Sarah Reviews… Good Girl, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson

Good morning! Today I am bringing you my review of Good Girl, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson. I read this book as part of my UKYA Readathon TBR, and it checked off my red, white or blue cover prompt. As you can see from the images this has a delightful blood red cover! I read Holly’s debut, and the first book in the series A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder last year and it was definitely up there as one of my favourite books of 2019! So, I was very much looking forward to getting stuck into this sequel and finding out what Pip is up to now.

Title: Good Girl, Bad Blood

Author: Holly Jackson

Publisher: Electric Monkey

Publication Date: 30^th April 2020

Format: Paperback

About The Book…

Pip Fitz-Amobi is not a detective anymore.

With the help of Ravi Singh, she released a true-crime podcast about the murder case they solved together last year. The podcast has gone viral, yet Pip insists her investigating days are behind her.

But she will have to break that promise when someone she knows goes missing. Jamie Reynolds has disappeared but the police won’t do anything about it. And if they won’t look for Jamie then Pip will, uncovering more of her town’s dark secrets along the way… and this time EVERYONE is listening.

But will she find him before it’s too late?

You Think You’d Know What A Killer Sounds Like.
Good Girl, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson

After discovering the truth about the murders in her town last year Pip has decided she is done with investigations, the cost to her and her family was too high. Other than recording her findings for her podcast she is done with any crime solving. But when one of her good friends comes to her after his brother goes missing and he and his mum are sure that there is more to his disappearance than him just running away Pip can’t help but find herself drawn into an investigation.

Good Girl, Bad Blood starts with a very handy recap of the main findings of A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder. I won’t repeat it here to avoid any spoilers but I would say given the fact it had been quite a while since I read that book I found it a really handy little reminder of some of the major things that had happened, of the people who had been affected by the events which I thought was particularly handy as a lot of the characters in the sequel are characters from the original book who are still living through the aftermath of everything that happened. I know that by including the transcripts of Pip’s podcast Good Girl, Bad Blood had a uniquely organic way of resharing this information but I so wish more books came with some sort of brief recap of major things that had happened earlier in a series!

Holly’s writing as ever is absolutely gripping from beginning to end! The book was well plotted and had me hooked! I’m a really huge fan of books that aren’t solely prose and manage to weave in other elements; Holly does this really seamlessly with the mixtures of transcripts from interviews that go on to form the second series of Pip’s podcast, but also the inclusion of other important files whether is a copy of a floor plan with notations or photographs.

I was completely and utterly hooked by this book I was probably reading it for far too long, in fact I finished reading it at about midnight which probably doesn’t sound too bad although my alarm was set for 6:00 AM the next morning to get up for work so I did slightly regret it or at least the sounds of Radio 1 coming from my radio the next morning!

Many of the characters in Good Girl, Bad Blood will be familiar too anyone who has read the first book, which you should definitely do before picking up this one! I am definitely a fan of Pip although I do slightly worry for her in the way that she does become so incredibly involved. While this story perhaps doesn’t have such a direct personal cost to her in terms of losing the family dog or anything like that, I think that this will I actually have quite a big impact on her going forward and it would be really interesting to see if Holly has any plans for a third book in this series and how Pip is getting on, and how the events of the story continue to affect her.

I am really pleased to see that Ravi is still in the picture, I think he is generally a really good influence on Pip; he knows how to handle her, when she needs his help and what she needs. He also does his best to get through to her at times when things are beginning to really affect her, when things seem unjust and she is beginning to struggle with some of the harsher realities of the justice system.

It was nice to see Cara still around and I was particularly pleased to see the way her and Pip’s friendship continued despite all their history. Given the events of the last book it would have been understandable if Cara didn’t feel she could maintain the same relationship they had previously, so it was great to see that they were still there for one another.

Final Thoughts…

I absolutely adored Good Girl, Bad Blood! If you had asked me before starting this book whether it could top the original, I would have told you that was highly unlikely despite people on Twitter telling me otherwise. After reading Good Girl, Bad Blood I think I might just have to admit they were right, it does actually top A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder and for me that is a really high bar to reach! The case was interesting, and I thought the touches following the trial for sexual assault from the original book was an especially important inclusion. I also think it was really important that Holly showed the reality, however depressing it may be, of this sort of case moving through the British justice system – Although I suspect it’s not really much better and in fact probably worse in other parts of the world. It was a tense ending to the book, and should Holly write a third I would be really intrigued to see how Pip is dealing with the aftermath of everything she discovered and went through in this book. I do know that whatever Holly writes next I’ll be reading it!

The A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder series on Goodreads

More Holly Jackson on SWB

About The Author…

Holly Jackson was born in 1992. She grew up in Buckinghamshire and started writing stories from a young age, completing her first (poor) attempt at a book aged fifteen.

‘A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder’ is a YA Mystery Thriller and her debut novel. She lives in London and aside from reading and writing, she enjoys binge-playing video games and pointing out grammatical errors in street signs.