I Adore A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, So Did the Show Live Up?

If you're new to the book blog and to my recommendations, you might not know that A Good Girl's Guide to Murder is one of my favorite book series. I'm not a straightforward mystery gal. I'm the one screaming at the television that, "Hasn't the untrustworthy spouse been done before? This isn't revelatory!" Anyway, I usually guess the twist.

When I first read the book, I was actually going to an oyster bake in North Carolina that night. I stayed in the corner most of the evening, finishing the final pages on my phone because I couldn't put it down. Antisocial? Never.

I have thoughts about the other books in the series, and about Holly Jackson's writing trajectory as a whole, ranging from positive to negative to back again. All in all, I'm a fan and she does a phenomenal job in her niche. So I was very excited for the Netflix adaptation.

About the Book

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Novel: A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson
Release Date: May 2, 2019
Publisher: Electric Monkey
Format: Library
Source: eBook

Everyone in Fairview knows the story.

Pretty and popular high school senior Andie Bell was murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh, who then killed himself. It was all anyone could talk about. And five years later, Pip sees how the tragedy still haunts her town.

But she can't shake the feeling that there was more to what happened that day. She knew Sal when she was a child, and he was always so kind to her. How could he possibly have been a killer?

Now a senior herself, Pip decides to reexamine the closed case for her final project, at first just to cast doubt on the original investigation. But soon she discovers a trail of dark secrets that might actually prove Sal innocent . . . and the line between past and present begins to blur. Someone in Fairview doesn't want Pip digging around for answers, and now her own life might be in danger.

FIVE REASONS TO READ

1. Pip is such a refreshingly focused character. The mystery's never bogged down by subplots; she's consumed by the challenge in front of her, and the plot benefits from it.

2. It'll appeal to fans of Serial, the original murder mystery podcast. The cold-case structure is similarly engaging.

3. I always guess the twist, but Pip's presentation of each pattern of facts had me second-guessing each character multiple times.

4. The sequel is even better, and handles trauma in such a sensitive yet spiraling way. It's tinged with darkness that intensifies the events of the previous book, complicates Pip, and feels both true-to-life and larger-than-life.

5. It's also phenomenal as an audiobook, with full cast narration. (I'm very picky about audiobooks, so rarely choose to listen instead of read.)

The Show Just Dropped on Netflix

While I knew the BBC was producing a film adaptation, I hadn't realized it would be released in the US so quickly after the UK release. While the US version of the book makes some changes — Pip writing a senior thesis rather than an EPQ, the setting in Connecticut rather than in a small town in England — the show honors the author's British roots.

I also had no idea what the structure would be. Six episodes feels slightly short for a television show, even a limited series, and I definitely noticed details that could have been expanded with extra time.

So when the series dropped on Netflix on August 1, I was thrilled. I saved the watch for a rainy day. First, I got really sick; then, I finished my book revision. Finally, this week, I settled into do some long-overdue laundry and got into the show.

My Verdict

I did enjoy the film adaptation, but admittedly—the book was better. Nowadays, so many impressive showrunners breathe new life into book series I thought would otherwise be flat (cough, The Summer I Turned Pretty) so the usual "the book was better" adage doesn't always or even usually ring true. As a whole, book-to-film adaptations recently have each felt like distinctive, separate portions of an overall piece of media. I get one pro from the show, one from the movie, etc,.

In the case of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, the show did suffer from its time constraints. Certain plot aspects weren't present in the adaptation, but in fairness, the journal-forward nature of the book seems like it would be difficult to adapt. Frequently, in the book, Pip is updating her thesis notes or jotting down suspect lists. Much of the action and twists in the book are actually revelations that appear during verbal interviews that Pip conducts with each subject. It sounds like it wouldn't be compelling, but it absolutely is—but those same conversations wouldn't have been engrossing on my television screen.

Still, I think the show lost a lot of the nuance and characterization that made the book great. It portrayed a lot of the events accurately, but tended to skip over them pretty quickly. When one scene ended, it didn't really linger and so they almost felt more strung together—whereas in the book. we actively see how each domino falls and impacts our suspicion of who the killer is.

I would have loved to see the same complexity of Andie's book character portrayed on-screen. In the book, so much of what made the case stand out was that Andie wasn't particularly nice, and could be pretty selfish too. Nat de Silva was entirely different, and not a big part of the plot in the show.

I'm not sure why the show felt so much less intense than the book. Maybe because in the book, it's so clear that Pip is all-in on the mystery and constantly thinking about it; her interviews and investigations feel super active. In the show, we see her doing plenty of other things, so it almost doesn't carry the same weight. We don't see the mystery consume her. Maybe I wanted more True Detective vibes? For example, Mare of Eastown features a lot of slice-of-life, but you still feel the undercurrent tension of the case unfolding in every scene. I almost felt like the case was more casual in A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, but so much of what I loved about the book related to Pip's intensity and unwillingness to let it go.

I still liked it a lot, but I'm glad I chose it as a laundry and deep clean show. I had it running in the background, enough to tune in but not that I had to be glued to the screen every second. If I had treated it as an indulgent, phone-off show, I'm not sure I would have liked it as much.

The show's nice. The book's better. Still, it clocks in at roughly a five hour run time, so would be a solid afternoon of background noise. I'd watch a second season if they make one, but I wouldn't prioritize it, and I'd really hope they dive just a little deeper.