A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

This debut Young Adult novel deserves the hype and praise it's been receiving. It was a book I found myself looking forward to getting back to whenever real life got in the way of reading and which I finished with the same sense of satisfaction that comes from finishing a good meal.

The premise is that bright, independent, highly organised Pippa, in her final year at school and planning to go on to Cambridge, uses her EPQ project to investigate the alleged murder and suicide, five years earlier, of two kids from her school. She tells her teachers that she wants to explore the impact of social media on how the deaths were understood and how that affected the investigation. Her real motivation is that she doesn't accept that the boy show more accused of murder was guilty.. So, Pippa uses her summer vacation to investigate the five-year-old crime.

What follows is an engrossing mystery that kept me guessing and hungry for answers right up to the end, which also managed to do interesting non-pretentious things with form and has a main character who is easy to believe in.

The plot is twisty. The suspect pool is diverse. The method of investigation is quirky but believable. I thought the idea of presenting the investigation using the project log format required by the EPQ worked very well. As well as providing a clear structure, it displayed the way in which Pippa's logical mind, well-suited to this dispassionate reporting, kept bouncing off her passion to find out what really happened, resulting in some innovative and often risky courses of action.

I found it refreshing to read a story set in a realistic version of a modern English school. Although the story is Young Adult and therefore avoids the direct depiction of some of the action, the story still covers various kinds of abuse, assault, drug abuse and bullying without pulling any punches and without falling into moral outrage. I admired that way in which Pippa navigates through these things without getting distracted and mostly keeping her anger under control.

Pippa is one of the main strengths of the books. She's real and engaging. She's bright, methodical and persistent and often brave. She's also vulnerable, often scared and when things go wrong sometimes becomes so distraught that she can't function. When she's at home, playing with her little brother, having dinner with her family or dancing with her dog, she's still very much a young girl. When she's facing down a drug dealer you can see the woman she will become. When she's with her friends you can see where her strength comes from.

Perhaps the most distinctive thing about Pippa is her unwillingness to settle for easy labels. She wants to scrape those off and see what lies beneath. In the early chapters, we're given an insight into how Pippa thinks and how her background has affected that thinking when Pippa reflects on people's puzzled reaction to her pale white skin when they see her dark-skinned father and little brother.

"The giant Nigerian man was quite evidently her stepfather and Joshua her half-brother. But Pip didn’t like using those words, those cold technicalities. The people you love weren’t algebra: to be calculated, subtracted, or held at arm’s length across a decimal point. Victor and Josh weren’t just three-eighths hers, not just forty per cent family, they were fully hers."
My only criticism of the book is the final chapter. It's one of those "Three Month's Later" things. It's well-written but, to me, it seemed too neat and too preachy. The rest of the book convinced me, even when it surprised me, but this seemed too simple.

I highly recommend this book. I hope Holly Jackson goes on to produce more work like this. show less

This was so much fun. The mystery was well done, but more importantly, the characters were genuinely enjoyable. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, good characters are the most important part of a book!!! And Pip was such an enjoyable character. She’s a quirky MC who actually managed to feel realistic without feeling incredibly cringe. And Ravi? Delightful. I liked watching their relationship grow, and thank you Holly Jackson for using the “I have to lie to you to save you” trope in a way that wasn’t annoying. I have decided I love books like this where a teenager inserts themselves into a police investigation and turns out to be more competent than the adults working the case, while constantly doing dangerous and show more illegal things themselves. Is it unrealistic? Probably. Do I care? Absolutely not. show less

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson starts out when a high school senior and aspiring journalist, Pippa, decides that her Senior Capstone project will be to investigate the disappearance of high school student Andie Bell. It has been presumed that she was murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh, but her body has never been located. At the time, the evidence and witness accounts all pointed to Sal but before he could be formally charged, he was found dead, an apparent suicide. But Pippa, who knew Sal, remembers him as a kind and gentle boy, and could not imagine him lashing out at Andie in any manner. She connects with Sal’s younger brother, Ravi, and the two embark on a quest to clear Sal. They do not realize that by digging show more into the evidence and re-interviewing the witnesses, they are exposing secrets that others want to stay hidden and putting themselves in danger.

This YA teen crime thriller is both fast paced, intricate and addictive. At first I did think that Pippa was a little to good to be true, very mature for her age and she seemed to know exactly how to progress her theories about the crime, but eventually, she shows that she is indeed an impulsive teen who sometimes acts before she thinks. I was a little hesitant about reading a YA crime thriller, but this book totally worked for me. I liked the main characters and I thought the plot was intelligent and there were a few twists that certainly held my attention.

The book is written with journal-like entries, charts, text screenshots and interview recordings and this unique format brought a sense of reality to the story. For me, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder was a book that I found hard to put down, I was constantly wanting to read “just a few pages more” as Pippa stumbled ever closer to the truth. show less

This has all the trappings of a YA murder mystery...but it turned out to be so much more sophisticated. Sure, there were moments of levity that were welcome breaks from the surprisingly dark plot (i think this should come with some trigger warnings), and I really enjoyed the protagonists' humor...but this was a really complicated cold-case murder mystery, a very well crafted puzzle, with satisfying twists and ending. The titular good girl makes for a brilliant detective too. By the end I was exhausted and heavily invested and very much looking forward to the second book in the series.

High school senior Pippa Fitz-Amobi decides to investigate a cold case murder for her capstone project. Five years ago, popular senior Andie Bell disappeared. Her boyfriend, Sal Singh, was found dead a few days after Andie’s disappearance with traces of Andie’s blood on his hands and with Andie’s cell phone. Although Andie has been declared dead, her body has never been found. Pip has doubts about Sal’s guilt, and she believes that there is evidence that the police never discovered because they stopped investigating once Sal’s body was discovered. Pip interviews Andie and Sal’s friends, family, teachers, and other acquaintances with the help of an unlikely source. Pip knows she is onto something when she starts to receive show more threatening messages. If Andie’s real killer is still out there, is Pip’s life in danger?

This book reminds me of the Nancy Drew mysteries I loved in my tween years, in a really good way. She’s a 21st century version of Nancy, and I really warmed to her. The audio version is lots of fun with multiple voice actors creating the phone and in-person recorded interviews with the suspects. show less

I actually found my first review of this back in the early days of my blog and oh boy, the cringe! Please don't go and read it, I am begging you.

I do still agree with my past self that this book was amazing and perfect! Such a great murder mystery with diverse and fully-fleshed out characters, including the perpetrators involved in the Andie Bell and Sal Singh murders.

Setting this up as a senior capstone project made it more believable that all of this could be done. I've seen some discussion of how Pip falls into the white savior trope, but I do believe that this is mitigated quickly in the beginning. We find out when she talks with Ravi, Sal's little brother, that he's tried to find answers for years and everyone ignores him. He show more actually says something along the lines of how Pip will have an easier time getting answers specifically because it's for a school project. Plus, at the end of the novel, Pip tells the whole school (and country since there's national media there too) that Ravi was her partner in all of this; she even invites him on stage to talk about his brother and how good he was.

Again, I mentioned in my first review how the book is about creating monsters and trying to fit people into specific narratives that make us (the world at large) feel better. With Andie Bell's murder, the town was so ready to not bad mouth the beautiful, perfect daughter that they all forgot that Andie was human. She was a bully, blackmailer, cheater, a drug dealer, plus she was struggling with self-esteem issues and a father who verbally abused her saying that her only worth was how she looked. Andie Bell was a complicated person with multitudes just like all humans are. The town was so ready to accept that Andie was this golden girl and that Sal murdered her because it fit the "usual" narrative of the "outsider" committing the crime.

Pippa ends her presentation with a speech about monsters and the town's culpability that I believe sum up the novel well: "Though this story does have its monsters, I've found that it is not one that can be so easily divided into the good and the bad. In the end, this was a story about people and their different shades of desperation, crashing up against each other...There's one final player in this story, Fairview, and it's us. Collectively, we turned a beautiful life into the myth of a monster. We turned a family home into a ghost home. And from now on we must do better."

I omitted part of the quote to not give away who was involved because it was such a twist that people should read on their own! show less

I really liked this. I thought I would - I'm really enjoying all the true crime inspired cold case type mysteries lately. And it was good.

Pippa was smart and determined and I enjoyed her quirky pun filled sense of humour. She was mostly safety conscious until towards the end when she started to make some really dumb decisions (breaking and entering, following suspects at night alone, blackmailing the possibly dangerous drug dealer, etc).

I liked the progression of the investigation and how Pippa worked to uncover the evidence. Particularly at the start when she was busy compiling the details from the news reports. I also really liked the focus on how the media and the town at large condemned Sal without ever looking at the facts and show more regardless of the lack of conviction - or charges for the matter. Especially their condemnation of Ravi and his family. The mystery itself was interesting and I was drawn into the drama and speculation of who was guilty and what happened.

I loved her relationship with Ravi. The romance was incidental rather than a main plot line. Pip and Ravi were mainly friends for the majority of the book and whatever happens between them in terms of defining their relationship happens off screen. It was a refreshing change of pace for a young adult read.

It wasn't perfect but it was pretty good. I'll definitely be picking up the next one in the series. Solid 4 stars. show less