As Good As Dead

"The game had changed. Her against them. Save herself to save herself."

3.5 ⭐️

Phew, that was a stressful read, I was on the edge of my seat for this entire book and I never wanted to put it down. That being said, I am disappointed in this one and not completely happy with how this book handled certain topics and how it concluded the series. I just don't think I can suspend my disbelief quite this far... So this is your fair warning that this review is going to have spoilers, because I can't realy think of a way to speak about this book without talking about the major plot points. This review will also have spoilers for book 2 as well.

>>>SPOILERS

Firstly, Pip's reactions to how Good Girl, Bad Blood ended, with Stanley's murder and Charlie Green escaping - I didn't particularly love how this was handled. Pip has always been a very reckless and relatively selfish person throughout all of these books, she's selfless in a lot of ways but she also acts impulsively without really, fully giving a thought to the people around her that care about her until it's much too late and this book really showed that in black and white. Pip is struggling to cope with her involvement in Stanley's death, the blood on her hands and the gunshots echoing inside her heart, she's struggling to sleep and clearly suffering from PTSD. So, in a truly Pip fashion, I guess, she just deals with it all on her own. The girl who supposedly knows a lot about everything just completely ignores professional advice and therapy and instead takes Xanax peddled from Luke Eaton (Nat's ex boyfriend) and lies to Ravi and her friends. She thinks solving one last case will "save her" but in reality she is spiraling. Then by the end of the book, after all of the horrid traumatic things she goes through, she isolates herself and this tauma is never resolved in any type of healthy way. This is a pretty terrible representation and handling of mental health in my opinion, and if you're going to go down the morally grey route then you HAVE to have the side characters being more worried about her condition and trying to be the voice of reason instead of acting like everything is resolved by the end, when it very clearly is not.

Through the middle of the book I was really enjoying it. The tension of her being stalked, the threatening messages, the connection to the DT Killer and an innocent man behind bars was really thrilling and interesting. As she started to uncover things about the connection I thought it became pretty obvious straight away who the stalker was, but Pip was still blinded and accusing the wrong person. When she got kidnapped I was absolutely hooked and terrified for her and thought Part 2 would switch POVs and be about her friends figuring out how to find her, because that seemed to be the direction the book was heading with the "who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears?" tagline repeated again and again - but unfortunately this book really switched it up, in what I am assuming was meant to be a shocking twist, she miraculously escapes. I found this whole sequence pretty unrealistic to be honest, you're telling me a practised serial killer wouldn't have perfected his craft after five victims, even rusty after a few years out of the game? Hmmm...

The she murders him, and I'm thinking, ok, self defense, this is fine. But then she's talking about covering it up and how she doesn't trust the police and I GET that, I totally understand it, and I get overreacting in the moment and making things worse. But my gosh... what an absolute mess. She then breaks another dozen laws, incriminating Ravi and every single one her best friends... I was absolutely shocked at how this was handled and then played off as if Pip was some type of hero. No. Nope. I'm sorry, this is where the book lost the plot. Pip was clearly suffering a LOT of trauma and for everyone to just enable her to make things worse, a lot of them trusting her blindly, just rubbed me the wrong way. There was some degree of satisfaction with how she managed to get two birds with one stone by framing Max, but it was overshadowed by how ridiculous the rest of the plot was and how it was written as if this was all totally fine as long as she got away with it... I dunno... I am pretty pissed off at that ending to be honest.

END SPOILER<<<

There were parts of this book I did like, the writing, as always, was gripping and had me glued to the page, parts of the storyline were really well thought out and pieced together, the loose threads were all succintly tied up and I was pretty hearthbroken by the end, Jackson really did a number on me with those emotional last few pages. But... wow... yeah, I wanted to love this book, I really, really wanted to but I just can't overlook all the things I thought were badly handled and problematic, the message this book portrays just didn't really work for me. I will definitely be reading more of Holly Jackson's books because I do think she is a fantastic writer, I just think she lost the plot a little bit with this one when she had a really fantastic opportunity to make this series end on a better note. She had the opportunity to make a really stong message about friendship, family and about the reform needed of the police and their poor handling of these types of cases.. and we got some of that shining through, but it was overshadowed by all of the other messiness. I'm so sad to write this review... 😔

Well… I don’t know about this one.

I loved book one. Matter of fact it is one of the reeeally few murder mysteries I really like. Book two was a bit underwhelming in my opinion, but it happens with the second book in a trilogy. But this one…

Initially it was good, but after the murder I found it a bit far fetched. I don’t mind the character development in someone who doesn’t trusts the law, I actually found it pretty realistic after the first and second book, but I don’t believe two teenagers could get away with non premeditated murder with a twenty minute conversation and just a few hours to execute the plan.

Also I don’t think pulling everyone in would be the choice Pip would make in this situation. I can understand Ravi, but they pulled in EVERYONE and the author kind of used it as a showing of their friendship (?) kinda (?)

I would have understood trying to get away with it, getting rid of the body and all that, but framing someone? Even as hateful as Max? I don’t know.

And also, she doesn’t feel remorse, doesn’t have a nightmare about the violent murder itself, doesn’t feel fear if not of being caught or getting her friends involved with the police. Mmh, I don’t know. I feel like there’s some reality missing.

I’m a bit disappointed in the finale of this beautiful story and I’m not even gonna talk about the last few pages.

I’ll give it three stars cause I loved the journey and the characters, especially Ravi.

Well… I don’t know about this one.

I loved book one. Matter of fact it is one of the reeeally few murder mysteries I really like. Book two was a bit underwhelming in my opinion, but it happens with the second book in a trilogy. But this one…

Initially it was good, but after the murder I found it a bit far fetched. I don’t mind the character development in someone who doesn’t trust the law, I actually found it pretty realistic after the first and second book, but I don’t believe two teenagers could get away with non premeditated murder with a twenty minute conversation and just a few hours to execute the plan.

Also I don’t think pulling everyone in would be the choice Pip would make in this situation. I can understand Ravi, but they pulled in EVERYONE and the author kind of used it as a showing of their friendship (?) kinda (?)

I would have understood trying to get away with it, getting rid of the body and all that, but framing someone? Even as hateful as Max? I don’t know.

And also, she doesn’t feel remorse, doesn’t have a nightmare about the violent murder itself, doesn’t feel fear if not of being caught or getting her friends involved with the police. Mmh, I don’t know. I feel like there’s some reality missing.

I’m a bit disappointed in the finale of this beautiful story and I’m not even gonna talk about the last few pages.

I’ll give it three stars cause I loved the journey and the characters, especially Ravi.

Honestly, it’s crazy to see this other side of Pip and can’t say she was wrong with what she did but I blame Hawkins for never believing her and leading her to do what she did. I will say it was quite repetitive which made sense with what she had gone through and her thoughts. But the ending, after the clean up and alibis, seemed to drag a bit and I ended up skimming through just to finish the book. Overall, really good series and good closure for it all.

OUTSTANDING!!! The ending is like no other (spoiler alert) I would’ve never thought that pip would kill someone!! I love how pip and ravi work together to solve cases throughout the whole trilogy-Holly Jackson’s books are SO heartwarming and I would DEFINITELY recommend to read them.