Review by rinku - A Good Girl's Guide to Murder

rinku 's review for:

A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

3.5

adventurous dark emotional informative mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder gets 3.5 stars from me. I really enjoyed the mystery, even though it was a bit unbelievable at times. The characters are great as well and I have a feeling that there’s more going on in the town than we’ve seen in this volume.

Pip has to do a school project and decides to look at the case of Sal Singh who supposedly killed Andy Bell. Almost everyone in her town is sure that this is what happened, but Pip doesn’t believe it and starts to investigate. I was quite invested in the story and the investigation is quite fun. The format with the protocol entries and transcripts incorporated into the text work great as well. Additionally, the story has some quite creepy and really dramatic moments that I also enjoyed a lot. Furthermore, I found it interesting how the book talked about Ravi’s family and what they have to deal with.

Sadly, some moments were just a bit too cliché for me. Of course,

someone else would come in while they were sneaking around in the house. The dark secret that they run over a guy with the car was so cliché as well. I also expected that something would happen to the dog but not that it would die

. Besides this, it was a bit unbelievable that

Pip pretending to be Emma would just work, or that she just meets Becca by chance

. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the solution of the mystery, it was just a bit confusing. I also found the aspect weird that

a girl pressured her teacher into sleeping with her. I don’t know, the message is just a bit weird since the teacher is the one in a power position

I don’t have so much to say about the character. I didn’t expect the cast to be so diverse as it was, and I especially appreciate that Pip has a stepfather that she likes and that they’re also a mixed family. Pip is okay but a bit “not like other girls”. I furthermore couldn’t understand why she didn’t tell anyone what was going on, she could’ve told at least her parents. I also like Ravi, he’s kinda cute.

In my opinion, the hype for A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is justified. It’s a fun book but also can be quite serious at times which I always like.

Content Warnings