SPOILER Book Review—As Good As Dead by Holly Jackson

I'm a huge fan of the young adult thriller genre, and few have done it better than Holly Jackson in the A Good Girl's Guide to Murder series. Released in 2021, As Good As Dead caps off the trilogy in unexpected and increasingly macabre ways. Jackson takes the reader on a twisting journey of trauma, morality, and difficult choices that will leave them questioning just how thick the line between good and evil truly is. The bulk of my review is dedicated to my thoughts about the book's "big twist", so take this as a first and final spoiler warning! I discuss key plot points from all three books in the series, so if you haven't read A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, Good Girl, Bad Blood, or As Good As Dead, I would recommend giving them a read first!

As Good As Dead by Holly Jackson

Goodreads Summary

Pip is about to head to college, but she is still haunted by the way her last investigation ended. She’s used to online death threats in the wake of her viral true-crime podcast, but she can’t help noticing an anonymous person who keeps asking her: Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears? 

Soon the threats escalate and Pip realizes that someone is following her in real life. When she starts to find connections between her stalker and a local serial killer caught six years ago, she wonders if maybe the wrong man is behind bars. 

Police refuse to act, so Pip has only one choice: find the suspect herself—or be the next victim. As the deadly game plays out, Pip discovers that everything in her small town is coming full circle . . .and if she doesn’t find the answers, this time she will be the one who disappears. . .

My Thoughts

I started reading this series for the first time in September and, wow, A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder and Good Girl, Bad Blood are phenomenal. I loved As Good As Dead too, albeit in a different way. Compared to the first two installments, I found As Good As Dead to be more character-driven than plot-driven. The heart of the novel is Pip’s transformation—her descent into darkness. Holly Jackson’s POV style, limited third person, is surprisingly intimate and lends itself well to this character study. Speaking of, I really loved Jackson’s writing in this book. Her comfortability with the characters, coupled with a talent for vivid, immersive description, results in some powerful passages of interior monologue.

As Good As Dead is very much Pip’s novel. Jackson takes great pains to sum up the state of her character in the first forty or so pages. Pip is damaged, reeling, and feels emotionally isolated from family and friends. She seeks to rectify her suffering by putting the world back into its black and white colouring—something that we, the reader, may recognize is not possible. The entire novel is based on this premise. Reading onward was like watching a long line of dominoes topple over, the fall of the final domino inevitable in hindsight.

Photo by Pars Sahin on Unsplash

So, let’s talk about that moment. Pip narrowly escapes DT/Jason Bell’s clutches, only to return to Green Scene and murder Jason Bell. She then covers up the murder, framing Max Hastings. So. The craziness of it all didn’t really hit me until Pip called Ravi and they agreed not to go to the police. At that point, it became apparent how the Pip we used to know may be lost forever. BUT—despite the shock of it all, I don’t think that the decision was out of character. The crux of the decision is Pip having zero trust in the “system” to arrest and convict Jason Bell. This sentiment does not just stem from Hawkins shutting down Pip about her stalker—although it definitely reinforced the point—but from both of her previous cases. Let’s look at the facts: 

1. The police and courts wrongly convicted Sal Singh for the murder of Andie Bell. 
2. After Pip proved Sal’s innocence, Elliott Ward and Becca Bell were sent to prison. — Yes, they did terrible things, but, as Pip recounts to us, were they anything more than good people placed in extraordinary circumstances? Does Pip believe that they deserved their fate?
3. The police refused to investigate the disappearance of Jamie Reynolds.
4. The court system found Max Hastings innocent of drugging and assaulting girls.

The final nail in Pip’s moral coffin is the issue of Stanley Forbes and Charlie Green. Pip believes that Charlie was justified in killing Stanley. She also believes that Stanley didn’t deserve to die. This contradiction tears her apart. Should justice be left in the hands of the law? If the law cannot deliver justice, as Pip sees time and time again, why shouldn’t she seek out justice herself? Holly Jackson challenges us, the reader, to consider these issues, but Pip’s decision is not about our beliefs. It is about a traumatized girl who has lost faith in any sort of “system”. In light of what Pip has gone through over the past year—coupled with the PTSD, lack of sleep, and literally just being kidnapped and ALMOST MURDERED—I had zero issue with Jackson deciding to have Pip deliberately kill Jason Bell. 

Photo by ella alpert on Unsplash

To me, it’s less about Pip “becoming a murderer” and more about the cycle of violence and negligence that has corrupted this once plucky and optimistic young girl. As the series comes full circle, we realize that the events of all three books begin with the police coercing a false confession out of Billy Karras. The failure of the criminal justice system—to detain the real DT Killer, to look past the convenient narrative in Andie Bell’s death, to search for Jamie Reynolds, even to protect Stanley Forbes—leads to Pip being consumed by her cases. We should be enraged that the life of a teenage girl has been tarnished irrevocably by the failures of the systems put in place to protect her.

In defence of Pip’s decision to frame Max Hastings, I offer the below quote (As Good As Dead, Page 38) as evidence.

“And Max Hastings? Pip saw no grey here at all: Max Hastings was black-and-white, clear-cut. He was the danger, the danger that had outgrown the shadows and now made its home behind an expensive disarming smile. Pip clung to this belief like she would fall off the world if she didn’t. Max Hastings was her cornerstone, the upturned mirror by which she defined everything, including herself. But it was meaningless, twisted, because Max had won; he would never see the inside of a prison cell. The black-and-white smudged back out to grey."

If the DT Killer breaks Pip’s tenuous grip on the girl she once was—plunging her sense of morality fully into the grey—then what better way to get justice than by framing the one person she judges to be clear-cut evil? In Pip’s mind, she is the white and Max is the black. Putting Max in prison is a way for Pip to return to a world of “straight, uncrossable lines between the good and the bad”. Pip believes/knows that Max raped girls in the past and is perhaps still doing so (when she asked Luke if he was selling Rohypnol to Max, Luke didn’t answer). While rape and murder are not necessarily equitable crimes, is giving Max more years than he may deserve a concern for Pip at that moment? She flat out does not trust the system to punish Max for his crimes.

Photo by Maan Limburg on Unsplash

The most heartbreaking part of the novel is that up until Pip killed Jason, I saw a way out for her. A way for Pip to recapture her old self. But killing Jason Bell, the subsequent cover-up, and then freezing out her family and friends—that does something to a person. Something irreversible. Pip gave up everything trying to reclaim her old self, and I don’t think she ever will. That is tragic. As such, this novel gives us a different kind of closure than we usually see. Sometimes even when the main character wins, they also lose. Even with the book’s last page—Ravi and Pip reconnecting after Max is convicted—I don’t think Pip, Ravi, or their relationship will ever be the same again. Pip is forever marked by the cycle of violence in her town and what she has done to seemingly end the cycle or continue it. Ignoring the fact that Max is a rapist and all-around terrible guy, doesn’t his “wrongful” conviction seem like a case that a young Pip would investigate? The merry-go-round of secrets and lies in Fairview has kept on spinning.

In summation, I really liked this book. It's one of those books that you absolutely fly through, but also a bit of a thinker. The ending leaves the reader with many unanswered questions, which I think is Jackson's intention. It is up to us, the reader, to make our own decisions about good and evil and how we think "justice" can be achieved. A very topical subject in today's world. As Good As Dead was a bit heavier than its predecessors in the series, but as we see in the novel, sometimes change—evolution—is inevitable, borne out of the world we occupy, for better or for worse.