Good Girl, Bad Blood

I LOVED Good Girl’s Guide to Murder when I finally picked it up, and it truly shouldn’t have been a surprise. True crime YA? Sign me up. The author is British with a UK publisher, so the US is getting editions about a year later, but that just meant I had to order the sequel, Good Girl Bad Blood, from Book Depository, because I did not want to wait. Potential spoilers ahead.

In Good Girl, Bad Blood, we pick up a few months after the end of GGGTM, and Pip has launched a podcast about the case–a la Serial/Undisclosed–and she’s got her eye on the end of school. But then one of her friends comes to her, begging her to take on a new case. His older brother is missing and the police won’t help look for him. Pip only agrees because she’s got a bad feeling, and boy is she right. On her quest to find Jamie, Pip discovers sketchy new people, catfishing, a decades old serial killer case, and more. Plus, there’s even more cute moments with Ravi, her funny parents, and more. Pip’s got to balance this new found fame with her gut instincts, and not everyone is as cool with her poking around as they may have been years ago–because they know Pip gets results, and they’ve got stuff to hide.

This book is so much more British that I’m not realizing how many changes were made in the US edition of GGGTM. If that consistency bothers you, maybe wait for it to come to the US, but it’s not THAT disorienting, you just have to keep that in mind instead of being like “but this isn’t Connecticut!” But it’s good! This book is SO cool in the way it uses mixed media to tell the story–even more so than the first–more transcripts/podcast interviews, photos, maps, etc. I loved seeing it! It’s something I’ve always wanted to do with my books, and now I have seen it work WELL and really give the story even more depth.  I enjoyed spending more time with Pip& Ravi and seeing what happened to the cast of characters, even though I still wanted to string up Max out back and never come back.

I can’t wait to read more books in this series! I hope we get to see Pip go to a podcast convention or something, or meet another podcaster, or solve a truly cold case!