As Good As Dead - Saving me to save myself (Book Review)

It's wrap season. Everyone and everywhere is buzzing with recaps of the year, 2024. Sometime this year, I started the series A Good Girl's Guide to Murder. I've read two books from the series and I liked the first book in the series but the second book wasn't one I really liked. Well, sometime last month, I read the last book in this series. As a way of wrapping up the year 2024, I wanted to be done with most of my opened books before venturing into new ones.

I read As Good As Dead. The third book in the series A Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson and I had mixed feelings about this one. It wasn't bad, neither was it too good. To me, it hovered between good and just fine. I'm about to review this book so let's get on with it.

In this book, Pip decides to investigate one last crime case, as a way to deal with the trauma she had experienced in book 2. She plans to endure everything till she goes to high school in a few months and investigates the murder of Jane Doe. Save Jane Doe to save herself. When she begins to notice strange happenings around her house, strange things that 5 murder victims of six years ago had complained about before they were murdered, she realizes she's a killer's next target. But this is a killer that has been apprehended and should be sitting behind bars. If she is his next target, who is this new killer? And will this be the last crime case she needs to investigate to save herself?

I really really loved the plot and the storyline in this third book. For someone like Pip who had gained so much popularity from her victory in Book 1, it was expected that even with all the fans and the online lovers she had garnered, she was definitely going to have haters, stalkers and psychopaths on her trail. And I liked that about this third book. Pip having to save herself to save herself. Making her the center of her own investigation was a very interesting plot on its own. And reading that, was worth it.

One thing I also loved was the twists in this book. The villain. Pip, investigating her potential stalker means she had to involve everybody in the town in her investigation. But this killer is in the same town and is in on her investigation. The big reveal was so good to read about. There were traces to this person from the book's beginning but these traces were those that could easily be overlooked because they could be characterized as human flaws. I loved the villain reveal.

When a book is centered on the investigation of the past lives of a dead person, there is sure to be questions left unanswered. And that's what we saw in Book 1. The murders that brought Pip to the spotlight, that of Andie Bell and Sal Singh. In this third book, more truths were told, about the two teenagers and about the little town. Everything that had happened in the town in the past five years was as a result of one thing that happened 6years ago. I really liked how the author linked it. It made it all worth the read.

Talking about the things I didn't like. The Pip we knew in Book 1 and Book 2 wouldn't have made decisions as stupid as Book 3 Pip. She was nerdy, smart and many of the things she was in Book 1 but in some cases, the decisions she was making wasn't typical of Pip. This third book didn't meet up to the standard of Pip's smartness we were introduced to earlier on. It was somewhat annoying.

Also, the ending was unpredictable but it really did not make sense. Pip always had Ravi by her side. They were always team Ravi and Pip. Making things pan out the way it did wasn't nice at all. Leaving all sense of rationality aside, I still found that ending unnecessary. Things were just fine the way they were. The book would have ended very well with how things had planned to end but the author decided to make things more complicated, 3 pages away from the ending. And that was something I did not like.

For a thriller where the killer has mapped out his murder strategies for years, apprehending such a killer isn't supposed to be easy. But here, the killer was apprehended too easily for my liking. He deserved to have suffered more for all he had done.

This is a fast paced novel and Holly has managed to create a darker and a more suspense filled world for all characters in this third book. This book is absolutely worth the read. Although there were some dissatisfying scenes, I still liked it.

I'll rate this book a 3/5. It wasn't really up to my expectations but it did really well in its own way. Do I recommend the series to people? Yes. Definitely. This series is nice and worth all the hype it got for Book 1.

Thanks for reading. Do check this one out.

Image is a screenshot taken by me during the process of reading.

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