Book Review #67: A Good Girl's Guide To Murder by Holly Jackson

Hey Guys x

Here's another book review, this time in the form of 'A Good Girl's Guide To Murder'.

This is a book that I hadn't heard much about until I actually bought it. I remember going into a WHSmiths and it was in their 'recommended' section (along with 'One of Us Is Lying'), and I thought it looked kind of interesting, so I bought them both. Then I went online and saw that the online support for both of them was massive!

Five years before, Andie Bell was murdered by Sal Singh. There's no doubt in anyone's mind that Sal was guilty... that is, apart from Pip, who has never quite believed the police's version of events. So when she has to do a class project, she knows exactly what case she's going to investigate. But when the evidence becomes too obvious to ignore, and Pip gets deeper and deeper into the lives of two people that she never really knew, can she push her personal connections aside to discover the truth? And if she does discover the truth, how far is the real guilty party willing to go to stop Pip from revealing all?

I loved this book!

For some reason, it took me quite a long time to get through, but every time I picked it up I was sucked right back into the story. Because that's what this story does, it completely sucks you in from the first page you read. You can't help but get involved with these character's lives even though you don't know them.

Speaking of the characters, how great is Pip as a main character?
She's someone that you instantly warm to and like a lot, so much so that even when she's doing questionable things, you can't help but not care, just because it's her that's doing them. I really admired her persistence and tenacity, and I really liked the fact that these things were just a part of her personality, rather than being related to this one specific case.

The other characters that make up the story however are not as great to read about as Pip is. In fact, the only character that I'd say is as entertaining as Pip is Ravi Singh, who is a great character in his own right, but is amazing when paired with Pip. In fact, I think he was my favourite character overall, even more than Pip, just because of the way he acts and the fact that he is still able to have a sense of humour despite everything he's gone through.

But apart from those two, the vast majority of the rest of the characters were quite two dimensional. Without giving anything away, the characters with the most development story-wise were the characters that you least expected. Whereas the characters that you wanted to know about, like Pip's group of best friends, had hardly anything. I can't even remember the majority of their names because they were pretty much non-existent. Or at the very least, not important to the story at all.

However, what is important to the story is the murder mystery surrounding Andie Bell.
If you're into murder mysteries, then this is the book for you because everything is done perfectly. The right things are teased at the right moments, you're working things out right when Pip does, and there are moments when you suspect that nearly all of the characters are responsible for Andie Bell's death.

Now, without spoilers, we have to talk about the reveal, which is one of the most important things about a murder mystery. About 50 pages (or less) into the book, I thought I had guessed who the killer was. And I know that I said that you guess everyone at one point, but I was so convinced, and without giving anything away, I wasn't exactly wrong. And I know that guessing the killer so early on would definitely be seen as a bad thing in a book like this, but the book is written in such a way that, not only is it kind of impossible to completely guess the killer and what happened to Andie, but even if you do have a good guess, as I did, you have no idea why it happened, and the reveal is extremely surprising whether you know the truth or not.

Overall, read this book. Read it, guess the killer all the way through, and fall deeper and deeper into the lives of Andie Bell and Sal Singh, as Pip did. Because this story is amazing!

4/5 Stars!

Lou