Flu Review - Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

Posted on Mar 28, 2022 by Anna Jackson  | Comments (0)

If you’re looking for a gripping, page-turner of a YA mystery...you might get it in “A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder” by Holly Jackson. If Goodreads reviews are to be trusted, most YA readers will eat this book up; however I found myself slogging through it towards the end. After chapters and chapters of build-up, the mystery seemed to get convoluted in the last third of the book. Now for some, that might translate into exciting and page-turning, but for me it just felt dizzying.

There was definitely a lot to like about this novel, though! The formatting of the narrative was unique, and it was interesting to see parts of the plot unfold while reading the main character’s senior thesis project. Character development was another strong suite of this novel - the author spent a lot of time really developing the character of the girl who was missing, and the boy who was dead. And while sometimes there seemed to be more character development for dead characters than for live ones, that is only a minor criticism. 

Overall, this was a fairly clean, well plotted Young Adult mystery novel. If you enjoy intense murder mysteries, this will definitely fit the bill! This book is also clean enough to hand to most teens (even younger ones!) as there was little swearing, no graphic sex, and only minor talking about crimial drug use. Don’t set your expectations too high, and you’ll probably love this novel!

By Anna