Audiobook Review | As Good As Dead

Finally I have made time to read the last book in this series.

As Good As Dead
Holly Jackson

The highly-anticipated finale to the A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder series, the instant bestsellers that read like your favorite true crime podcast or show. By the end of this mystery series, you’ll never think of good girls the same way again…

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. . .

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Well, I do not think I could have ever predicted where this story was going to go, I thought the last book was darker but this eclipses that entirely, it is full of suspense and at times terrifying.

This story focuses on how the events of the last two books have affected Pip, who is definitely struggling. She is understandably a very different character from who she was at the start of the series. There are still moments where the old Pip shines through but she is now plagued by all the things that have happened and is a little harsher and always on edge. However, she is also still sharp and determined and there is a bit of cunning and manipulation that shines through in this book which was an interesting development.

I won’t say too much about the story itself, except to say that I enjoyed that everything came full circle and was pieced together so well to give context to all of the events that have happened since the start of the series, it is some very clever storytelling indeed. It is a very big departure from the rest of the series and has a very different tone which I did appreciate but I know that it could also be too much of a difference for another reader.

If I’m honest I’m not sure how I felt about some of the decisions that Pip makes towards the very end of the book, to me, they just didn’t seem believable even with someone who was going through as much as Pip was. It’s hard to say much about it without giving something away but I just felt that even with her being so changed in such a high-stakes situation she would have made a smarter decision.

Once again it was superbly narrated and the production value was brilliant, however, it was quite a tough listen at points because the narrator got the agitation in the voices so well. I actually had to take breaks from listening because I would get very tense and uncomfortable, this one is better in small sessions.

As Good As Dead is a gut punch of an end to this series, even though it was not always easy to read it was just as transfixing as the rest of the series.