#2: The It Girl by Ruth Ware

April and Hannah are Oxford roommates, one vivacious and fun and one more serious; when the former is murdered by a staff member in the dorm, the terrible case seems open and shut.  But ten years later, after the man's death in prison, evidence points in a different direction in Ruth Ware's The It Girl.

Hannah, the surviving roommate, has married her college sweetheart and is expecting a baby; but that doesn't deter her from teaming up with Hannah's younger sister and going back to find their old friend group a decade later.

Very solid mystery, told in alternating chapters set in the past and the present, with lots of twists and turns and puzzle pieces locking into place.  

Ware is one of my favorite contemporary writers because she doesn't ever write the same book twice and dabbles in a lot of mystery subgenres.  This one satisfies down to the last surprise.

I listened to a good audiobook read on loan from the New Castle-Henry County Public Library in New Castle, Indiana.

#49: The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware

A down-on-her-luck tarot card reader gets a mysterious letter proclaiming a lost inheritance, and ends up in the middle of decades-old family secrets, in Ruth Ware's The Death of Mrs. Westaway.

Ware's novel is a straight-up, reverent (but contemporary) take on the old-fashioned gothic, with a rotting old house, a menacing housekeeper, and a cold attic bedroom (with mysterious bars on the window, naturally), among other standards of the genre.

Even though I started piecing it together about halfway through, the storytelling is engaging throughout, and never takes its foot off the accelerator.

I enjoyed the audiobook reading by Imogen Church, which added value.  I checked this out from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana.

#57: The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware

A writer with a number of problems lucks into reporting about the maiden voyage of a luxury cruise ship; when somebody goes overboard--and nobody believes her--the tension ratchets up in Ruth Ware's The Woman in Cabin 10.

Ware's novel follows the trend of unreliable female protagonists seen in thrillers from Gone Girl to The Girl on the Train in recent years.  This outing is an agreeable entry for those that enjoyed those novels.

At times, it seems Ware relies more on luck and rickety coincidence than her contemporaries, but a breakneck pace and interesting plotting smooth it all over.

I listened to a good audiobook reading of this from the Morrisson-Reeves Public Library in Richmond, Indiana, on a long drive back and forth from Pennsylvania.