As Good As Dead

Introduction

As Good As Dead was written by Holly Jackson and published by Delacorte Publishing company on August 5th, 2021, as the finale to the A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder series. This is one of the most consistently good series I’ve read so far in that I can’t say one was leagues better or worse than the rest, I genuinely enjoyed them all. For fans of the young adult mystery genre, this series is a fantastic one to start off with, and I would highly recommend it. For those who haven’t read this series yet, the Spoiler-Free Thoughts section will not have any major information for this book, just general thoughts, but there may be spoilers for the previous two in relation to this one. For those who want a deeper insight on this book and series, the Thoughts section is for you. Anyone who wants to start up a conversation can head to the comments on either this post or the social media posts, as well as my DMs. Enjoy the review!

If you would like to stay updated on Holly Jackson and her upcoming projects, you can follow her on social media @hojay92.

Plot

Pippa is falling apart after Charlie’s escape, and when she begins to receive threatening messages from an anonymous source, she begins to wonder if now her life is the one in danger.

Spoiler-Free Thoughts

While I won’t focus on the style of this installation nearly as much as the previous ones, I do want to mention that I enjoyed the personal aspect of her logs this time around. She’s now speculating not only about the case, but about her own character, which is very interesting.

Pippa has always been a strong character, but following the events of the previous book, that strength is presented as more aggressive. She has always been persistent, and she never truly cared about ruffling feathers in her search for the truth, but there are times in this book she lashes out and becomes more violent. Honestly, I understand it, and there are moments that I really appreciate it. Thankfully, Ravi and her family have been consistently supportive of her and her struggles, even if they don’t understand the full extent of it, which she is cognizant of. I really appreciate that aspect of this story; the support that Pippa has. I feel like it drives home that even though she isn’t alone and she knows that, it doesn’t make it go away or easy to deal with. Even still, she remains candid and mostly honest with at least Ravi if not her family.

I mentioned above that Pippa was more temperamental in this installment, but it goes beyond that. She is completely unraveling, and she will do whatever she feels she needs to do to put herself back together. It is such a sharp contrast from the put-together good girl with slightly rebellious tendencies that we started with, and I felt that it was a natural progression for her given her experiences.

We revisit the themes of justice this time around, which is fitting both for the story told throughout the series and for the finale. Why the police don’t take Pippa as seriously as they should is both shocking given what they’ve seen her accomplish and not shocking at all given their consistency in underestimating her. Each book amps up the danger, but these themes have remained consistent, which is both realistic and disappointing.

This book is difficult for me to rate because while I didn’t love the plot of this one as much as the previous two, I have gained a new appreciation for the potency of the themes while writing this review. Ultimately, I didn’t feel as invested in the story being told in this book, which is leading me to an 8.5/10. Not quite on the same level as its predecessors for me, but a solid conclusion to a very enjoyable series.

Thoughts

As mentioned above, Pippa is much more aggressive in this book than in its predecessors. There were times - such as with Max - that I loved it, and there were other times - as with Jason - that it didn’t resonate quite as well with me at the time of reading it, but I’ll get into that more later. Something else new for Pippa is the drug use, and I honestly get why she feels she needs it. She’s falling apart, and she thinks they will help hold her together, even temporarily. The support she has from Ravi and her family is wonderful, but that doesn’t mean it’s enough to get her through Stanley’s death and Charlie’s disappearance. But they do come through for her in spades at the end, the culmination of all she’s done for them coming back for her.

The police are so frustrating in these books. Pippa was dead on when she said that stalking is often underreported because those claims aren’t taken seriously, and so many people are harmed or killed because of it. Ravi is the only one who takes her fears seriously and, once again, she was proven correct. It’s a painful reminder of the trial outcome for Max, and the injustice of it all is infuriating in its realism.

The plot moved very quickly. I was not expecting to find out who the DT killer was halfway through, and while I wasn’t surprised by it being Jason - I had a feeling about that hairbrush in the picture of Andie’s room - he wasn’t a prime suspect for me or Pippa at the time. Then, I was shocked again when she got out but paused, turned around, and murdered Jason. And this is where the book started to lose me. It felt very How to Get Away With Murder to me, which is fitting, but didn’t resonate as well with me in the context of this series when I first read it.

What did sit well with Jason’s story - at least initially - was Pippa’s mental state behind it all. At first, there was a broken feeling to her internal monologue because she assumed that she was at death’s door, as all statistics pointed to no chance of escape. Then there seems to be a clarity to her panic, and she plans in the same way she always has; with success being critical. When that doesn’t work, there’s an extreme level of guilt and anxiety, and that concoction on top of her already agonizing over the gray area of “innocence” likely led to her choice to kill Jason.

In all honesty, I did not enjoy the kidnapping and murder plot at first, but in thinking more about it, I appreciate what it meant for the themes. Pippa killed Jason not because she was angry and irrational  - though she was angry - but because she knew that if she didn’t, he would continue to hurt people. She could have gone to the police, but every single time she had gone to them before, they ignored her until it was too late. And even if they had listened, Jason was a rich and influential man. Those factors allowed Max to get away with his crimes, so why not Jason? Especially when he was such good friends with officer Hawkins.

To add insult to injury, Hawkins takes Jason’s murder very seriously, more so than we’ve seen for any other crime committed in this series. He has the same intensity Pippa did when investigating Sal’s death, and while he knows that Pippa did it, he also knows that he can’t prove it because she made sure all signs pointed to Max. We once again see that if he had just listened to Pip and taken action when he had the chance, lives could have been saved, and that is truly a tragedy.