I just finished reading Holly Jackson’s debut novel, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, and wanted to share some thoughts, because I really think a lot of you might like this one!
I’d been seeing this book around Instagram and social media for a little while now, and obviously, being a true crime junkie (seriously, all I watch on YouTube is true crime videos, vegan recipes, and yoga videos. My watch history is questionable), that murder board cover with the red string immediately caught my eye. After a couple friends and fellow readers recommended it, I decided to jump and ordered my own copy!
GGGTM (yes, we’re abbreviating already) follows Pippa Fitz-Amobi, who usually goes by Pip, and Pip is a girl after all our own true crime loving hearts. Pippa is a senior in high school and it’s time for her to do her senior capstone project, but instead of choosing an ordinary, boring, or safe subject, no, this girl decides she is going to solve a local murder. Five years prior, local high schooler Andie Bell was murdered, and her body was never found. Andie’s boyfriend, Sal, was suspected of the murder and (allegedly) committed suicide before he could be arrested and formally charged. Despite the fact that he didn’t live to have a trial, he was thoroughly tried in the court of public opinion and the media, and police eventually said he had been the one to kill Andie…based on some rather shaky evidence.
Pip is not satisfied with this answer, and actually believes Sal is innocent. She knew Sal, a sweet guy who stuck up for her when she was being bullied, and can’t imagine him committing such a heinous crime, so for her capstone project, she decides to disregard what the police decided and open her own investigation, hoping that she will eventually find that Sal was, in fact, not the killer. With the help of Sal’s little brother, Ravi, and her own wit and dangerous ambitions, Pip starts hunting down clues to find the truth.
I found the plot of this to be so interesting. Of course, I’m a sucker for any kind of true crime thriller, but I found it even more captivating that the MC in question wasn’t necessary a cop or a detective, but just an ordinary girl with access to the same resources we all have, using her own methods to figure out the truth. I think most of us have occasionally busted out some Sherlock level social media sleuthing, but in this novel, Pip uses her hardcore creeping for the greater good and I absolutely love it. From Facebook stalking to catfishing, she pulls out all the stops using the technology available to her and I loved every second of it.
I also really liked the plot of the murder itself, and how as we dug in deeper and deeper we saw the dark things that were lurking behind the surface and all the players who could be involved. It was actually a really good mystery, and the author set it all up incredibly well. Hats off to her, honestly. I had theories about who I thought might have been involved, and I’ll be honest—my theories ended up being wrong. Jackson successfully tosses in quite a few red herrings and twists and turns so you might be able to guess it, but you might not, and either way it’s a lot of fun to follow along as Pip unravels everyone’s lies and ulterior motives. Even though I didn’t get it right, I had a heck of a lot of fun theorizing alongside her.
I also really loved the way the characters were portrayed in this book. I felt that everyone from our MC to our victim was very real and fleshed out. Pip was a really relatable character, and it seemed to me that she grew throughout the novel, acknowledging her own flaws and bettering herself as a person. There’s a part where she realizes that she kind of loses track of herself and who she is if she isn’t actively working on something all the time that I thought was an extremely genuine and accessible quality for a lot of readers, and I loved seeing that side of her. I really liked that despite the fact that she’s a young man who decided to literally solve a major crime as part of a school project, she’s no Mary Sue.
And speaking of Mary Sues, I also enjoyed the fact that the victim was a flawed character, too. Despite the media’s initial portrayal of her as a perfect All-American teen, as the book goes on, we find that Andie was a real person just like everyone else, and she was far from the perfect girl the news made her out to be. She did some bad things, and her disappearance wasn’t as black and white as people wanted it to be. I loved that. So often in books we have this victim who is just this flawless human being who could not have possibly wronged anyone, but I liked seeing it approached in a different way. Pippa says it best herself:
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.”
This book was so fun and so good and so well written, and I loved it, and I highly recommend it. I also just found out that there is a second book, also starring Pip, where she continues on her true crime investigating streak, and I immediately added it to my wishlist. I am all for more Pip and more mysteries. She may just be our modern answer to Nancy Drew—a Nancy armed with a laptop, a smartphone, and a trusty ball of red string.
You just happen to have red string ready to go?” Ravi said.
“I have every color of string.”
“Of course you do.”
What about everyone else? Have you read A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder? Do you plan to? What did you think? Do you want to get the next book in Pip’s series? Let me know in the comments! As always, you know I’d love to talk. <3