Wednesday 15 February 2023

CBR15 Book 8: "A Good Girl's Guide to Murder" by Holly Jackson

Page count: 433 pages
Rating: 4 stars

CBR15 Passport Challenge - New to me author

Five years ago, blonde and beautiful high school girl Andie Bell was murdered, although no one ever found her body, despite careful searching. However, Andie's boyfriend Sal Singh confessed in a text message to his dad and then committed suicide before he could be arrested by the police. So everyone knows that he did it, and the case is closed. 

Pippa Fitz-Amobi remembers Sal Singh as a kind and considerate young man, with a promising university career ahead of him. She doesn't really believe he killed Andie, and as her senior project in high school, she claims to be focusing on how media bias might have affected the reports of the murder case, but in reality, she plans to re-investigate the whole case and hopefully clear Sal's name. After interviewing Sal's younger brother Ravi about his recollections about the case, he figures out what she's doing and insists on being allowed to help in the investigation. Ravi unsuccessfully tried to clear his brother's name a few years ago but got nowhere, in part because the police refused to even speak to him.

Pippa knows the police isn't going to be forthcoming with information about a case they consider solved and closed, and she plans to use more unconventional ways to figure out what actually happened when Andie disappeared and was most likely murdered. As she keeps contacting Andie and Sal's family members, friends, and acquaintances, she starts to discover that Andie Bell certainly wasn't as innocent and angelic as the public image of her would have it in the press and case documents. 

If Pippa is correct, and Sal Singh didn't kill Angie, and may in fact have been the victim of a crime himself, then there is a murderer (or several) out there, unhappy about her trying to uncover secrets. Pippa starts getting anonymous threats, and when they only spur her to investigate more thoroughly, the threats start getting a lot more vicious. Will Pippa and Ravi be able to solve the five-year-old murder and clear Sal's name? Or is Pippa going to end up being the unknown killer's next victim?

I've been seeing Holly Jackson's books all over the place for the last few years, including in the first season of Heartstopper on Netflix (this is one of the many books Isaac reads). I could do an internet search to check, but I'm guessing that one of the reasons I'm seeing her books in all the bookstores is because of Tik Tok, as pretty much all the authors who seem to be enjoying impressive sales have had them boosted by Tik Tok attention. Either way, as this fit, not one, but two of the keywords in my Monthly Keyword challenge for January, as well as into a whole host of my other reading challenges (I'm really trying to be good about reading books I already own this year). 

This was a quick read, but also kind of reminded me why I don't read a lot of crime and suspense novels anymore. It may be aimed at young adults, but there was more than enough unpleasant tension in this book as the threats to Pippa come more frequently and become more serious. Just as I don't really like being scared and tend to avoid the horror genre because of it, I'm not super fond of being on edge because of threats and tension toward the characters I'm reading about. The characters in this are all really well drawn and Pippa and her family especially are very likable. I didn't want bad things to happen to any of them.

There are two more books in this series, where Pippa keeps getting entangled in murder investigations. I probably will get round to reading them at some point, this was a really well-written book. I just think I need to be in a different emotional space when I do. 

Judging a Book by its Cover: Both the US and UK editions of this book have the red "murder board" thread on the cover, but on the whole, I much prefer the cleaner, brighter mostly white cover of the UK edition that I have to the primarily grey cover of the US edition, with the title on little torn-up pieces of paper. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read

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