Good Girl, Bad Blood

     Pippa Fitz-Amboi is back at it again in Holly Jacksons, Good Girl, Bad Blood. After what happened a year prior when Pippa solved a double homicide and published a podcast about it, one of her friends from school, Conner Reynolds, immediately came to her when his brother, Jamie Reynolds, went missing. If she could solve a five year old homicide case she could solve a real time missing persons case, right? Following Jacksons hit A Good Girls Guide to Murder, Good Girl, Bad Blood, is yet another YA mystery thriller where Pippa Fitz-Amboi is the only option to help save a life. Last time it was a choice to look into the presumably solved case, but this time, regardless of her doubts, Pippa knew she had to do this. The town of Fairview was holding a memorial for Sal Singh and Andie Bell and that was the last time Jamie Reynolds was seen. After going to the police about it and they said they wouldn't do anything, Pippa began to put the pieces together and started season two of her hit podcast, A Good Girls Guide to Murder. An exciting sequel in the same town of Fairview where all of the secrets are starting to come full circle, Good Girl, Bad Blood was a great book that I rate 4/5 stars. 

     Good Girl, Bad Blood starts with some recap of what happened last year. Then it transitions into the memorial for Andie Bell and Sal Singh. This is where the new part of the story gets introduced. At the memorial Pippa notices some suspicious activity from Jamie Reynolds, but because the emotions were so high she didn't think too much of it. That was until the night after the memorial his brother, Conner, comes to her with the concern that Jamie is missing. Instead of wanting to take it on right away, Pippa was kind of worried about the idea of getting back into investigating because of what happened when she was investigating the murders of Sal and Andie. Pip was put into danger, as well as her family, so it wasn't exactly something she wanted to do again. So rather than taking it on right away she goes to the police, who would end up doing nothing, so besides her better judgement, she ends up taking on the investigation of the disappearance of Jamie Reynolds. She had no other choice. Good Girl, Bad Blood turned into the next season of Pip's podcast, A Good Girls Guide to Murder. Before she could start the season of the podcast she had to do research and try to retrace Jamie's last steps. This was where she started to hear about how he was acting differently the past few weeks. Staying up late talking to a mystery person, trying to steal money, and just being generally secretive. All of these things may have had something to do with Jamie's disappearance. This part of the book is where you could see the conflict of the story start to evolve and see where exactly it might go. Of course, the author, Holly Jackson, could never write a book with a boring story structure, so throughout the book starting from this part of the rising action, all the way to the resolution, there were a lot of twists and turns that kept you reading. Each of these plot elements flowed into one another, which made the entire book come together nicely. One of my favorite plot elements from this book was the resolution and the protagonist. Many of the characters are the same from the original, A Good Girls Guide to Murder, including the very entertaining protagonist, Pippa Fitz-Amboi. Pips character and personality really drives the book. She's the reason why Good Girl, Bad Blood is so engaging. As the protagonist, you obviously get to see the good, but you also get to see the bad. This creates a more realistic story without the "perfect" characters that are commonly seen. The resolution also follows a similar path. Of course, because this is set to be a trilogy there has to be some sort of cliff hanger of sorts left at the end of the book, but the resolution of Good Girl, Bad Blood was definitely not lazy. Instead of finishing out the disappearance of Jamie Reynolds the author could have just left that as the cliff hanger, but rather than doing that she just connected the next mystery with this one. This helped the ending of the book not be predictable and it also made it be able to stand alone for the most part. The elements made Good Girl, Bad Blood come completely together to form an amazing story. 

      Different from the original, Good Girl, Bad Blood was written in the form of a podcast, rather than the Capstone Project. This difference made the book stand out from the original. I did not completely like or dislike this format. I enjoyed it partially because another mystery similar to this one - Sadie by Courtney Summers - used this format and it worked really well for it. In the case of Good Girl, Bad Blood I just don't think that it worked as well. Not saying that it ruined the book, but I just liked the project format better. Other than this, I thought that the writing was really good. The conflict and resolution were written in an incredible way, just like the original, that keep you wanting to keep reading to find out what happens next. Holly Jackson is great at knowing exactly how to keep the readers engaged - I have yet to be let down. There are twists and turns throughout the book, many of which are pretty unexpected, especially at the end. Just like the first book of the trilogy, none of these twists were written out of convenience. All of the twists were written in a way that makes sense to the story, but they weren't predictable and easy to figure out right away. This is very important for mystery books and I think it's why I enjoyed Good Girl, Bad Blood so much because it was written in such a way that kept you questioning what's going to happen next. With this being a sequel, it had to connect to the first one and between the ending of the first one and the beginning of this one the writing really got tied together. The two stories connected very well without being the same thing over again. The beginning of this book was written to connect back to the first one and create the transition into the conflict of this one. Again, it was different, but it also didn't completely forget what happened in A Good Girls Guide to Murder. There was a really good balance between the amount of differences and similarities between the two books. The overall writing and execution of Good Girl, Bad Blood was really good and it made the book very enjoyable to read. 

      Overall, I really liked this book and I rated it a 4/5 stars. Of course, being that it is a sequel, it couldn't ever completely live up to the original -  A Good Girls Guide to Murder -  but it was still very good. I really liked that the mysteries and stories behind them were different so this book was not just a copy and paste of the first. The two books do have similarities, but it's not too many to where you feel like you're reading the exact same thing again. Although I really did like this book I just could not rate it a 5/5 stars. This is not necessarily bad, but coming after AGGGTM it's hard to live up to the same expectations because the bar was set so high. Also, because it was the second one the characters were all ones that you already know so you don't get the same excitement of meeting this new character who does edgy things because after a while the edge goes away. One other thing that I missed in this book is the amount of time Pip and Ravi were together. While this book isn't about their relationship directly, I feel like it was a nice factor in the background, but it was a little bit forgotten about in this book because she was spending all of her time with Connor. The only other complaint that I have is the choice to make this book into a podcast style, rather than the Capstone project, but I previously talked about it. In some ways it just made sense to keep it as a project style, but I didn't hate the podcast part. Regardless of these things, I still really liked it. I recommend this book to anyone who likes YA mysteries and especially if you're someone who enjoyed the first book of the series, A Good Girls Guide to Murder. This book definitely did not disappoint, but there were just a few things that could have been different. All in all, I did enjoy this book a lot and I think that 4/5 stars is a perfect rating for it.