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A review by faeriefox
A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
I started this book with high hopes. I had heard very good things about it, but was fairly disappointed. It wasn't all bad, but I had enough issues with it that it lowered my rating significantly.
Firstly, the writing style. As a book aimed toward the YA audience, the prose was far too immature, especially for the dark and possibly triggering themes with, such as SH, suicide, and rape. It felt like the book did not take truly seriously and tried to make light of these things. This was my biggest issue, and brought down my rating the most.
No matter how much I enjoyed the plot, the aforementioned is a huge problem and I hate that anyone could be exposed to that without advance notice. The content warnings on StoryGraph are not thorough enough, and I feel like most of these people who read the book must not have these types of triggers. There is a detailed explanation of how a suicide was allegedly committed, many mentions of rape, an adult-minor relationship, and more.
Also because of this writing style, dialogue felt very forced and unbelievable, and because of this these 17+ year old characters acted and sounded like they were no older than ten. It was really difficult to really fall into the story because of this. The characters were all also very flat and had little to no development throughout the story.
I also felt that most of the solve kind of came out of nowhere, and that there were too many suspects at time during the story; I didn't even really try to figure out what happened because I was quite confused.
All of that being said, there were some good points. The premise was overall interesting, and while I was too confused to actually figure out what happened, I was interested enough to finish the book and hear the solve, especially as I got further in and more invested. The writing quality also improved slightly towards the end.
Firstly, the writing style. As a book aimed toward the YA audience, the prose was far too immature, especially for the dark and possibly triggering themes with, such as SH, suicide, and rape. It felt like the book did not take truly seriously and tried to make light of these things. This was my biggest issue, and brought down my rating the most.
No matter how much I enjoyed the plot, the aforementioned is a huge problem and I hate that anyone could be exposed to that without advance notice. The content warnings on StoryGraph are not thorough enough, and I feel like most of these people who read the book must not have these types of triggers. There is a detailed explanation of how a suicide was allegedly committed, many mentions of rape, an adult-minor relationship, and more.
Also because of this writing style, dialogue felt very forced and unbelievable, and because of this these 17+ year old characters acted and sounded like they were no older than ten. It was really difficult to really fall into the story because of this. The characters were all also very flat and had little to no development throughout the story.
I also felt that most of the solve kind of came out of nowhere, and that there were too many suspects at time during the story; I didn't even really try to figure out what happened because I was quite confused.
All of that being said, there were some good points. The premise was overall interesting, and while I was too confused to actually figure out what happened, I was interested enough to finish the book and hear the solve, especially as I got further in and more invested. The writing quality also improved slightly towards the end.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Murder, Cursing, Death, and Suicide
Moderate: Body shaming, Bullying, Child death, Adult/minor relationship, Racism, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Grief, Animal death, Emotional abuse, Mental illness, Rape, Sexual assault, and Toxic relationship