A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

Genre: Mystery/Thriller, Romance

One POV, series,Young Adult

Isabella’s Rating: ★★★★

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder follows Pip, a teenager in high school, resurfacing the case of Andie Bell who was murdered in their town 17 years ago. Pip doesn’t believe how the case went down, and wants to find out the truth behind the case of Andie Bell.

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is the first book in a trilogy, along with Good Girl, Bad Blood, and As Good as Dead.There is also a novela that is 0.5 in the series which is called Kill Joy and explains why Pip felt so strongly about this case. This series is done and will not have any more books written for this series, but Holly Jackson has since written other thrillers, like Five Survive and The Reappearance of Rachel Price. There is also now a season of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder out now on Netflix that was just released recently.

I have never read a thriller series before, and this one was so much fun for what it was. I feel like some series can get dragged on just because the first book was hyped up so much, but you can tell through the writing and plot lines that Holly Jackson had planned for a series. This book definitely had a strong start and a strong finish, with a lot of different mysteries going on all at once. I also really liked the podcast element in the series, where Pip documented all of the interviews that she had with friends and family of Andie Bell. The book also contained other pieces of media like previous recordings and pieces of evidence from the original investigation. We also dove deep into Pip’s life, along with all of her friends, who are side characters in the first book, but become more relevant as the series progresses. Ravi, who is the love interest in this book, was such a nice addition to the story, because Pip and Ravi solve the case together, and while the investigation isn’t going on, we get to see them fall in love. Overall, this series is so refreshing and easy to read, and is a great pallet cleanser book when in a slump.

While this book was very good, there was also a lot of information dumped in the middle of the book. Pip keeps a log of all her suspects for who may have killed Andie Bell, so as we go through the book we meet lots of people who are all a part of a lot of different families. While that may be easy to keep up with, each family had their own drama going on making the plot a little messy. One of my least favorite things that a thriller can do is confuse the reader just so they don’t guess the plot twist at the end. Personally I think it’s just a cop out for not making your plot twist subtle enough throughout the book. While I don’t think Holly Jakcson was trying to do this, there were some points where I had to go back and figure out who was who and what they were involved in.

Overall I would recommend A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder to anyone who is looking for a thriller series that will get you invested and has a fun story line, a good mystery, and a small subplot of romance. As the series goes on, the books get a little less YA in my opinion, because of the topics talked about in the books, and the dark theme. I also think that as the series goes on, the books get better, and the mysteries get way more interesting.