*The article contains spoilers from the book: A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.
The case had been previously closed. Five years ago, a schoolgirl named Andie Bell had been murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh. Everyone in the whole town knows he did it.
But our main character, Pippa Fitz-Amobi, or more commonly nicknamed Pip, thinks otherwise. So she takes on the case as her last project of the year, as she discovers the secrets of that case along the way. Unfortunately, she is not aware of someone in town who desperately wants the case’s specifics to remain hidden.
This book follows along the young seventeen-year-old Pippa Fitz-Amobi as she investigates the local murder of their town that had taken place five years ago.
Everyone in the town is aware that Andie Bell had been murdered by her boyfriend in college by Sal Singh, but something about it just didn’t seem right to Pip.
As for Pip, there were too many loose threads and not quite enough evidence. So as the more she researches about the murder, and the deeper she gets into this case, she realizes Sal was not actually the guilty one at all. But that raises the question of who was the real murderer and how did he pin the blame on someone else so successfully.
Pip isn’t your typical novel protagonist, but she is still amazing.
She isn’t the usual preppy yet popular school girl you find in YA books. Pip is quite hilarious with her humor, and the writer perfectly captured her distinct Britishness in the book. She was also a bit more mature than usual protagonists.
Pip wasn’t a detective, instead, she was a normal teenager working on a case on her laptop in her room, with no type of law and forensics at her side.
The way the book had been presented had just seemed so realistic and fun to read.
There are also many more prominent characters, each of which offers something brand new to the main narrative, whether it would be a casual conversation between friends or a recorded interview of a witness.
Another said character would be Ravi, who was the younger brother of the supposed killer Sal Singh.
Ever since the school girl Andie’s murder five years ago, Ravi and the rest of his family have been repeatedly ostracized by the entire community. It’s also honestly awful how he is treated, even for going to the local grocery shop to buy groceries.
Ravi had built up his own walls around himself to protect against those people and to survive. It’s good to see him slowly letting down that wall when he meets Pip.
Nobody has ever before considered that Sal Singh might be innocent, so you can practically see how important it must be for Ravi to have someone else fighting at his side.
In each of Pip’s encounters with different people, each of those interactions offers the readers and Pip a whole new insight into the night of the said murder, making the book more interesting and easy to get lost in. There are excellent characters yet also some incredibly shady characters who have done some terrible things, so if you’re a sensitive reader, then this book may be a bit too much for you.
Another one of my absolute favorite things about the novel A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder would be just how the way it was written.
This feature would again make this book rather different from other typical YA crime novels. In addition, the way it is written is basically an investigating scrapbook, which makes the book even more unique and fun to read.
Spread throughout the various chapters, you would find transcripts of already recorded interviews, screenshots from the social media, annotated maps, production log series, and even diary scans.
The way the book had been written takes it out as fiction and makes it feel real; all the records are presented to us, so it’s like we are also trying to solve the case along with Pip, multiple times you will also rack your brain to figure out the mystery and perhaps go back to previous pages to check other messages and evidence as well.
Everything about this book was exhilarating to read, from the characterization and character development to the intricate plot, all of which will get you to love the book once you read it. This book is a highly recommended thriller that will pull you in such depth towards your book that you will be disappointed once it finishes.
