A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson (2019)

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson (2019)

A YA murder mystery involving a teenager that went missing 5 years earlier.

Laura’s Rating: 3.5/5 Stars

Plot: High school senior Andie Bell was murdered by her boyfriend Sal Singh. Well, that’s what everyone believes anyway. Five years later, Pip isn’t convinced that Sal is to blame and starts to investigate the case as part of her senior project.

Analysis: This book reads a bit like the “Serial” podcast, for those familiar. For my audiobook listeners, I enjoyed the full cast and sound effects of the audiobook so this is a good one for listening.

This book is categorized as Young Adult and it does read that way. I think it’s probably a pretty good book for teens interested in the thriller genre to explore the crime drama and mystery aspects without the full mature adult content that thriller books can contain. I do think the book could’ve been edited down to be a little shorter and more condensed, but it was engaging enough to keep my attention.

The mystery is pretty well done, with twists and turns. There’s a lot of suspects with legit motives, opportunity, etc. I do think that the author makes a couple bad characters too sympathetic, but that does help to keep the readers doubting until the end. I’d recommend this as an easy thriller mystery that could be enjoyed by multiple generations.