Joined in 2023 
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This review will be full of spoilers, so if you haven't read As Good As Dead and plan to do so, don't read on. A Good Girl's Guide to Murder is The New York Times No.1 bestselling YA crime thriller and WINNER of The British Book Awards' Children's Book of the Year 2020 and shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2020
So, Ravi only wanting to be there for Pip because the author made him believe that she was the only thing he has left, agrees to help her hide and frame what she did 😃. The fact that the author knew that if they just made Pip do it on her own it would make her seem like a monster so they had to throw innocent, lovable, Ravi in the mix to justify her actions. I mean he literally tries to justify Pips actions FOR her. 🤧 And then came the twist. The mass plot twist around half way through that completely ruined my bookish LIFE for the past few years. Killed all of my love for Pip and the series. When the police refuse to act on her behalf, Pip does the thing she is best at, she investigates herself. Is she finally in over her head?So is the story of these two women, who meet while pursuing a course at the Iowa Writer’s workshop and apart in 1988. Now, twenty years later, Charlotte is a successful author and professor at the University of Arizona where her husband, Will is also a professor.
The tone of this entire story is much darker than the previous two and I feel like some people may not like it as much because of that. For me, it felt like the natural progression of Pip's story.Mr. Turner,” Epps barked, voice rising, “I suggest you advise your client to keep quiet and remind her that any defamatory statements she makes now could be classified as slander.” Pipis about to head to college, but she is still haunted by the way her last investigation ended. She’s used to online death threats in the wake of her viral true-crime podcast, but she can’t help noticing an anonymous person who keeps asking her: Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears? I suppose one reason I became a writer was that writing allowed you to edit your thoughts until you got them right." What I did love were the insightful moments of the friendship between Esme and Charlotte. They were written so clearly that I could imagine being there witnessing their early friendship. However, I never really got the feeling that I knew either of these girls. The "betrayal" seemed to be so out of character and made me feel even more that I just didn't get this character.
Pip's character is beguiling than ever. I love seeing how much Pippa had grown; from the good girl we used to see, to this morally grey character that we least expected. She's become harried, and less strait-laced as one might expect from someone with a history of becoming involved in murder investigations, yet still so identifiable that it seemed like I was on the dark, terrible ride with her. For the most part, I think the writing here was nicely done. I think the author did a fantastic job of capturing the characters, up until the end. And maybe my critique of the end belongs more in the entertainment value portion of the review. The problem I had was with a character who basically abdicates all personal responsibility to her husband and allows him to solve her problems for her. I'm not sure whether I can legitimately consider this a writing issue, because it is in line with how the character behaves historically, but it ultimately means that our protagonist shows absolutely no growth. It's something I'd love to discuss with the author and perhaps understand better. Are we meant to see that Charlotte hasn't changed at all from her graduate school days and has learned nothing from her experience with Esme or is that a flaw in the writing? From what I can tell, we are meant to sympathize with Charlotte, which leads me to lean more towards a flaw in characterization. A shy girl from a small town and working class family, Charlotte is ecstatic to be accepted into the prestigious Iowa Writers Workshop. She heads to Iowa City to find an apartment and meets the beautiful and beguiling Esme. She and Esme move in together and become best friends. Many years pass and Charlotte is a published author and tenured professor. Her university boyfriend, who was away in Italy completing his doctoral research while Charlotte lived with Esma, is now her husband, and he and Charlotte live a settled life in Tuscon. Charlotte and Esme are no longer friends; Esme moved away from Iowa and stopped answering Charlotte's letters. Out of the blue, an older, fatter, less beautiful Esme turns up at Charlotte's house and all of the wounds she thought had healed from the past reopen, tearing her life apart. It also didn’t sit well with me the fact that Pip *roped* her friends into helping her get away with it, and they turned that narrative into them “taking justice into their own hands.” Or the fact that the police was continuously portrayed as nothing but a useless 🤡 throughout the series. I was mad everytime they turned Pip down when she needed their service. As Pippa Fitz-Amobi is leaving her house, heading to a mediation meeting in New York City, she notices a dead pigeon on her lawn. She doesn’t think much about it, her mind focused on the upcoming meeting. In the city, she meets with her lawyer, Max Hastings (a serial rapist Pip outed in one of the previous books), his lawyer, and a mediator. Max is planning to sue Pip for libel for posting a “defamatory statement” about him on her podcast. He agrees to drop the lawsuit if she posts a statement admitting she was wrong and apologizing to Max. She also must say that the audio clip she used was doctored. Furious, Pip refuses and storms out.
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As Good As Dead is the story of two women who meet at a writer’s workshop, claim to be “friends” yet do little to show that except for an occasional moment. They grow distant over the years, with Charlotte harboring a secret that causes stress on their relationship as well as with her husband. Particularly after solving her last case, she's left with PTSD surrounding those events. Her emotional state of mind is fairly dark. She's struggling for real. The last book is definitely different from the previous ones. It's more dark and ominous, capturing Pippa and the emotional toll the past two investigations have had on her. However, the twist of events is too abrupt and far-fetched, I was caught off guard by the shift in tone from book one and two's playful inquisitiveness to this novel's trauma-filled narrative. I enjoyed the first half of the book, and I am surprised that my guess for the culprit is on the beam compared to the last two books. However, the "cover-up" part that takes up the second half was a miss for me. It caught up with her as they pulled into the parking lot for the Fairview train station. It was busy, the sun glinting off the regimented lines of commuter cars. However, these last few months, Mr. Hastings has struggled to find employment at the level to which he deserves. This is directly due to the reputational harm that Miss Fitz-Amobi’s libelous statement has caused. Consequently, my client still has to live at home with his parents, because he cannot find an appropriate job and therefore cannot pay rent to live in New York.”
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