Thanks to my sister and her two children, I read the first book in A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, and when my sister lent me the next two books in the series, I was immediately happy to be able to continue reading.
I particularly liked that this book didn’t shy away from the problems caused by Pip’s investigations in the previous books. While they obviously had a negative impact on Pip’s family, there were also a lot of conflicts that were caused between Pip and other members of the town…such as Nat da Silva. While she was definitely hostile to Pip, I could thoroughly understand why she felt the way she did…and empathise with how everything Pip had done previously brought up old, emotional wounds. To be honest, though, I didn’t like her brother. From what little I saw of him, he seemed to let personal bias get in the way of doing his job and…well, he just wasn’t a nice person.
I liked the inclusion of Sal in this book and the fact there was a memorial to both him and Andie, even though the memorial was what set off the events of this book.
It was good to see that Pip had a wider reach in this book, due to the site that she’d created. I also thought it was good to see that, for as many people who were willing to actually help out (one commenter actually giving an idea for further investigation), it was obvious that there were trolls; people who said things that were deliberately hurtful, or who made threats because of the public attention everything was gaining.
I really didn’t like Ant and Lauren in this book. Pip kind of describes them as a single entity…and I can’t really say that she’s wrong. I’m not sure I can describe them as friends of Pip, Connor and Cara…honestly, if I was any of them, I would have cut off the two the moment they proved they didn’t care about their friend’s brother having gone missing.
I thought it was really good that, like the first book, this one contained transcripts of the interviews Pip conducted, along with the details of her notes. Both of those helped to add more to the story, as well as to gain a little more insight…not only to Pip, but to other characters as well. And I thought the inclusion of the photos worked really well too.
I found this book really easy to read and I got quite emotional towards the end. I would completely recommend reading this book if you like reading young adult thrillers. I’m not even sure you need to have read the first book in this series, as I think this one stands well on its own, but I would highly recommend reading the first one too.
Ink of Blood 