Review of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder

If you love intrepid girl detectives and love true crime, you definitely need to read this one. Check out my Review of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder!

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There aren’t many things I love more than a smart, intrepid girl detective – in fact, I did a whole post on Best YA Mysteries for Nancy Drew Fans. So I was super curious to read A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson.

Published in the United States on February 4, 2020 by Delacorte (originally published in May 2019 by Electric Monkey)

Synopsis: Pretty and popular high school senior Andie Bell was murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh, who then killed himself.

Five years later, high school senior Pippa Fitz-Amobi sees how the tragedy still haunts her town. But she can’t shake the feeling that there was more to what happened that day. How could Sal possibly have been a killer?

Pip decides to reexamine the closed case for her senior project and discovers a trail of dark secrets that might actually prove Sal innocent . . . and the line between past and present begins to blur.

Someone in Fairview doesn’t want Pip digging around for answers, and now her own life might be in danger.

What Else Has Holly Jackson Written?

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is her debut book. It was published in the UK in 2019. The UK version takes place in Little Kilton, but the books have been Americanized for their publication in the U.S. In the American version, Pip and her family live in Fairview, Connecticut.

Review of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder

Pippa Fitz-Amobi needs a capstone senior project. So she decides to delve into the most famous true crime case in her Connecticut town: the tragic story of a teen girl who was murdered by her boyfriend, who then committed suicide.

But as Pippa delves into the case, she begins to question everything she thought she knew.

A Good Girls’ Guide to Murder was a really fun read that seemed a little bit inspired by season one of the Serial podcast, which also looked at the case of a high school student who was assumed to have been murdered by her boyfriend. There was a huge development in the case in 2022, when his conviction was vacated by the state.

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder flips the case a little by having Pippa team up with the brother of the suspect, who also never believed that his brother was guilty.

I loved the way Pippa doggedly tracked down suspects and journaled all her clues and suspicions as part of her project.

Though she receives anonymous threats, she never backs down. (Anonymous threats always seem a little cheesy to me, and make the book seem more “teen,” but

I did spot one person I thought was up to something pretty early on, but I think the book did a great job of presenting a lot of possible scenarios. Being (partially) correct didn’t dampen my enthusiasm for this great YA mystery.

Love YA mysteries? Check out the Nancy Drew list!

I also review the final book in the Good Girls Guide to Murder trilogy, As Good as Dead, here.

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AGGGTM Puzzle pack, AGGGTM quiz and more!

Check out my entire series review of The Good Girl’s Guide to Murder trilogy.

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