A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson on January 5, 2021
Genres: Young Adult Fiction / Law & Crime, Young Adult Fiction / Social Themes / Prejudice & Racism, Young Adult Fiction / Thrillers & Suspense / General
Pages: 400
Format: Paperback
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“I’ve already learned my lesson here: when you catch someone lying about a murdered girl, you go ask them why.”
This book follows Pip Fitz-Amobi who decided that murder will be the subject of her senior capstone project. She doesn’t believe that Sal Singh murdered his high school girlfriend, Andie Bell, and she intends to prove it. But Andie’s body has never been found and all the evidence seems to point to Sal. Friends who had provided alibis for Sal for the time of Andie’s disappearance admitted they had initially lied to the police. Andie’s phone was found on Sal’s body and traces of her blood under his fingernails. If that wasn’t enough to convince everyone he’d killed her, Sal had sent an “I did it” text message to his father before committing suicide. But as Pip begins to dig deeper into Andie and Sal’s lives, lie after lie begins to be revealed, and a growing list of suspects emerges: a too-friendly high school teacher, a mysterious older boy with a fake Facebook profile, a girl Andie had bullied, a local drug dealer, a police officer who could have removed evidence from Andie’s house. When Pip begins receiving notes threatening her if she doesn’t stop digging into Andie’s murder, she’s certain she’s on the track of the real killer.
My thoughts on this book are conflicted. I enjoyed it, but to me, it was not memorable, nor fully believable. I could not get past the thought that an average high schooler could do the things she did while also outsmarting police. Holly Jackson wrote very well that keeps the reader engaged. Each chapter, she added a new suspect and then your thought on who the killer could have been are changed. I, however, did not feel engaged to the point that I couldn’t wait to get home and finish the book.
I gave A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder a three-star rating only for the simple fact that it was a little too ‘young adult’ for my liking. Now, if you were a teenager, then this is a great book for you! Especially, for the young ones interested in crime solving. I just prefer my crime to be a little more R-rated.