Pippa Fitz-Amobi is a 17-year-old high schooler with an opinion unlike the rest of her town—she thinks Sal Singh didn't kill Andie Bell five years ago.
When the opportunity presents itself to find the truth, Pippa disguises her investigation as a school project and interviews not only Andie and Sal's friends but also those closest to her. What she finds is anything but ordinary, and although she goes in hoping to clear an innocent boy's name, she realizes it might not be so cut and dry.
Let's begin!
Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book! The characters were well thought out, and the mystery was both expansive and wrought with twists and turns. It's not every day I'm caught off guard by twists (I'm a huge mystery fan), but this one got me more than once!
Pippa is a strong main character throughout the novel, and I enjoyed her relationship with Ravi, the brother of the presumed killer. They had a strong dynamic in exploring this case, and I liked the deeper connection he brought to the table. A Good Girl's Guide to Murder isn't another teenage detective story; it's a search for the truth with close, emotional attachments.
While most of the twists and revelations in this story hit the mark for me, the near-end reveal did not sit right (but more on that in the spoiler section of this review). There were so many strong points in the novel that the 'false' ending felt a little far-fetched in comparison. I will say the way the killer connects to the story is fascinating and so well-planted.
And now... onto the deep dive! *spoilers ahead*
Let's talk about the characters first:
Pippa
I love Pippa! She's strong, fierce, and intelligent. She's refreshingly neutral in her quest for the truth—while she doesn't believe Sal killed Andie, she doesn't choose to look at the case through that lens. She's willing to admit Sal is the killer if it's where the evidence leads.
At certain points she comes on strong with her interviews, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. She asks the hard questions, but she's never annoying.
My only qualm (barely) is that sometimes Pippa lies to the people she's interviewing to get more information. While I don't mind this as a plot point, I take issue in a character that is basically the moral good of the story almost ruining the credibility of her case by lying to those she interviews. She'll pretend to be a friend of someone when she's not, or she'll pretend to be a completely different person to trick someone into talking to her. The redemptive aspect of this is that—because Pippa keeps detailed records of her findings—she's still a credible source.
Ravi
Ravi is so sweet! I love his character, and I enjoyed watching him come out of his shell not only with Pippa, but with the town. After he spent so much time ostracized for his brother's alleged crime, his progression is well written. He wants to help the case, but he knows he can't get directly involved without people seeing his brother in him. He walks a fine line, but as the story unfolds he takes back his place in the world.
I was also overjoyed when he presents alongside Pippa at the end (I was honestly worried all the credit would go to her because it was her project). His temper is minor but understandable. Any time Pippa considers his brother might be in the wrong, Ravi becomes defensive. It makes perfect sense though! Sometimes it felt a little like the author making sure we remember the stakes—that Pippa agreeing with the town does a disservice to Sal and his family—but it isn't overdone.
Elliot Ward
Excellent writing, terrible guy! I love that the author made him a father figure to Pippa. There is more than one occasion where he seems culpable but has an easy way to explain the concern. His character makes you feel sometimes on edge, but mostly paranoid for suspecting him. This book does an incredible job of making you suspect almost everyone on the page, and in circling back to Mr. Ward more than once, you really feel Pippa's struggle.
Mr. Ward killing Sal was heartbreaking, but the way the author spun the story made it so believable. Considering Mr. Ward thought he killed Andie, he wanted a way out that didn't involve going to jail. With Sal's flimsy alibi and connection to Andie, Mr. Ward chose killing his student over being taken away from his daughters. It's so sad for Sal as a character, making Mr. Ward all the more despicable.
Max Hastings
Scumbag! Excellently written. He's this guy that seems chill, but as you read you realize he's the type that finds himself untouchable. He does what he wants without consequence, yet it's impossible to pin him down. You hate him the whole time, and kudos to the author for that. I just wish karma came for him harder in this book! (I wanted him behind bars immediately, haha.)
Becca Bell
Underwritten, but likely on purpose. Becca is barely in the novel, though it's the perfect way to hide her in plain sight. When she's working at the local paper it's difficult to see the relevance, yet I'm so happy it comes back around!
I was upset to learn not only what happened to her, but also that she is Andie's killer. You feel bad for her to some degree. She was young and in such a terrible spot. Andie was cold and loveless to Becca when Becca needed her most, and it's fitting that Andie's death was the result of an accident.
Another upsetting part of this is that—while Andie was in the wrong for how she treated Becca—Andie and Becca were really both victims of their father. Andie dying for that is cruel and makes the father's lack of repercussions infuriating.
Becca's cover-up was so well crafted on such short notice! Almost too well-crafted, but it makes sense that Mr. Ward's meddling is what saved Becca from punishment, not her cunning.
There are many more characters with varying importance, but I think the main ones are covered.
Now, onto plot!
I love, love, love this plot. It's different than most mystery books in how many suspects there are, and how intricately they connect. Pippa's best friend is the younger sister of Naomi from Sal's friend group, which gives her access to many important players. It's as if every character in the book ties to at least two other people, and the interconnectedness is phenomenal.
Max's Twisted Arc
Max's twisted arc was well-paced. The deeper you dive into the story, the more you learn about his cruelty and ego. He's spent so much of his life doing what he wants and getting away with it that the hit-and-run makes sense. I liked this red herring also—you thought the dark secret was the murder of Andie or Sal, but it turns out to be something else entirely. What adds to this is that Naomi and the others were in the car. He not only had to cover up his crime but convince his friends to do so as well.
The Cover-Up
The cover-up plays so strongly into the next plot point: everyone is lying, all the time. You can't understand why Sal's friends want to let this case go. They act suspiciously and don't always tell Pippa the truth. Learning it's because of the hit-and-run brings everything together. Not to mention the messages threatening to expose the hit and run if they talk about the case make you think the killer must be one of the friends. In actuality, Mr. Ward reading Naomi's diary for the information ties everything back to him!
Plus, Naomi unknowingly using the burner sim card Mr. Ward talked to Andie with is excellent—like I said, the interconnectedness is top-tier!
Andie
Andie was written as not just a mystery but an unlikeable one. On the outside, she's the perfect student and the perfect daughter. As soon as you scratch the surface; however, she's manipulative and cold. Learning she's despised by Sal's friend group makes you suspect them. Learning that she always had money, but her dad never gave it to her makes you wonder how she got it. The author convinces you that the money comes from her older, secret boyfriend, only to reveal that she makes it herself by selling drugs.
The "Boyfriend"
You also learn that the boyfriend is Mr. Ward (ew) and that—in Mr. Ward's words—Andie was blackmailing him using their relationship. While I don't trust Mr. Ward as far as I can throw him, the book never refutes his side of the story. Andie's tumultuous nature shows itself when she destroys a painting the deceased Mrs. Ward made shortly before her death—something the story well establishes as deeply important to the Ward family. In this regard, his striking her makes more sense than just wanting her out of the picture for blackmailing him. It also ties together so beautifully that when she stumbled out of his house with a head injury, only to go missing by morning, he thought he killed her.
Something that just doesn't work
A plot point I couldn't get behind: Andie Bell being in the attic. Or, rather, the fake Andie. I was so excited when Pippa put together that Mr. Ward was entrenched in Andie's disappearance and still held the deed to the prior Ward home. All the pieces were falling into place. Police never found her body—she could still be alive. The race to Mr. Ward's prior home exhilarated me. Not knowing if Pippa would arrive first—and then not knowing if Mr. Ward would kill her before she could escape—was one of the most thrilling parts of the story.
All of its grandeur disappeared when I learned that the girl in the attic was not Andie Bell. It was another red herring, but one that didn't ring true. I would not have minded if the attic still didn't contain Andie, but the reasoning behind the fake Andie didn't feel real enough to me.
Mr. Ward's guilt led him to believe a random, homeless girl was what became of Andie, so he kidnapped her and put her in his old attic. As mentioned earlier, so much of this world is artfully crafted—which makes this jarring. Yes, guilt consumes Mr. Ward, and yes he wants to atone while still living his life, but I find it hard to believe he convinced himself this girl was Andie. Even Pippa, who only knew Andie in photographs, could tell this was not the same person. Considering Mr. Ward knew her quite personally, this doesn't make sense.
The Grand Finale
That said, I enjoyed the ending! I liked that everything came back to Becca. It made her push to save the old farmhouse make sense. I'm a bit torn on how Andie died—she began convulsing, clearly due to the injury at Mr. Ward's, and choked on her vomit.
Maybe it's just me, but I would not blame Becca for an injury Mr. Ward caused. I understand she was conscious of Andie's worsening condition and didn't do anything to save her. That's awful, don't get me wrong, but there's no way of refuting Becca's emotional state.
She just had something horrible happen to her by Max, she tells Andie, and Andie could not care less. Becca's traumatized. Then, her sister begins convulsing. Long story short, if Becca called the police—even if no one could save Andie—I think Becca wouldn't have been condemned. I'm not entirely convinced Becca wasn't in some form of shock.
Regardless of my thoughts on what happened, what truly seals Becca's fate isn't her sister's death (in my opinion) but what she does in response to it. Becca decides to frame Max for Andie's murder to make him pay for what he did to her.
I hate Max the entire story, but framing someone else for a murder you think you committed is exactly what Mr. Ward did, and it's wrong. Then, when Max isn't caught for it, she does everything she can to keep her sister from being found to protect herself. Plus, her attempt to kill Pippa is the cherry on top of a guilty cake.
There's certainly more to the plot than this, but I've covered my biggest likes and dislikes. And if I haven't already written your high school book report for you, let's get into something only writers and English Teachers love—writing style.
Narrative Style
This book is written uniquely in that it's split between interviews and a third-person narrative. The interviews feel almost first-person, mostly due to being dialogue-heavy. These chapters also include research, text messages, and summations, which means sometimes Pippa does talk in first-person. The shift in perspectives, I think, is done very well.
Point of View
I'm a huge fan of first-person narratives, though I love this story as it stands. I think a big selling point for me is that—while there are so many characters—the main cast is small. One of my biggest pet peeves is when a story constantly uses names. In this novel, the other main character is Ravi, so pronouns instead of full names are used more freely. Third-person in this narrative also kept the suspense of what would happen to Pippa!
Character Voice
I liked Pippa's voice in this story—it felt specific to her as a character. I love mysteries and crime novels. When you read as many as I do, the moderate ones begin blending. Their voices are all similar, and the crimes are different but the same.
What grabbed me so much about this story is that it's laid out differently from other stories I've read. Many mysteries have suspects connected to the killer and sometimes connected to other suspects. At most, Character A was having an affair with Character B the whole time—gasp!
A Good Girl's Guide to Murder was one of the first mysteries I've read where, if you put a bunch of red strings up on a cork board, every person relates to the others in some way. By making this murder so close-knit, I felt so much more paranoia and excitement. Every character could cast doubt on another, and the doubt bounced between all of them at least once.
The interviews and summations also help solidify Pippa's voice differently than other books in the genre. By reading her interviews, you can't rely on the narrator to tell you how she feels or what she thinks. In this way, the dialogue has to speak for itself to convey the necessary clues and establish the characters. This gives Pippa extra depth we wouldn't otherwise get by reading a conversation between two people at a coffee shop.
It goes without saying that my rating for this novel is quite high! I'd recommend this novel to anyone who loves mystery, and especially those who used to enjoy it but find it too redundant. It's the type of book that will reignite your love for the genre!
Keep in mind that A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson is YA. While this doesn't make a difference to me, if you're more interested in the realism of seasoned detectives or reporters solving a case, this isn't for you. This novel does an excellent job of making events plausible, but it's still a story about a teenager doing police work better than the actual police.
With that said, my overall rating for A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson is... 🪴🪴🪴🪴🌱 out of 5
(Wondering how I grade my book reviews? Read my criteria post here.)
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