Books like The It Girl

In My Dreams I Hold a Knife operates in the same territory as The It Girl: a college reunion that unearths a long-buried murder. Ashley Winstead's thriller follows Jessica Miller, who returns to her elite university's ten-year reunion determined to prove she has made something of herself. But the unsolved murder of their classmate Heather hangs over every interaction.

Both books understand that college friendships are forged under intense emotional pressure, and both use the gap between the past and present versions of their characters to generate suspense. Winstead matches Ware's skill at making every member of a friend group a potential suspect, distributing guilt and motive evenly enough that the reader cannot settle on a single theory. The dual-timeline structure mirrors The It Girl's approach of interweaving past and present, with each chapter in one timeline illuminating something in the other.

Winstead's prose is sharper and more sardonic than Ware's, with Jessica's unreliable narration driven by ambition rather than grief. This is the most direct analogue to The It Girl on this list, and readers who loved the whodunit structure will find this equally satisfying.

The Lying Game shares The It Girl's DNA of female friendships fractured by old secrets, set against a moody English coastal backdrop that serves as Ware's own take on dark academia without the university. Ruth Ware's earlier novel follows four women who made a pact as boarding school students: a game of lies where they kept track of who could deceive most convincingly. Years later, when a text summons them back together, the lies from their past start to unravel with real consequences.

This is Ware writing at her atmospheric best, with the tidal flats and crumbling buildings of the seaside town creating a sense of things being revealed and hidden by the tides. Both books share Ware's interest in how teenage bonds, formed in institutional settings, create obligations that persist into adulthood. The smaller cast makes The Lying Game feel more intimate than The It Girl's Oxford ensemble, and the focus on female friendship without a central male suspect gives it a different emotional register.

The pacing builds steadily toward a revelation that reframes everything. Readers who loved Ware's voice in The It Girl should read this if they have not already.

The Silent Patient takes the locked-room mystery concept and applies it to the human mind, creating a psychological thriller that shares The It Girl's obsession with getting at the truth behind a single traumatic event. Alex Michaelides's debut follows Alicia Berenson, a famous painter who shot her husband and then stopped speaking entirely, and Theo Faber, the therapist determined to make her talk. Both books organize their plots around one central question, and both use professional investigation (Hannah as informal detective, Theo as therapist) to peel back layers of deception.

Michaelides writes with the economy of a playwright, keeping scenes short and loaded with subtext. The twist here operates differently from Ware's reveals in The It Girl, but both books reward the reader who pays attention to structural clues. The art-world setting gives The Silent Patient a different social milieu than Oxford, but both environments feature characters performing roles that mask their true selves.

This is a fast, precise thriller that readers who finished The It Girl in one sitting will consume just as quickly.

The Sanatorium transplants the isolated-setting mystery from Oxford's ancient halls to a converted sanatorium high in the Swiss Alps, creating the same sense of a beautiful place hiding something rotten. Sarah Pearse's debut follows Elin, a detective on leave who visits her estranged brother at the hotel he manages, only for guests to start disappearing during a snowstorm that cuts them off from the outside world. Pearse shares Ware's gift for making architecture feel threatening, with the sanatorium's history of suffering seeping into every corridor.

Both books use their settings as more than backdrop, turning buildings with pasts into active sources of dread. The locked-room element is more literal here than in The It Girl, with the snowstorm trapping everyone together, but the effect is similar: a closed circle of suspects, no outside help, and the growing certainty that the danger is coming from someone already inside. Pearse's writing is visual and atmospheric, with the mountain setting providing a stark beauty that contrasts with the violence.

The family tensions between Elin and her brother add an emotional dimension that complements the mystery. A strong pick for readers who loved The It Girl's gothic atmosphere.

The Maidens brings dark academia fully into the spotlight, setting its mystery in a Cambridge college where a charismatic professor may be connected to a series of murders. Alex Michaelides's second novel follows Mariana, a group therapist who becomes convinced that her niece's professor, the magnetic Edward Fosca, is killing students, though she has no proof and no one believes her. The obsession with a charismatic figure at the center of a tight social group mirrors The It Girl's dynamic with April, where one person's magnetism distorts every relationship around them.

Michaelides layers classical Greek mythology throughout the plot, which gives the murders a ritualistic quality that Ware achieves through Oxford tradition. Both books understand that academia creates hierarchies of admiration and jealousy that can become dangerous. The Cambridge setting and the focus on a professor-student dynamic give The Maidens a more explicitly literary atmosphere than The It Girl, though both books use their prestigious settings to comment on privilege and its costs.

The ending is divisive, which only adds to the discussion value. Readers who want dark academia dialed up should pick this one.

The Paris Apartment takes Ruth Ware's closed-circle mystery approach and moves it to a Parisian apartment building where every resident has a reason to hide. Lucy Foley's thriller follows Jess, who arrives at her brother Ben's Paris apartment to find him gone without explanation, and starts investigating the other residents to discover what happened. Foley shares Ware's talent for distributing suspicion evenly across an ensemble cast, and both authors use building architecture to create claustrophobic tension.

The rotation between residents' perspectives gives The Paris Apartment a structural similarity to The It Girl's technique of showing the same events from different angles. Foley's Paris is grimy and atmospheric rather than romantic, with the building's elegant facade hiding decay and dysfunction, much as Oxford's beauty masks danger in Ware's novel. The brother-sister dynamic adds a different emotional stake than The It Girl's friendship bonds, but the theme of looking for someone who does not want to be found connects both stories.

Foley writes with pace and confidence, keeping chapters short and endings sharp. This is ideal for readers who want The It Girl's atmosphere with a continental European setting.

The Guest List is Lucy Foley's island-set whodunit that puts a group of interconnected people in an isolated location and lets old resentments boil over into murder. Set on a windswept island off the Irish coast during a lavish wedding, the novel shifts between perspectives as the celebration sours and a body turns up. Foley and Ware share a structural affinity: both authors build their mysteries by giving each character a chapter to make their case while hiding their worst impulses.

The atmospheric setting here is more explicitly hostile than The It Girl's Oxford, with the island's remoteness creating genuine danger when things go wrong. Both books play with the reader's sympathies, making each character alternately likeable and suspicious. The wedding setting adds social pressure that mirrors the academic pressure of Oxford, forcing characters into proximity when they would rather be anywhere else.

Foley's pacing is relentless, with the timeline jumping between the wedding morning, the night before, and the aftermath in a way that creates constant small revelations. Readers who could not stop turning pages during The It Girl will find The Guest List delivers the same addictive quality.