Reviews - Good Girl, Bad Blood

4.79k reviews for:

Good Girl, Bad Blood

Holly Jackson

4.26 AVERAGE

dpsmom's review against another edition

3.25

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

The second installment of the Good Girl's Guide to Murder series, this one was much like the first, not bad, but not amazing either.

Pip is back in action, solving a missing person's case in the small town in which she lives. My first thought...for being such a small town, it seems like an awful lot of people are either murdered or missing. Yes, I know it's a fictional book, but much like the later seasons of Grey's Anatomy, one has to question how many bad things can realistically go wrong before one calls BS? Interestingly, this plot wasn't even that much after the end of the first book...

the trial for Max Hastings is just getting started and there's a memorial for Andie and Sal

.

Once the book gets going, it reads much like the first book. There didn't seem to be much difference between the two in regards to Pip's actions in solving this case. She's still the same old Pip (for now), interviewing people, researching facts, doing stakeouts. Ravi is by her side for most of the book, but otherwise, it's structure is strikingly similar to the first novel.

And while the ending is different than the first in the series, it still climaxes to a

traumatic event involving Pip and the accused, giving it the same feel as book 1

.

Things that were hard for me in this novel: The book moves at a pretty decent pace, but being busy and having other books in my reading pile, I didn't read this book daily. Which meant when I came back to it, I struggled for the first few page to remember what Pip was doing at the time, and what had just happened. It wasn't too much of a problem, but it was annoying and there were times near the end when I couldn't remember something mentioned much earlier in the book because I didn't read it through quickly. I'd suggest reading this one over a much shorter time than myself...a month was far too long.

One reason I didn't pick this one up as much was because it was so similar to the first book, my other current reads were more exciting and drew my attention more. It wasn't bad, per se, it just wasn't great...forgettable is a good adjective here.

The characters were, obviously, pretty much the same from book 1 to book 2. The only exception is

near the end, when Pip decides to be a little less rule following, good girl complex and does certain things that would move her out of that category. I've heard this is a set up for the third book, which I do plan to read to finish out the series, so it would make sense if Pip's personality started to change to accommodate what I think is coming

. One thing that wasn't wrapped up that really bothered me is

Pip's friend Ant. In book 2 he seems like a jackass for no apparent reason, having little compassion and pushing his friends away at every opportunity. There was no resolution there. The reader had no idea why Ant was being an ass...he was never really confronted either. My only thought for why Holly Jackson would writing in a character like Ant would be because he's going to pop up in a major way in book 3

. I will recommend reading the first book before the second book; while not directly related, there are

too many references to things that happened in the first book (the trial, the memorial) which help propel the plot along somewhat

.

Overall, if you've invested time in the first book, I'd go ahead and move into the second book (and possibly even the third book...who knows, it may crap the bed) to finish the series. It's a fast read that's easy to follow if you read it more frequently.