A review by flyinglark
A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5

Based purely on the feelings this book sent me, I’d give A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder a 4/5. It was exhilarating and my sleep cycle has been wrecked listening to the audiobook before bed.

Pip is such an interesting character. She can be summed up with “thinking of a dead girl is easier than thinking of myself.” The lengths she went to solve the murder of Andie Bell were wild
from blackmailing, stakeouts, and breaking into a house to impersonation. It almost became obsessive to Pip, to fill a void in her life when she wasn’t an academically inclined good girl. I like how this side of Pip was introduced right away when her supervising teacher said not to contact the families involved, and in the first chapter she is trapezing to Ravi Singh’s house. However, I had to suspend my belief at times. Pip was risking her life sometimes, going to interviews alone, the lack of oversight on the project, the accusations/confirmation biases and research ethics were thrown out the window.


I thought there would be more Ravi. Amerincanizing the book may have lost some of the cultural context. Fairview clearly didn’t have a fair view of the case. The book glossed over the racial implications too.

Overall, this book was a ride, but I need time to process more of what happened.
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