Review - 'A Good Girl's Guide to Murder' by Holly Jackson

"Who do you think I am, an amateur?"

Move aside, Nancy Drew! There's a new teen detective in town. And she won't rest until she's unearthed all your secrets and gotten to the bottom of a mystery that has long held her town captive.

Pip never truly believed what all of Fairview has accepted: that Sal Singh murdered his beautiful and popular girlfriend Andie Bell and then killed himself. Five years later, Pip is a senior in high school, and decides for her final project that she's going to find out once and for all what really happened that night.

I'm always in the mood for a good whodunnit. Give me a small group of suspects, everyone hiding secrets, more twists and turns than you can shake a stick at, and red herrings galore, and I'm in heaven. I loved putting on my detective cap and puzzling out the clues alongside Pip as she investigates and solves this mystery.

For me, in order for a mystery to be successful, it has to be so riveting that there is no room for me to think. Once my mind gets going, it has this annoying habit of supplying me with random unsolicited guesses, some of which inevitably turn out to be right, and ruining the surprises. So it's best if I'm so taken with the story that I'm only surfacing to turn the pages as fast as I can. And this story was exactly that.

I grew up on Nancy Drew, and have been looking for an older version of that for as long as I've outgrown it. And how wonderful that this story turned out to be all that I've been looking for and more. Pip is clever, spunky, and fearless, the perfect teen detective staring down secrets and murderers. And the fact that this is a series means I won't have to say goodbye to her just yet.

Readaroo Rating: 4 stars