Pippa Fitz-Amobi is a crime-loving teen who aspires to become a top-notch journalist one day. So naturally, she decides to focus her senior capstone project on her small town’s unsolved crime: the murder of Andie Bell. What begins as a simple proposal quickly turns into an in-depth investigation full of unexpected twists and turns. After teaming up with the alleged murderer’s brother, Ravi Singh, the pair fall into a web of danger and obsession, and quickly wonder if they’ve gotten themselves in too deep.

A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder by Holly Jackson reads as if you are investigating alongside the main characters, with a multimedia formatting that engages the reader from beginning to end. The writing style was fantastic. There was an orderly representation of diagrams, transcripts, posts, emails, and messages related to the case. I was doubtful at first because the details of the story were already laid out and I’m not a fan of podcast-based murder mysteries, but all the facts, footnotes, and suspect interviews had me second-guessing until the last minute. There were so many new additions to the case and times when the old facts were proved wrong, time and again. 

It was also so beautiful and emotional, especially concerning Ravi and his family. Their lives have been destroyed, their reputations tarnished, all because everyone believes that their oldest son, Sal, killed Andie before taking his own life. Holly Jackson paints a painful picture of a family just trying to go about their life after a horrible tragedy, and the hardships they face in doing so. 

Pip is a genuinely good person, something that I really admired about her. She is an enjoyable and clever main character who made the nearly 400 pages of this book fly by in a flash. She is extremely organized and mature, and as the story progresses, the more round of a character she becomes. She is also somehow able to balance solving a five-year-old cold case with her home life, friends, school work, and even a potential love interest in Ravi Singh with little to no trouble at all, which I found super impressive. While not everyone is smart enough to solve a five-year-old murder, Pip is still relatable. She is a teenager who is struggling with her sense of identity, something that I could definitely relate to. “…I don’t know who I am when I’m not working, when I’m not focused on or totally consumed by a task. Who am I between the projects and the assignments, when there’s nothing to do? I haven’t found her yet as it scares me.” 

Pip also goes through so much while on this case, and as the reader, you can really observe how her perception of the world slowly starts to change. She was never naive to begin with, but while investigating the murder of Andie Bell, she uncovers some startling truths about the nature of humanity. “And though this story does have its monsters, I’ve found that it is not one that can be so easily cleaved into the goof and bad. In the end, this was a story about people and their different shades of desperation, crashing up against each other.” 

While it may seem like a typical YA thriller, this book teaches so many important lessons; your behavior can affect your future and the people around you. the way you act and every decision you make, may lead you to a future you can’t predict. The main message of this book, while simple, is still an important one: be aware that your actions have consequences. While Pip is a wonderful character, she too has her flaws, one of them being how obsessive she gets over things she is passionate about. Holly Jackson conveys this message through Pip’s actions, and how her obsessive behavior hurts others around her, which was something I really appreciated because it made Pip seem more real, more human. 

In the end, this was an extremely enjoyable book that I would recommend to anyone. It is a grounded, engaging mystery that features a diverse cast, discussions surrounding racial injustice, and the importance of found family. Even better, it’s the first in a breathtaking trilogy (which does have quite a surprising ending). I cannot recommend this book highly enough.