Book Review: A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder By Holly Jackson (Spoiler free!)

A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder is a really fun YA mystery thriller following Pip, a high school senior who is convinced that a boy in her town was framed for the murder of his girlfriend. However, he is not here to defend himself as he committed suicide after the fact.. Or did he?

This book is such a page turner and I had a lot of fun reading it. Pip really is a little detective-to-be and we unravel the story through her eyes. She is examining the murder for a school project (or so she says) and I thought it was really fun to be able to read her school notes. This included a map she drew, interview transcripts and a journal she was keeping for the project.

A lot of the story is just Pip and Ravi going to talk to different people about the case. There are multiple suspects and because Pip always recounts what happens, it’s super easy to keep track of what’s happening. The story is interwoven in cool ways that are unexpected and it seems well plotted. It becomes a classic whodunnit.

The book starts out a little slower but the pace picks up a lot later own, especially after the halfway mark. So much so, that it almost felt like the second half was completely different from the first half. Of course, because this review is spoiler free, I won’t go into too much detail, but towards the end it felt like the story became so fantastical that it was a little hard to believe at times. This was a shame, because in the first half of the book, the realism of the story was what made it stand out to me.

Trigger warnings: bullying, suicide, animal death, drug abuse, kidnapping, murder, racism, statutory rape, death threats. This book deals with A LOT of heavy subjects so please caution.