a good girl's guide to a good girl's guide to murder

Synopsis, Character Review, & some suggestions (no spoilers)

If you've read Holly Jackson's 2019 coming of age murder mystery and suspense novel, and you're also a coming-of-age teenage girl infatuated with crime, you'll know that a rare meteorite fell from the sky into your lap. This meteorite will solve all your dramatic, life-changing problems for a day (or lesser, because that's how much you're gonna want to leave this world behind to step into this new foreign but familiar land) and provide the perfect summer escapism.

I had the ebook for about two weeks and I forgot I even had it. Three days ago, as another electricity blackout hit us at night (I live in Karachi, duh!) at about one in the morning, I cursed my insomnia for making me witness the shutdown when all my loved ones were already tucked in bed and off to their individual paradise lands.

My IPad, which was about seventy percent charged, felt absolutely useless without an internet connection. Touching, swiping, and navigating myself into my Library Folder (containing Apple Books, Podcasts, Goodreads, Amazon Kindle, and a library of thousands of pirated books ;)) is an unconscious behavior that I'm not even sure my brain processes and tells my index finger to do.

All I know is, in the dead of the night, and the silence of darkness, I found myself scrolling through the bottom of the 'Will Read Sometime Soon' folder in relation to 'Probably Will Read Before I Die' on Apple Books.

And there it was, A Good Girls Guide To Murder! Without a second thought, I touched on the three dots on the right side of the book cover and exported it to my Kindle (yeah, I do that. Sue me if I trespass your moral code, Mudblood!).

As I install myself on my balcony under the windy and starry night sky of August in Karachi, I start to read.

I look up suddenly, and I let out a very audible gasp that a herd of crows nearby fled in fear.

Dawn had crept up, the sun shining in my face, school buses passing by, children coming out of nearby houses in their starch uniforms. How deep in it was I? How long had it ben?

I rubbed my eyes, slapped myself a couple of times, and realised my large tea thermos was empty when I started pouring my nineth cup. So I went back in to make some more.

The electricity was back, so was the internet, and my muggle (non-reader) brother lay partially awake in his bed. When he saw me, and the overnight enlarged patched of darkness under my bloody, cross eyes. He smirked at me, victoriously. He thought I had just woken up.

'Will you ever be able to wake up before me? I've been awake since like Eight O'clock, sleepy head'

Awe, eight O'clock, cute! I giggled, shaking my head, and gave him the look that said, 'You don't know what I know, and I'll keep it that way. He hates that look. Everybody does.

As I returned to my reading station, I looked at all the people hurriedly passing by, either on foot or using their transport -contributing without the slightest thought a dangerous impact on the heavily commuted city.

None of them knew! None of them could even imagine what I'd been through that very night. Nothing of them knew how I became another person in another world, how I witnessed dark criminal and psychopathic tendencies in humans, or how I witnessed the tragedy of two innocent souls. None of them wept, laughed heartily, got a whirlwind of bitter-sweet emotions, connected with existing but non-existential friends, made new friends, hurt close ones, and tackled risk and danger like no other.

None of them, possibly over the course of their entire lives, could have been able to live the life that I had lived that night.

I felt sorry for them. Truly, utterly, plainly sorry for them.

A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson

This is a story about a seventeen year old girl, Pippa Fitz-Amobi. in her last year of school. As a true-crime podcast lover, she had been skeptical when an eighteen-year-old Sal Singh confessed to the murder of Andie Bell (his girlfriend) and committed suicide five years ago. The peculiarity being that Andie's body was never found!

Now, that Pippa is old enough to be taken a little seriously and has the perfect opportunity to hide behind her EPQ, she uses it as an excuse to re-investigate the case. Starting out she doesn't expect to solve the case on her own, but only to provide some substantial evidence of Sal Singh's innocence and reopen the case.

She partners up with Sal's brother Ravi Singh, and takes some ridiculous risks to get to the bottom of things. Except as she gets closer and closer to the truth, her investigation burns under the gaze of the real killer who got away with it and will travel to any lengths to stop her from changing the outcome as it is.

Nothing is as it is. People close to Andie Bell have secrets they will do anything from coming out, and as Pip's investigation furthers, she discovers a pandora of revelations from the night Andie was allegedly murdered by Sal Singh and the days that followed.

Protagonist: Pippa Fitz-Amobi

Pippa is what I believe any teenager would idealize.

Unlike real-life teenagers (or most atleast), not only is she incredibly smart, criminally instinctive, book smart, and keen to details, but she's also street smart, compassionate, and gets so many good grades and eureka moments in her crime investigations like I didnt't even know could be true. She has a supporting and loving family, a loyal friends group, a handsome partner-in-crime ;), and a vision for her life: Investigative Journalism.

You see how this 'Good Girl' has an astonishing source of raw courage and curiosity, with no limit attached. Some moments in the book, especially when it got ugly and dangerous that Pip actually put the lives of her loved ones at risk, were truly shocking and felt pretty out-of-character for someone like her.

Which makes Pippa Fitz-Amobi as unreal as it makes her palpable.

Most of the investigation is pure and accurate guesswork by the hyper-sensitive imagination of Pippa that lands at the worst possible scenario at every new lead. And in some cases, it has worked out for her. With the way she handled the investigation, interrogating, thinking and improvising in real time like a pro throughout her persons of interest list, one may be surprised to learn that she is just an amateur sleuth, investigating anything for the first time, let alone a case-closed murder. I believe if astonishing revelations come to you by simply looking at a murder board or a stack of word documents, most people would be exceptional detectives.

And ofcourse, Pip can be an abstract genius. She can be her idiosyncratic version of Sherlock Holmes or CBC Strike. But she's also so normal and regular that you might be tricked as I am in believing that that aspect of her is out-of-character behavior and thus, a flaw in character planning and development by the author.

But I'd also like to say that her wit, her dedication, and the way Holly Jackson unveils the entire mystery, is eye-catching and page-turning. In fact, I believe Pippa's ability to make sense, or a story, of [raw] research information makes you double-check and reread all the content because you know it contains some key information about the case, something you might've dropped and Pippa would've picked.

Overall, even though the character of Pippa is very fictional and perfected in her abilities, it becomes real the moment you witness her emotional and vulnerable moments in the book when the research project starts blurring the line and stepping over the threshold of her personal life. Some of her idiosyncrasies differentiate her from other girls her age, like her stating useless facts when she's nervous, her inability to enjoy herself at school house parties, or her unhealthy obsession with her EPQ.

Generally, I'm glad for a character like Pippa. And I'm eternally grateful for A Good Girl's Guide To Murder.

I totally recommend this book to any thriller or suspense reader. And of course, it's coming of age, so I have a hard time imagining if people who're not into young adult will be able to truly enjoy this book. And I don't mean that in a definitive way, because I too do not read YA, but I'm also a teenage girl obsessed with the world of first-world crime so I found it relatable, humoring, and angering in a lot of ways.

Shoot! Now I gotta go back under the cover of my ordinary muggle life. There's something so exciting about that despite common notion that it is excrutiating when your character's move on to the next chapter of their lives, and you're the one who can't move on from the drama of their previous one.

But I find it energising. I return to that dusty sticky note with the heading 'Goals' on my board and work harder than ever.

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