A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder or AGGGTM by Holly Jackson takes advantage of today’s facination with true crime and put’s it into a book full of twists and turns, exploring just how far someone is willing to go to protect their secrets, even years after the fact.
This book follows a high school senior Pippa Fitz-Amobi as she strives to solve a murder many years cold. She is threatened, pushed to her limit and becomes border-line obsessive when it comes to this case.
She is trying to find the reason behind the deaths of Andie Bell, the picture perfect person with a dark past, and her boyfriend Sal Sighn, who is framed for Andie’s murder.
The entire town accepts the police’s explanation. They say that Sal murdered Andie as a crime of passion, then felt so guilty about it that he killed himself.
Pippa knows that there is something wrong with this explanation. She knew both Sal and Andie enough to know that there had to be another explanation.
The case brings her into close quarters with the darkest side of her small town, making her go further and further into the shadows. She encounters a hit-and-run, drug deals, kidnappings, rapists, and even another death.
However, she is brought closer to her best friend, Cara Ward and Cara’s sister, Naomi, and Sal’s brother Ravi Sighn, uncovering buried secrets about the Ward family, the Sighn family, and her sweet little town in the process.
Pippa keeps careful notes as she does her detective work and decided to create a podcast called A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.
The author, Holly Jackson, does a good job at keeping her readers engaged, but not overstimulated by taking short breaks between action in order for both the readers to catch up and allows her characters time to develop.
Jackson takes the space between chapters to add in notes and images related to the case. The readers are more easily able to keep track of what is going on as well as allowing them to go back through the books to easily find the most relevant information.
She continues this strategy in her other two books in the series, however, this novel could stand by itself if a reader does not want to continue with Pippa as she pushes herself through two more cases.
Overall, this book is a great contemporary murder mystery novel for those who need something with a slower pase and many moving parts.
Kayla LeBeau
Kayla LeBeauis a first-year Secondary Education major with a concentration in English. She was the Arts and Entertainment editor at Montoursville Area High School for two years and has continued as the Arts and Entertainment editor on the Eagle Eye staff. Kayla has written a variety of articles for the Eagle Eye beyond Arts and Entertainment. She loves to read fantasy, adventure, and Sci-Fi novels, especially books by Brandon Sanderson and Sarah J. Maas.
