The Book:
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson
(A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder #1)
Published May 2nd 2019 by Electric Monkey
Date read: November 7, 2021
The Characters:
Pippa
Ravi
Buy it on Bookshop.org | Amazon
The Plot (from Goodreads):
The case is closed. Five years ago, schoolgirl Andie Bell was murdered by Sal Singh. The police know he did it. Everyone in town knows he did it.
But having grown up in the same small town that was consumed by the murder, Pippa Fitz-Amobi isn’t so sure. When she chooses the case as the topic for her final year project, she starts to uncover secrets that someone in town desperately wants to stay hidden. And if the real killer is still out there, how far will they go to keep Pip from the truth?
The Twist:
Sal didn’t lie about having an alibi. He really was at Max’s house until 12:15. The friends got texts that blackmailed them into saying that his alibi was a lie. (Max had been drunk driving with the rest of the friends in a car, he committed a hit and run leaving a man in a wheelchair). Naomi was distraught over the guilt.
Pip found an image on Max’s private Facebook that proved Sal was still there at 12:09. She and Ravi recreated the supposed murder to prove it wouldn’t be possibly before Sal had arrived home at about 1am.
Unfortunately, Pip didn’t think this would be enough to go to the police to get the case reopened. She also wanted to protect Naomi from the fallout regarding the drunk driving accident (Naomi and Cara Ward had recently lost their mother).
Mr. Ward was the “mystery older man”. He and Andie had hooked up a few times. She showed up at his house on the night she died, they fought, and she fell and hit her head, but left his house alive. He didn’t know what happened to her after she left his house. A few days later, he found who he thought was Andie walking down the road towards Fairview. He picked her up and kept her prisoner in his old house a few towns over.
This girl wasn’t Andie. Her name was Isla, and she had a neurological disability.
Pip realized that Becca (Andie’s sister) was the actual killer. Andie had gone home after hitting her head at Mr. Ward’s house. Becca confronted Andie about dealing roofies to their classmates, since Max had drugged and raped Becca. Andie brushed it off saying Becca was lucky to have someone interested in her. Becca got angry and pushed Andie. Andie died from the second head injury after choking on her vomit while Becca just watched. Becca put Andie in her own trunk, drove her to the nearby farm, and put her body in the septic tank.
The Ending:
Max was arrested for drugging and raping Becca (and other girls). Howie was arrested for dealing. Mr. Ward was arrested for kidnapping Isla. Becca was arrested for negligent homicide, improper disposal of a body, and tampering with evidence.
Pip and Ravi share a brief kiss.
Questions:
Why did the town just assume that Andie was dead without a body? Wouldn’t this be a missing persons case, if a cold one?
Why wasn’t Sal autopsied? I thought all deaths by suicide were automatically autopsied, although maybe that’s not the case in small towns. If Elliot Ward put Andie’s blood underneath Sal’s fingernails with tweezers, I feel like it would be immediately obvious that it wasn’t natural. I believe Elliot also put a bag over Sal’s head to speed up his death, which would leave signs of strangulation.
How in the world did Elliot Ward not realize that the girl he kidnapped wasn’t Andie? If she had a history of drug problems as well as a neurological disability, he could have just let her go. As a trusted member of the community, I feel like it would’ve been easy for him to say Isla was just on drugs if Isla tried to say he had kidnapped her. That would be less of a stretch than some of the stretches in this book.
In America, septic tanks are below ground with just a small vent for gases. How did Becca get a body into one without digging it up with heavy machinery? (Unless they’re above ground in rural England, where the original book takes place).
The Review:
Unpopular opinion alert: A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder was cute but just okay. Take my review with a grain of salt, though, because it’s a YA book and I am not the target demographic.
I loved how it was set up. The book is a compilation of Pip’s research, her log of thoughts, and a third person account of her daily life while working on this case. There are some fun things thrown in like a murder map, illustrations of her thought processes, snapshots of someone’s calendar, and text message passages. All this made it a more fun read than just a novel, and I really enjoyed all the different mediums.
Pip was a great main character. While she is very clever, she’s also certainly flawed. She makes a bunch of mistakes and silly unsafe decisions, but this is fitting with her age and the YA genre. I liked her character overall.
This is certainly a young adult book. I try to rate YA novels differently than adult novels, instead of spending the whole time thinking, “Where are your parents??” As someone who reads a ton of crime and thriller novels, there were a lot of plot holes regarding the case itself. If you’re a crime buff I’d probably give this one a pass; otherwise, it’s a fun little escape you’re sure to enjoy with some suspension of belief!
If you’ve already read this one, expand the spoiler tab above to see where I thought the plot fell short.
Follow me on Bloglovin’!
QOTD: Did your parents let you run wild as a kid, or did they want to know where you were at all times? My family was the latter.
