Series written by Holly Jackson, published 2020-2021.
Five years ago in the small town of Fairview, teenager Andie Bell went missing. Everyone suspected her boyfriend Sal Singh, who was later found dead. The Police determined that he was responsible for her death, and subsequently committed suicide out of guilt. Case closed. Now, Pippa Fitz-Amobi refuses to believe this and has decided to find Andie's real killer for her senior school project. Pippa makes an unlikely friend and gets on a few bad sides as she digs through Fairview's many secrets to find out what really happened.
Good Girl, Bad Blood has Pippa searching for her friend's older brother, Jamie, who is missing after trying to meet up with a girl he met online. In As Good as Dead, Pippa's odd online messages (Who will look for you when you're the one who goes missing?) turn into a real-life stalker and the situation turns deadly.
I thought this was a fantastic read, with compelling details and the Andie-Sal story wasn't cut and clear with a straightforward solution. Things in small towns are very intertwined, and this story was no different. It felt bold, to say the least. I am not a regular in the murder mystery genre, but without spoiling anything, I will say that the ending was not what I was expecting at all, pleasantly so.
Guys, I really would recommend this series except for one glaring thing: I hate profanity. It was a great story, with three mysteries in small town Fairview, but there was a ton of language all over. You can always tell an author's favorite swear word, and Holly Black liked the S-word in A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (AGGGTM), but that changed to the F-word in both Good Girl, Bad Blood, and As Good as Dead, and by then, there was no holding back. It was like a teenager who learns a new word and uses it whenever they possibly can. So because of that, I have to give this one the no-go. Or split the series, and give the green light to the first book, but a hard pass on the second and third.
Contains: Crime scene descriptions, murder, rape, drugs, and extreme profanity in books two and three. This is listed by the publisher as a YA novel (12-18yo on Amazon) and I think that is WILDLY inaccurate. Based on the number of F-bombs alone, it is far into the R-rated movie category, into which theaters don't admit anyone under 17. Not to mention the graphic sequences that happen in the third book, As Good as Dead.
This is your final warning, reader. Walk away if you don't want to read any spoilers.
"I'm not sure I'm the good girl I once thought I was. I've lost her along the way."
I'm just going to get right to it, so really, read no further if you don't want spoilers. For a long time, especially since they had (up until the end of the book) not found Andie's body, I totally thought that she had faked her death and run away, and that Jason Bell had killed Sal. (I guess he only liked killing females, right?) No way had I thought that a duly-trusted member of the community (single dad and teacher) would be first of all, having a relationship with a student, but then murdering another student to cover up any involvement with the former. Bonkers. I absolutely love how close Pippa and Ravi grew throughout the investigation, and that Ravi finally had a friend and a reason or two to leave his house. Actually, Ravi is just my favorite. His sense of humor was just so perfect, like when Pip burned her mouth on coffee he had just given her, "Let it cool down for a second, or you know, a few sequential seconds." It was usually a welcome second of calm in a fairly heavy novel.
Also, what is wrong with the police in this town? I hardly believe that they have a large number of pressing matters that take attention away from Jamie going missing and Pippa's stalker. Of course she wouldn't want to go to Detective Hawkins after her incident with Jason Bell, but it really freaked me out that she decided to frame Max instead. I actually wanted Max to come to the Green Scene building after following her or something, helping her out of the situation, being a second witness against the DT Killer, and proving Pippa's hate wrong. (I am in no way condoning his actions ever, just that maybe he was due for some character development). I see that Holly Jackson was illustrating the point that Pippa could literally get away with murder without entirely making her a bad person, another person whose actions are in the gray area. I wonder if maybe Holly Black has a weird interest in covering faces when someone is murdered, from Sal suffocating with the bag over his head, to the DT killer wrapping their heads in duct tape.
All said, I would have liked this series 1000% more if there was far less profanity. It became distracting and filthy. And that is a hill that I am willing to die on.
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