A Good Girl's Guide to Murder Reading Order (and the TV Show)
June 7, 2026
Discussing the differences between books and their adaptations may reveal plot points for both.
Holly Jackson’s A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is one of the biggest YA mysteries of recent years — a clever, twisty true-crime-flavoured thriller that became a word-of-mouth and BookTok sensation, and then a successful TV adaptation. Here’s the complete reading order.
The complete reading order
- A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (2019)
- Good Girl, Bad Blood (2020)
- As Good as Dead (2021)
Plus the prequel novella:
- Kill Joy (2021) — a prequel set before book one, showing the murder-mystery game that first gave Pip a taste for investigating.
Where does Kill Joy fit?
Kill Joy is a prequel, but it was published after the main trilogy. You can read it either as an introduction (before book one) or as a fun extra afterward. Many fans recommend saving it for after As Good as Dead, so you experience Pip’s story in the order it was written — but it works either way, since it stands largely on its own.
What it’s about
Five years ago, Andie Bell was murdered by Sal Singh — case closed. But teenager Pip Fitz-Amobi isn’t convinced, and chooses the case as her school project. What starts as homework becomes a genuine, dangerous investigation. The series gets progressively darker and more morally complex — book three in particular takes a sharp, divisive turn that readers love to debate.
The TV series
The screen adaptation brought a whole new audience to Pip’s story. As with most adaptations, it streamlines and changes details — so if you’ve watched first, the books offer far more depth (and the full, unsettling arc of the later instalments).
Where to start
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, then straight on through the trilogy. If you love a smart teen sleuth, follow it with The Inheritance Games →.