Family Book Club: A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder

Hey guys! This post is a part of what will (hopefully) be a new series on here. I invited my parents to start a “book club” with me where we buddy read the same book and then all review it on here. My mom and I both read all the time but my dad hadn’t read a book in like 30 years. This was basically just a way to get him to start reading books again. We decided to read A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson, which I’d been excited to read for a long time. Plus I thought it would be the perfect time to read it since the TV show’s coming out. Without further ado, here’s what the book was about and all our thoughts about it.

Synopsis

Five years ago, Andie Bell went missing one night without a trace. Everyone in town thinks her boyfriend Sal Singh was to blame. After all, he committed suicide several days later. Pip doesn’t think so though. She knew Sal. He wasn’t a murderer. No matter what really happened, one thing is for sure: the impact left behind by this tragedy is still being felt, even five years later. With the help of Sal’s younger brother, Pip decides to reinvestigate the case as a part of a school project. But what really happened night? And more importantly, who was really to blame?

My Review

I’d heard a ton of great things about A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder so I was super excited to have a reason to read it for this book club. It didn’t disappoint either. The storyline and mystery of this book were super interesting. It kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time I was reading. I also read this book super fast. It switches between traditional prose and log entries for Pip’s school project. The log entries have a lot of transcripts of interviews Pip conducts so it barely takes any time to read through them. This helped keep the book fast-paced, which made it feel even more suspenseful and exciting.

That being said, I did have a few issues with the book. Many of the characters just didn’t feel very real. Like, they did and said things that normal teenagers wouldn’t. Aside from Pip and Ravi, most of the characters seemed pretty flat, which made the whole book feel a bit less realistic and interesting.

The entire book I was really looking forward to how it would end. I had heard that Holly Jackson always writes the best twists that you’ll never guess. And that’s not wrong exactly, but I still found myself a bit disappointed in the ending. The ending almost felt too surprising. Obviously, you shouldn’t guess the ending, but I feel like once you’ve read it, you should be like, “Oh yeah, I could see that happening”. Yet, with A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, the twist at the end felt so out of no where that it didn’t really fit with what had happened up until then in the story.

However, I still really like the book overall. I really loved Pip’s character and I loved trying to guess what would happen next. The story was very suspenseful and honestly just a really fun read. Overall, I would give it a solid 4 stars. It’s not an all-time favorite book, but it’s still one I really enjoyed and will definitely recommend to others.

My Mom’s Review

I am so blessed to have a daughter to recommend good reads to me. When she recommended A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, I was up to the challenge. I enjoyed the characters in the story, and I look forward to book two. I am anxiously waiting for it to be returned to our local library.

I am curious what schools out there require senior projects, especially projects that involve a murder investigation so I felt that may have been a bit questionable, but overall I enjoyed the book. I feel like Holly Jackson did a fabulous job of keeping the reader in suspense. She does a nice job developing the characters and helping the readers relate to Pip and Ravi.

At first I felt terrible for Andie, but as the story continued I was shocked to see how many people had reasons to commit murder. She was not a nice person! The ending was quite a surprise. Many times in the story I felt I had figured out the conclusion, but in the end I was quite surprised. I would give this book 4/5 stars and recommend it to any thriller fans out there. If you’ve read this book before and enjoyed it, you may want to consider reading Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson. This is another book with a surprise ending.

My Dad’s Review

I do not really read books but since my daughter asked me to read one and write a review I thought why not.

I read this book in a weekend which was great. I actually enjoyed the book and really did not want to put it down and instead finish the book cover to cover. It was not hard to do with this book as it was pretty easy to read and kept me interested. I found the characters interesting and wanted to try to figure out the mystery as I read. It turns out that figuring out the ending before you get there is pretty much impossible in this book.

I enjoyed the main character, Pip, and how she seemed to grow and get outside of her comfort zone to pursue her project. I found it interesting that the more I learned about the victim of the crime the less I felt bad for her and the more I understood why she was killed and many people had reason to see her dead. She probably did not deserve that fate but that is what happened to her.

I did have to look up to see if the author was originally from America as the conversations the teens had and the things they did seemed to not feel like American teens to me. I found she was from the UK and that made some sense to me. It did not take away from the story but just something I noticed.

Overall, I did enjoy the book and the experience of reading it. I would give it 4 stars. I am glad that I took the challenge from my daughter to pick up a book and read it cover to cover. It is not in my nature to do that. I recommend picking this book up especially if you don’t read a lot and need something that will keep you interested until the end.

I hope you enjoyed this post! My mom, dad, and I all had a lot of fun writing it and reading A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. We all ended up really liking the book and actually all gave it 4 stars which was kind of funny. We had a lot of fun discussing the book and we’d definitely like to do this again some time. If you have any recommendation for what book we should read together next, let me know down below! I’d love to hear from you! As always, I hope this post finds you well and you have a great day.