A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson: A Book Review
Genre: Mystery
Jackson captivates the reader straight away (or at least me). Opening the book to “a print out of” an online proposal form, struck me not only as odd but interesting. The inclusion of the proposal forms and entries were also quite a beautiful way to allow a clear shifting of point of views. By including these logs, the reader got to experience both the intimate closeness to the narrator and the structure of being separated from narrator creating the effect that rather than listening to the character tell you the story, you are instead experiencing it with them.
The character of Pippa was also a certain attraction. To the point of being obsessed, Pippa wants to solve the most uninvited part of her town’s history – even more, she wants to clear the person everyone thinks is responsible. Faced with barriers at all angles, Pippa constantly shows strength and determination in everything she does – to the point where her obsession crosses (or at least comes close to) the line of morality. Pippa is willing to do anything to solve the case – a characteristic that accidentally helps her throughout the whole story.
Its stupid since the whole work is fiction, but I am slightly stuck on how unrealistic and romanticized the whole mystery is. It seems enough that everyone could have been involved in the case in the first place, but adding to the fact that a senior in high school solved it without any police help shows how much YA mysteries have romanticized crime investigations. That said, however, important points of investigative journalism as well as the main idea of the journalism field are highlighted throughout the work in the most flattering of ways.
Who would most enjoy the work and who should stay clear (if necessary):
If you are interested in investigative journalism either as a career or not, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder should be put on your TBR. Likewise, if you are a fan of mysteries in the YA relam, this would also be of interest to you. The book does have some swearing, though nothing that I would call major. All scenes of violence are also pretty tame.
Other books like the one reviewed:
One of Us is Lying by Karen McManus
We Were Liars by E. Lockhart
Then She Was Gone by Lisa Jewell
They Both Die At the End by Adam Silvera
Kingdom of the Wicked by Kerri Maniscalco
| Plot: | 10 / 10 |
| Characters: | 10 / 10 |
| Writing: | 9 / 10 |
| Editor: | 10 / 10 |
| Total | 39 / 40 |
Title: A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder
Author: Holly Jackson
Edition: First Ember Edition; Paperback
Published: 2019
Publisher: Penguin Random House
ISBN: 9781984896391
If you want to get it: Amazon; Barnes&Noble
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