Good Girl, Bad Blood

Introduction

Good Girl, Bad Blood was written by Holly Jackson and published by Delacorte Press publishing company on April 30th, 2020. This sequel was released just shy of a year after the first in the series, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, and it is a solid follow up to what was an amazing start to the series. I greatly enjoyed this book, and I would recommend it to fans of the first one. For those of you who haven’t read this book and would like a general oversight of my opinions, the Spoiler-Free Thoughts section is a great place to start but do note that it may contain minor spoilers for events of the first book as they pertain to this one. For those who have read the book and are looking for deeper insights, the Thoughts section is for you. If anyone would like to discuss this book beyond what I have mentioned in this review, my Instagram DMs are open, as is the comment section on both social media and blog posts. Enjoy!

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

I am also going to insert a trigger warning for SA discussed in this book here. The subject matter is incredibly heavy and is one of the minor focal points of the story. Those not comfortable with this subject may not want to read this book. 

Plot

Pippa successfully solved Andie Bell’s murder, and now - for better or for worse - she has a reputation. So, when tragedy strikes her town again, she can’t help but get involved, and this time it’s personal.

Spoiler-Free Thoughts

I really like the angle they took with this. Not only was Pippa always organized to keep the information straight, but she also had her project as a reason to thoroughly document everything. I think transitioning that into a podcast format was very smart, and I of course appreciated the name. Ravi was right, it was perfect for Pip. This also allows for more commentary on the media, both professional and social, which I really enjoyed in the previous installment as well as this one. Something that felt odd to me in the first book and continued in this one was that Pip repeatedly breaks the rules to solve these cases - it was how the first book began - but she never seems to face serious consequences for this. The bad things that happen in this book aren’t necessarily the results of her breaking rules, just of being put in a lose-lose situation.

The emotional beats and morally gray characters were great. It was all very interesting and - in my opinion - well done. For me, some of that moral ambiguity makes the ending even more powerful. This time around, I did not see any of it coming, and I am so glad Jackson committed to an ending that wasn’t as happy as the previous one - if it can even be said that the first ending was a happy one. The focus turning back around to the broken justice system felt brutal in the way it needed to be to get the point across. On the other side of that, the character relationships are mostly calm and comparatively easy; it feels like a welcome reprieve from the mess that is the rest of the case. Ravi has always been that calm place for her, and I’m glad that was continued here. He wasn’t in the story nearly as much, but that opened up space for us to get to know the other people in Pippa’s life while keeping updated with the aftermath of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. I missed him, but his absence was a welcome change.

I was really glad to see the emotional toll of the previous book’s events explored within Pippa. She solved a murder, which is great, but that obviously came at a cost. I suppose I was wrong earlier in that the events of the last installment were met with minimal consequences. Externally, there weren’t many, but that’s not to say she didn’t suffer emotionally for all that she went through and discovered. I’m curious to see where her drive takes her in the sense that she faces a lot of burnouts - physically and mentally - when working on these cases, but she can’t seem to stop. That isn’t sustainable, and I want to see how that continues moving forward, especially with the ending now weighing on her as well.

This book was very well paced, and I enjoyed the way the story was intensified while keeping it within the realm of realism. The characters and character relationships are as strong as ever, and the heavy subject matter was handled and discussed in a way that highlighted its importance without being too forward with it. All in all, I feel that this installment is every bit as good as the previous one, so I will be rating it a 9/10.

Thoughts

I like the podcast angle here because it opens up a lot of possibilities that were more limited with the note format. I feel like as a series continues, it feels natural to keep upping the intensity, but where I felt the One of Us is Lying series by Karen M. McManus almost took it too far, I felt that this book continued it nicely. The threatening messages and the public’s perception of Pippa being all over the place felt very realistic, and it would be expected given she solved a local murder and took her findings public. Some people would love the story and appreciate what she did, some not so much, and many people don’t feel shy about sharing their opinions when they get to hide behind a screen. I also liked that this angle was introduced way earlier in the book, Jackson didn’t waste any time, which is also important in a sequel - you don’t need to lay nearly as much expositional groundwork.

I unfortunately did expect Max to get out. If these books are commenting on reality, they’re doing a great job. All too often, people like Max do horrible things and simply get away with it because the justice system - like so many other things - was built with their privilege at the forefront. Additionally, the police, as well-intentioned as they may be, sometimes just don’t do their jobs, or they miss important details that lead to people getting hurt. Stanley’s death - as terrible and emotional as it was - was made worse with Pippa’s probably accurate claims that if the police had listened to her from the beginning, it may have been prevented. This of course can’t be proven, but it's very difficult to consider the “what if”s.

I was so glad to see Pippa’s mental state explored more in this book because the toll the last one took on her shouldn’t be ignored, and it wasn’t. It was a focal point for both the story as a whole as well as for the people in her life who want to help her. In contrast to that though, I was glad to see her have the revelation that she doesn’t necessarily need to be a “good girl.” Some people will love her, and others will hate her, and she needs to find a way to live with that. If she wants to remain a public figure, that is a conclusion she would need to draw sooner or later, and I’m glad it was sooner. Her focus on Jamie was understandable because of her loyalty. It was loosely established in the first book that she is loyal by nature, but seeing how she was willing to do whatever it took to get her friend home - even if the cost of that was herself - really amplified that. It also allowed for a focus on relationships outside of her and Ravi. As mentioned above, I did miss him in this book, but I loved that we got to see more of Connor. It also showed how great Pip and Ravi were together by contrasting how in-tune they are versus how it was harder for her and Connor to be on the same page.

Stanley’s death and Charlie’s escape are going to be huge in the next book, I can already tell. She was already not doing great mentally in this book, but this is an entirely new level of trauma for her to work through in the next one. It was started in this installment, and I already do appreciate the style and language with which it was portrayed in the early weeks of it. She’s struggling, and the dialogue is flatter for it, but she isn’t pushing away the people in her life. They still love her, and their appreciation for all that she did is immeasurable, they will hold her together when she can’t do it herself.