A review by ed_moore
A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.75

‘A Good Girls Guide to Murder’ is the story of Pip, a college aged girl who decides to write her EPQ on how Sal Singh, the murderer of Andie Bell 5 years ago and victim of his own suicide, is actually innocent. It was a murder mystery with so many elements and threads to follow that it was hard to keep track which clues tied to which suspects, but ultimately ended in quite an ungrounded outcome.

The plot was extremely engaging and kept me listening (I audio booked it resulting in one of my main criticisms), however though engaging due to its nature as a murder mystery with so many theories and angles the writing itself wasn’t so great. Jackson’s prose was quote typical of a YA and in no manner anything remarkable, just did the job in telling the story, and her characters were also mostly one dimensional and flat, the suspects were bad and everyone else was good, they served their role in the plot and nothing more.
 
The story itself would probably warrant somewhere between 3-3.5 but it has really been dragged down by the narration of the audiobook. Though this is no fault of the writing it was a format I really didn’t enjoy, dramatised by voice actors for scenes of speech and especially added sound effects, rings and voice distortions for phone calls. I just didn’t enjoy such. The mystery was engaging but everything else was just fine.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings