What Is It About
It’s a young adult mystery by Holly Jackson, published in twenty nineteen, and it’s the first of a series. The first half of this summary is spoiler free. The second half tells you everything, including the ending, and I’ll warn you before it starts.
Here is the premise in one line. Five years ago, a seventeen year old girl called Andie Bell vanished in a small English town. Her boyfriend was blamed, and he died. Now a schoolgirl is sure the town got it wrong.
The Setup
The town is Little Kilton, in Buckinghamshire. On the twentieth of April, twenty twelve, Andie Bell left home in her black car and was never seen again. A few days later, her boyfriend, Sal Singh, was found dead in the woods, after a confession text went to his father. The police closed the case.
Five years later, Pip Fitz-Amobi is about to start her final year of school. She is clever and stubborn and has her eye on Cambridge. For her Extended Project Qualification, which is an independent school project, she decides to investigate. Her goal is to prove Sal was innocent.
The first step is to knock on the door of the Singh house. Sal’s younger brother, Ravi, opens it, and he is not happy to see her. But Pip tells him she doesn’t think his brother did it, and he agrees to talk.
How the Book Is Built
A fun thing about this book is how it is told. Between the chapters, you read Pip’s production log, where she records her research and her wild theories. And you read typed transcripts of her interviews with people from the case, like a journalist at the local paper, one of Sal’s friends, and her own teacher.
So the book feels like a real case file. You are doing the investigation along with Pip, and you are free to disagree with her.
Part One
In the first part, Pip builds her picture of the night Andie vanished. She studies the news reports and police statements. She finds out Sal told the police he had left a friend’s house at ten thirty. She interviews Ravi, and then Sal’s friends, including Max Hastings and Naomi Ward, who is the sister of Pip’s best friend, Cara.
The picture gets messier. Andie turns out to have had a secret life, and a lot of people had reasons to be angry with her. Pip makes lists of persons of interest. They include Andie’s own father, Jason Bell.
Part Two
In part two, Pip and Ravi follow the secrets. They talk to Andie’s friends, learn that she had a second phone, and track down a drug dealer called Howie Bowers. They even slip into the Bell house, the place where Andie was last seen.
Pip also works out that Sal’s alibi may have been taken away. A photograph from the night, once she enlarges it, suggests Sal was still with his friends after midnight. Naomi and her friends tell Pip they were forced to lie. A text from an unknown number made them change their story, because someone knew something bad they had done.
That’s the turning point. If someone arranged for Sal to look guilty, then Sal was innocent, and the real killer is still in town.
Part Three
In part three, the danger is real. Pip has been getting threatening messages, some from a number that says Unknown, telling her to stop. She ignores them, and then someone takes her dog, Barney. The message tells her to bring her computer and every drive with her research on it, and to come alone.
She is scared, and she’s also stubborn. Her best friend Cara and Cara’s family are mixed up in the story, so she has to protect them while she finds the truth. She now knows that her project is putting everyone she loves at risk.
This is the last chance to leave. After this point I’m going to explain the ending.
Spoiler Warning
This is the spoiler warning. If you haven’t finished the book, stop here. Everything from now on gives away the killer.
Okay, still here? Let’s go.
The First Answer
The first answer is Elliot Ward, Cara’s father and Pip’s history teacher. He had been in a secret relationship with Andie, and after he pushed her and she hit her head at his house, he panicked, believing he had killed her. To protect himself and his daughters, he framed Sal and murdered him in the woods.
Pip works it out when she tracks his location to a house in Wendover. She calls the police and confronts him, and he confesses. In the loft is a girl he believes is Andie, but she is not. She is a young woman named Isla Jordan, whom he took in from the side of a road and kept hidden.
The Second Answer
But Elliot isn’t the one who threatened Pip or took her dog. When she notices he looked confused about Barney, Pip realises there were two different people. She traces the second one, and it is Andie’s younger sister, Becca.
Becca explains what happened. She had been drugged at a party, and she found out that Andie had sold the drug. When she told her sister, Andie didn’t care. They shoved each other, Andie fell, and Becca did nothing as her sister choked. She hid the body, and later she sent the Unknown texts to protect herself. Barney died, which Becca says she didn’t mean.
When Pip goes to see her, Becca drugs her tea, and tries to strangle her in the woods, then stops. Pip’s dad and Ravi arrive in time.
The Months Later
In the final chapter, some months later, the consequences are clear. Elliot pleads guilty to Sal’s murder. Becca faces trial for manslaughter and other charges. Max Hastings is charged with sexual assault and rape, and Howie Bowers pleads guilty to supplying drugs.
Pip gives her school presentation to a packed hall. She says Andie was not just a perfect victim. She says Sal was good until the end. And she brings Ravi on stage to speak about his brother, so that finally the town hears the truth about him.
The Rest of the Series
If you want more, this is the first of a series. As of November twenty twenty-six, sources list it as a trilogy: A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder in twenty nineteen, then Good Girl, Bad Blood in twenty twenty, and As Good as Dead in twenty twenty-one. There is also a prequel novella called Kill Joy, and sources disagree on where to fit it in.
The same sources say the later books can spoil the earlier twists, so read them in order. The BBC and Netflix series is also following the books. It has reportedly adapted the second book, and a third and final season is reported for twenty twenty-seven.
Is It Worth Reading
So is it worth reading? In my view, yes, if you like mysteries with a clever format and a narrator you root for. I give it four out of five, and that’s my opinion, so feel free to argue.
It is a heavy book under the cosy cover, with drug use, sexual violence and a killing. But the ending stays with you, and the next books in the series, Good Girl, Bad Blood and As Good as Dead, carry on from here.
If you liked it, the best thing to do next is read the sequel while Pip’s voice is still in your head. If you only watched the show, the book is a different experience, because you are inside her notes the whole time.
Do you agree with the twist? Tell me in the comments. The full guide to the book is at book explained dot com. Thanks for watching, and I’ll see you next time.
