggity runs in “protest” when they took all meat out of the cafeteria during Lent. The Phantom Editorial. Fast-paced Monopoly games and weekend-long Trivial Pursuit games with at least six sets of cards. Sitting in packed lounges watching the Challenger explosion.
My fondest memories mean nothing to most of the people I know, but to those I shared those years with…they were everything. Campus life allowed us the opportunity to dip our toes into the real world while we were young enough to still do crazy things with a bit of a safety net.
As Corinne prepares to start college in the fall, she is content living at home but has expressed the concern that she will miss out on some of the college experience. She’s planning to study musical theater, and she’s also planning to work part-time. I imagine the rehearsal schedule is more rigorous than high school, so I suspect that she’ll be spending most of her downtime on campus either rehearsing or working, studying with the friends she will make. Her college experience will be different from mine since I did live on campus, but she’s very much the extrovert so I have no doubt she will make the most of it.
I’ve visited my college campus a few times since graduating. Even though the campus has changed dramatically over the years, the way I feel when I’m there hasn’t changed. I hope that Corinne experiences the same.
Book Review
⭐⭐⭐½
3.5 Stars for The It Girl by Ruth Ware
431 pages
Publisher: Gallery/Scout Press
Publication Date: July 12, 2022
Purchased on Amazon.
Publisher’s Description
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 year, 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 realizes that the friends she thought she knew all have something to hide…including a murder.
************
Main Characters:
- Hannah Jones de Chastaigne – married to Will, expecting their first child, works at a bookstore in Edinburgh, was April’s suite-mate and best friend their first year at Pelham where she was studying English literature, left school after April’s death
- April Clark-Cliveden – comes from wealth, knew Will and Hugh prior to attending Pelham, beautiful, someone Hannah looks up to in a way, seems to have it all together, has a passion for theater
- Will de Chastaigne – dated April at Pelham but was attracted to Hannah, the only friend in the group who stayed in touch with Hannah after she left school, studied economics
- Hugh Bland – went to prep school with Will, Will’s best friend, studied medicine at Pelham, has a successful plastic surgery practice in Edinburgh, the only friend in the group who Hannah and Will stay in touch with
- Ryan Coates – also studied economics at Pelham, connected with the friend group at lunch on the first day, lived on the same floor with Hugh and Will, had a stroke in his early 20s, Hannah and Will haven’t spoken with him in about five years
- Emily Lippman – studied math at Pelham, connected with the friend group at lunch on the first day, encouraged April to report John Neville, works at Oxford
- John Neville – worked as a porter at Pelham, seemed creepy and stalkerish to Hannah, convicted of killing April based primarily on Hannah’s testimony, died in prison 10 years after the murder still maintaining his innocence
- Geraint Williams – a reporter for the Daily, a friend of Ryan’s, looking into the case because he believes that John Neville was innocent
I have heard a lot about Ruth Ware in Facebook groups. This is the first book of hers that I’ve read, and I feel torn about whether I will read others. It will probably be very dependent on reviews and recommendations the next time.
The story centers around a group of six friends in their first term at the fictional Pelham College at University of Oxford. For Hannah, her admission to the prestigious college is a dream come true, and she is immediately brought into April’s circle by virtue of being her suite-mate. Ryan comes into the circle because he is studying economics, like Will, and he, Will, and Hugh live in the same hall. Emily inserts herself into the circle because Ryan takes a liking to her after a snarky comment in the dining hall.
The timeline alternates between “Before,” which takes place during that first term of the school year, and “After,” which is the present day—all from Hannah’s point of view. The Before chapters follow the group of friends from Hannah’s first day on campus. We learn about their relationships, Hannah’s crush on Will even though he is dating April, Ryan’s crush on Emily, Hugh’s awkwardness and lack of relationships, and April’s dalliances with someone (multiple someones?) other than Will.
April is everything that Hannah aspires to be—beautiful, popular, charismatic, wealthy, stylish, intelligent. She has every opportunity in front of her, and Hannah is happy just to be in her circle. After April’s death, however, Hannah leaves school, never graduates, and feels like she sees April everywhere, which she knows isn’t possible.
Once she hears that Neville died in prison and Emily tells her about Geraint Williams’ questions into April’s death, Hannah begins to second-guess her own recall of what happened that night. Driven by a need to get to the truth, Hannah starts to ask questions of her own, to the detriment of her blood pressure, which puts her pregnancy at risk, and her marriage to Will because Will is glad that Neville is dead and they can move on with their lives.
Ware spends quite a bit of the book misdirecting the reader in the After chapters, and the Before chapters offer no real hints as to whether Hannah was mistaken. There were plot elements I thought were unnecessary (Hannah’s high blood pressure and resulting weekly midwife appointments and Ryan’s stroke), which I feel made the book longer than it needed to be. I also started to get really annoyed at Hannah’s constant thought process around who the killer might have been if it wasn’t Neville.
I don’t want to spoil anything here. I didn’t dislike this one. It just felt too long and arduous, and I really wasn’t crazy about the ending.
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