“Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears?” (Jackson 37).

What do you do when death is your shadow? When it follows you like a wraith, every moment of every day? When the sound of a cup clattering to the ground is gunshots, and the sweat on your hands is someone else’s deep red blood? When you see dead eyes, glassy and blank, in the darkness of closed eyelids? Holly Jackson’s As Good As Dead, the much anticipated finale to the A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder trilogy, is a study of death and its psychological impact on those left behind. A young adult crime thriller, As Good As Dead, picks up with Pippa Fitz-Amobi, an amateur investigator now famous for her true-crime podcast, following the events of the novel’s predecessor, Good Girl, Bad Blood. Preparing to head off to college at Columbia, Pip soon finds herself embroiled in the most dangerous investigation of her career; someone is stalking Pip, hinting at a dark fate for the young detective.
An up-and-coming author, Holly Jackson’s debut novel, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, was a wild, overnight success, followed by two bestselling sequels. According to Ramapo Junior Brianna Guglielmoni, “I loved the first two books, and I can’t wait to read the third book! Jackson really knows how to write amazing plot twists and complicated characters, and I’m really excited to see how Pip continues to deal with the trauma from the last two books while solving more cases.”
The series chronicles Pip’s journey from a naive, “good girl” with a clear sense of right and wrong to a haunted young woman struggling to find peace in the moral gray of the real world. Writing a convoluted, intricate tale of intentions and coverups, Jackson expertly toes the fine line between self-defense and murder, vigilante and criminal, deserved and victim.
A narrative highlighting the possibilities of another path taken and different choices made, Jackson perfectly captures the pain and complexity of a girl broken by the corruption of humanity. Unwilling to acknowledge the darkness within herself, Pip desperately attempts to preserve a life of normality, to return to the life she had before she opened the tomb of Fairview’s past . . . but secrets cannot be returned to their graves, the past cannot be rewritten, and lives cannot be restored from the dead. Pandora’s Box has been opened, and Pip now carries the ghosts of Fairview’s victims in her heart forever.
Jackson’s nail-biting mystery is absolutely perfect for fans of the CW’s Riverdale and Nancy Drew, Karen McManus’s One of Us is Lying, and Jennifer Lynne Barnes’s The Inheritance Games, as well as hopeless crime thriller aficionados. According to Megan from Goodreads, “I was hooked from the beginning and I literally loved every second of this book.” As Pip’s lethal game with her would-be-killer escalates, more of Fairview’s twisted secrets and macabre past begin to come to light as the mysteries of Pip’s small town come full circle in this fast-paced, electric finale.