And so it has come to an end. After 3 years, I finished the A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (AGGGTM) series by Holly Jackson. This has been a roller coaster to say the least. My adventure began with the first book, playing armchair detective and loving every bit of it. But then I was surprised by how different the second book was. The formula wasn’t the same, and the character started to change. It was a book that really caught me by surprise. And then it was time to conclude the story with As Good As Dead (AGAD).
Title: As Good As Dead Author: Holly Jackson Series: A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder #3 Publication year: 2021 Length: 14 hours 18 minutes Genre: Mystery, Thriller, YA Pace: Medium Story focus: Plot & Character
It was a hard book to read. I’m not going to lie. I struggled a bit in the first half. The story keeps the dark tone it ends on in Good Girl, Bad Blood (GGBB), and it felt too much even for me. I enjoy a psychological thriller. I like dark stories. But in this one, it wasn’t working very well. Pip is still bottling up all her feelings and emotions about what happened with Stanley. She still blames herself for causing his death, and having Max walk away scot-free from the trial is only making her spiral down even more. The anger she displayed in the previous book has now grown into a dark hollow hole inside her. And this mood, this tone makes the story heavy. I felt it pulling down on my shoulders. It was uncomfortable to read. Not enjoyable at all. And even in dark and difficult books, you can enjoy the reading experience despite the topic. But in this case, it was a drag.
For me, the story only picked up after 250 pages. I spent more time reading those first 250 pages than the ones that follow. It took me almost two months to finish this book. A month and a half to read the first part and a week to read all the rest. And while I feel the book was a bit longer than necessary, the biggest problem was the setup. In my review of GGBB, I stated there was only one path the story could take that would make me enjoy the series again. And that was what As Good As Dead did. Although I still look back on the first book and think of how cosy and fun it was, while the rest of the series is dark and a bit depressing. It would be much better if those feelings were also present on the first one. To keep somewhat of a constant tone or continue to increase it throughout the various books.
I like As Good As Dead. I like the ending. This is the ending I wanted to see. I think it was very bold of the author to choose this ending, and that shows by how much I’ve heard people saying they don’t like the last book. Part of that, I believe, is also related to the precedents the previous books set. I enjoy unlikable characters as much or even more than likeable ones. So the changes we get to witness Pip going through from book to book don’t affect me as much as they can affect other readers who like to relate with Pip from AGGGTM. I actually wanted Pip to drop the good girl part altogether, and yet she didn’t.
I wanted a full-on villain. A bold unhinged Pip. But she was still a good girl, and that’s probably what creates the most disparity in the character. This darkness in Pip comes from realising the world isn’t black or white, it’s incredibly grey. And that makes her question herself. Her own beliefs. Her character is being deconstructed, although the author still wants to maintain that “good girl” part. And because of it, the character becomes unrecognisable and off-putting. Like she’s acting out of character. She wants to do justice with her hands, but she doesn’t want to hurt those she loves in the process. So it feels like any bad action on her part wasn’t intentional, a glitch in the matrix that the good girl now has to clean up.
The series as a whole is not the best. The sudden change in formula, the big shift in tone, the character… let’s call it growth, and the lack of foreshadowing don’t make for a good transition between books. They actually end up not connecting very well. This is Holly Jackson’s debut series, and I think it shows. It needed to be more polished, not to discard the secondary characters, to develop Pip’s feelings more deeply instead of repeating the same thing again and again, and to have a connecting thread from the first book until the last to prepare the reader. And no, creating a new plot out of thin air on top of the previous plot doesn’t count as connecting.
GGBB and AGAD are total curve-balls. The story goes from a mystery with all the clues for the reader to solve, to a disappearance connected to an old case the reader doesn’t know anything about, to Andy and Sal’s murders weren’t the only ones in this small town after all. This new information coming out of the blue not only seems convenient but also gives the sense that there was a lack of planning. Again, a bit of foreshadowing could fix this.
I still stand by my liking of this book. In the end, it went where I wanted. But it wasn’t the best execution. I’m still going to pretend AGGGTM is not a series but instead a standalone book. I really like the first book for what it was, an Agatha Christie-esque story. And I want that memory to stay that way. Although I also like the series for how it ended, for how bold it was, and for how it comes together with the title. But, they are going to stay as two separate things for me. I now understand why some people don’t like this last book, and if you are a reader who likes to read about likeable characters, who love Pip from AGGGTM, and who enjoyed the mystery of the first book, then you probably should skip this one.
