A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is about Pippa, a high school senior, who decides that she wants solve a local murder for her capstone graduation project. The cold case in her town reads a lot like season 1 of Serial (the story of Adnan Syed and Hae Min Lee). Five years prior to Pippa taking on this project, a teenaged girl went missing — and was later presumed dead — after her boyfriend confesses to killing her before taking his own life. Because he’s a bit of an outsider, the town is satisfied with this conclusion and moves on. Ever-curious Pippa, however, thinks it’s suspicious that a body was never found and that the intrigue will make for passing grade.
Pippa begins her own investigation, including reinterviewing suspects, friends, and family and revisiting alleged crime scenes. Like a modern day Harriet the Spy, Pippa is determined to get to the bottom of this and uncover the truth.
If you enjoy YA crime dramas or YA mysteries, this might be for you. For me, despite all the love it seems to get all over the internet, it was big dud. By the time I had made this decision, I was far enough into the book that it just made sense to finish it, but had the book been longer, it likely would have been my first DNF of 2022.
Originally, this review had a long rant about all the things I didn’t like about this book, but the reality is that the longer I sat with it, the more I realized that my rant about this book doesn’t really matter because I am not the target audience for this book. People who enjoy YA might find this book fun, quirky, creative, and riveting for all the reasons that I don’t. Honestly, I wanted to love it. I’m true crime obsessed and the similarities to Serial at the beginning had me ready for this to be a great read.
Like a lot of media aimed at younger audiences, the protagonist is minor, there’s little-to-no positive adult representation, there aren’t really consequences for dangerous/negative actions, and everything wraps up with a neat little bow. If I was a teen (with less cynicism under my belt) reading this, I might think that this book was awesome.
As someone on the jaded, adult side of things, I struggled to suspend belief enough to enjoy a teen confronting drug dealers and murderers, impersonating news correspondents, and breaking and entering with zero consequence. To the point where I’d almost be hesitant to hand this book to a teen to read. (I feel curmudgeonly saying that, but where I’m from it’s probably not great to give teens the idea that you can just show up at a drug dealer’s house and they’re just going to chat with you, give you the info you need, and send you on your way when you’re digging into the role they played in a well-known local murder…)
I also felt like I could see the twists at the end coming from a mile away, but I realize that might have more to do with the fact that I’ve read many a thriller/mystery novel in my time.
Overall, I’d say proceed at your own risk. Your mileage may vary. I won’t be reading more of this series.
