Book Review: A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder by Holly Jackson

‘A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder’ by Holly Jackson was released in 2019. It is the first book in a trilogy of the same name, followed by ‘Good Girl, Bad Blood’ and ‘As Good As Dead’. These books follow the story of Pippa, or Pip as she is known to her friends and family.

Unorthodox as it may be, I figured it may be best to focus on each book episodically instead of as a cohesive trilogy for the most part. So, although combining all three books into one master-review may offer a more streamlined experience, I’d argue it is easier to express the scope of my thoughts about Jackson’s books one at a time.

In ‘A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder’, we are introduced to seventeen-year-old Pippa Fritz-Amobi, and her idea for her EPQ. For those who aren’t familiar with it, the EPQ, Extended Project Qualification, is an additional qualification students in their second or third year at college have the opportunity to do. It has the equivalence of an additional AS-Level Qualification and you are given the opportunity to work on whatever you want, as long as you provide a diary of your working process, a final piece and a presentation. When I did my EPQ in 2016, my presentation was part of an EPQ Show, where all the students had a table and two poster boards to decorate and all day to present your findings to your peers and teachers. Having experienced the turbulent highs and lows of a self-directed EPQ myself, I knew from the beginning this book had a lot of opportunities to make me laugh whilst also hitting me in the anxiety. And not just because it is a YA thriller.

As I often say, thrillers and I have a marmite-esque relationship. Sometimes, I’ll love them, and others, I’ll not connect with them at all. This one, however, was relatable from the get-go, and so, I was able to jump straight immerse myself into the world of the EPQ and A-Level stress. I’ve been there, I understand Pip and her friends as they fret about grades and university places.

Which brings me to how Pip ends up in the absolute mess she ends up in, by dedicating her EPQ to vindicating a boy she saw as a hero when she was a kid, Salil Singh, alleged murderer of Andie Bell, one of the most popular girls in school, five years prior. In working to reopen the case and explore the leads left neglected, we see all the ways the police came to their half-baked conclusion, but also how very wrong they were. I really enjoyed getting to delve into Pip’s world as she gets tangled in a web of chaos, trampling over her ethics form and working to exhaustion. It was more than her EPQ. It was about proving a boy innocent, and letting his family re-join the community that had shunned them for all those years.

The romantic subplot, although gradual and steady, didn’t seem necessary in my opinion, while Pip and her love interest share plenty of time together, they could have just as easily remained friends and it wouldn’t have impacted the story at all. Though that might just be me.

Although the story closed itself off reasonably well, I was still left with enough loose ends to tug at and wonder about that it offered an easy segway into ‘Good Girl, Bad Blood’, which I look forward to reading in turn. Even as a stand alone novel, I would certainly recommend ‘A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder’, and am looking forward to following along with Pip’s journey throughout the rest of the series.