Audiobook Review | Good Girl, Bad Blood

Took a week off because why not, but I’m back with another brilliant audiobook.

Good Girl, Bad Blood
Holly Jackson

Pip is not a detective anymore.

With the help of Ravi Singh, she released a true-crime podcast about the murder case they solved together last year. The podcast has gone viral, yet Pip insists her investigating days are behind her.

But she will have to break that promise when someone she knows goes missing. Jamie Reynolds has disappeared, on the very same night the town hosted a memorial for the sixth-year anniversary of the deaths of Andie Bell and Sal Singh.

The police won’t do anything about it. And if they won’t look for Jamie then Pip will, uncovering more of her town’s dark secrets along the way… and this time everyone is listening. But will she find him before it’s too late?

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I have been looking forward to this book since I started the series back in January but to be honest, I was also really interested to see where this story would go, the story from A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder was wrapped up within that book so I was curious how the author would manage to make this into a series. I have to say the journey that this story takes was a lot better than I expected and with a bit of a darker edge which gave it a lot more tension.

This time the stakes are higher, instead of looking into an old crime, she is investigating a missing person and the family of the missing boy are relying on her help. I enjoyed the immediacy of this book, it had a very different pace than the first book because of the difference in what Pip is investigating, but she is just as relentless in the search for Jamie.

I did like that the first story is brought into this one and that we do get to see what happens in the aftermath of everything Pip discovered and how the characters are dealing with that. Especially Pip who starts to go through a bit of a transformation the more injustice she comes up against, I thought it was brilliant how her emotions evolve through this book and that she becomes a little bit unrecognisable and acts in ways that I wouldn’t have expected but show how much what she is doing is affecting her.

Ravi doesn’t feature quite as prominently in this book, he is still there, Pip’s voice of reason with a good dose of humour, but he isn’t doing this side by side with her as he was in book one. He is still supportive and caring and helps with this investigation as much as possible but you can really feel the burden of this one on Pip’s shoulders. I do like how their relationship has progressed, I love that he is a staple in the Fitz-Amobi household, and how comfortable Pip and Ravi are around each other.

The story is very clever, I didn’t expect any of the revelations in this book at all, and I was thoroughly invested the whole way through the story. The style is very similar to the first book, including the addition of interviews and podcast episodes and articles, which I still really enjoyed the second time around. The audiobook production was fantastic and the narration was too, a little mark down for some overly breathy and frantic scenes which were understandable but not always comfortable to listen to, but I loved getting to hear the voices of the characters again.

I would highly recommend this series so far, and Good Girl, Bad Blood is a very good follow-up to the first book in the series, it definitely has me wondering what on earth is going to happen in the next book. I’m so excited to find out.