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Spoilers below for A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, both the book and the series.
During your senior year of high school, what was on your mind? Perhaps college applications? House parties? Maybe you’d already planned what you’d wear for prom in May? Pip Fitz-Amobi can’t relate. The titular “good girl” in Holly Jackson’s award-winning YA murder-mystery novel A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, which stars Wednesday’s Emma Myers and made its Netflix debut this August after its BBC premiere, has only one senior-year project: solve a murder. The obsessive Pip spends the autumn of her senior year uncovering the truth of the case that rattled her town five years ago, a murder-mystery involving hometown sweetheart Andrea “Andie” Bell (India Lillie Davies), and her alleged murderer, boyfriend Salil “Sal” Singh (Rahul Pattni), who later committed suicide and admitted to the crime via text.
By the start of A Good Girl’s Guide, the case has been closed, with Sal named the perpetrator of the homicide—but clever Pip doesn’t buy that. She notices too many loose ends: there was no trial for Sal; the timelines don’t make sense; and the police never even found Andie’s body. So Pip enlists Sal’s brother, Ravi (Zain Iqbal), to help her crack the case, and together they find themselves drawn deep into Pip’s senior-capstone-project-turned-web-of-mysteries. If Sal didn’t kill Andie, then who did? And if the real killer is still out there…who will they target next?
As a true-crime fanatic myself, I was invested. In her debut novel, British author Jackson mastered the art of supplying readers with just enough information to immerse themselves in the case. But how does the screen adaptation compare? Do the subtle changes to the plot complement the story enough to suck readers in with the same strength as before? Or do those changes, in fact, improve upon the book itself? I’d argue so. Let’s discuss why.
The Locations
Fairview is now Little Kilton.
Something American audiences will notice right off the bat is that Pip’s charming little home looks and sounds nothing like the town of Fairview, Connecticut. Instead, the onscreen adaptation of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder takes place in a fictional U.K. town called Little Kilton, filmed in Axbridge in Somerset, England. The book was written by a British author but published as two editions, one set (and published) in the U.K, and the other set (and published) in the U.S. Given that British production company BBC Three bought the rights to the series first, it makes sense that the location of the screen-adapted version would align with the U.K. version of the book.
As an American who grew up in the tristate area suburbs, where the U.S. version of the book is set, I’d argue that the U.K. setting lends itself much better to the type of “round-the-town” investigating and frequent homework hangouts that Pip tends to have.
Pip has a new first encounter with Max Hastings.
When we first learn that Pip has spoken to Max Hastings (Henry Ashton) in the book, it’s through one of Pip’s capstone-project log entries. Not much context is given for how Pip convinced him to sit down with her; we just get a transcript of their conversation. It’s only over time that we come to learn Max is another one of those infuriating, spoiled rich-boy types with the uncanny ability to commit any crime without consequences.
In the series, we get a completely new scene in which Pip and her best friend, Cara (Asha Banks), dress up in ridiculous star-shaped outfits to serve at Max’s parents’ Hollywood-themed garden-anniversary party. Pip and Cara’s job for the day is to serve champagne on tall trays to strangers. In an opportune moment, Pip sneaks off and finds Max, one of Sal’s former friends, to ask him some questions about the Andie Bell case. It’s then when Max lures Pip into the basement, coerces her into getting drunk, and tells his skewed story of the night Andie went missing.
By setting the scene up this way, the showrunners are foreshadowing insight into Max’s character and revelations that are later exposed. I found that this setup did a great job of adding to my understanding of Max, a dashing smooth talker with a dark side, performed brilliantly by Ashton.
The calamity parties go underground.
Early in the book, readers learn that a “calamity party” is a local house party—particularly the sleazy kind that attracts characters like Max Hastings. A new location is announced each Monday, and on Saturday, calamity ensues. However, the term “calamity party” takes on a whole new meaning when adapted for screen, as these “underground” raves are literally underground.
Another key change here is that the initial 10-minute calamity party scene in the show is also where Pip first encounters drug dealer Howie Bowers (Thomas Gray). The stakes are raised, as Pip has found herself asking this dangerous suspect sensitive questions without Watson’s support. The face-off between Howie and Pip at the calamity party doesn’t go particularly well, but it was perhaps a more realistic encounter than the one in the book: In Jackson’s novel, Pip follows Howie to his house and invites herself and Ravi inside to proceed with a dangerously high-risk interrogation. At least in a cave, they’re not trespassing on private property.
The Characters
Pip is more hard-edged than in the book.
In many moments throughout the series, I found that the on-screen portrayals of Jackson’s characters brought a new depth and credibility to the story. Myers, in particular, brings a sharpness to Pip that was less evident in the book, which instead painted Pip as an awkward and frequently naive word-vomiter. (In one scene, she nervously asks a boy rolling her a joint to “get it rolling; roll it like a…rolling pin.”) Lovable though she might be, the fact that Pip actually survives the subsequent series of events in the book seems like a miracle.
Instead, Myers’ Pip is notably more discerning with her words and self-assured in her body language, which feels more suitable in the context of a high-stakes murder case. Take, for instance, the moment when Pip decides to reveal to the world, via social media post, that she’s withholding a crucial piece of evidence—one that could trigger the reopening of the Andie Bell case and lead to the unveiling of the true perpetrator. Her body language says it all: She stares straight into the camera, speaking with intensity, clarity, and a hint of a clenched jaw. This Pip is a badass, and she means business.
Myers plays the character with enough vulnerability to reflect her age, while also making it plausible that brilliant rule-follower Pip could also be a Pip who’d choose to spend her senior year investigating a murder case.
Pip’s family is more complicated in the show.
In the book, Pip has a picture-perfect family, one whose dialogue is so wholesome as to veer saccharine. Her parents have nicknames for Pip like “Hippo Pippo,” “Pickle,” and “Pipsicle”; their version of “arguing” ends in tickles and laughs; and they even have a rambunctious “sloped, smiling eye[-ed]” golden retriever named Barney. Pip’s omnipresent family is a constant in the novel which balances out the heaviness of the plot, providing a steady stream of warmth and comic relief.
Pip’s family in the show is more resistant to murder-case meddling, and, at one point, her adoptive stepfather, Victor, becomes a possible person of interest in the Andie Bell case. However, the suspicion is short-lived, resolved over the course of one episode. While I don’t think this change was necessary, I can see what the creative team might have sought to accomplish: By making even Victor a suspect, audiences get the feeling there’s no one in this story whom Pip can trust—not even her own family.
Chloe Burch, Stanley Forbes, and Nat da Silva are absorbed into other characters.
The Good Girl’s Guide creative team made the clever creative decision to combine certain characters together, cutting those who might otherwise seem extraneous. This is most obvious with the book characters of Chloe Burch and Stanley Forbes.
The novel’s Chloe Burch doesn’t bring much to the story to begin with. As one of the first of Andie’s “minion” friends whom Pip decides to interview, Chloe sheds minimal light on some minor details of the toxic relationship that Andie shared between her two closest friends. Later, Pip decides to use a pay-as-you-go Sim card in her phone to pose as Chloe and forge a text conversation with minion No. 2, Andie’s “other” best friend, Emma Hutton (Georgia Aaron). But the show gets rid of Chloe altogether, and instead, in the show, Pip actually speaks with a tight-lipped Emma, who is similarly reluctant to share any valuable information about Andie.
As for Stanley Forbes, I never could quite wrap my head around what was going on with him and his strange relationship with both Howie Bowers and police officer Dan da Silva in the book. (I believe that’s because these details are meant to lay the groundwork of Holly Jackson’s next book in the Good Girl’s Guide trilogy.) Thus, it made sense for the series to do away with the character of Stanley, and to make Dan da Silva fill his place, replacing Stanley as Andie’s sister’s (Carla Woodcock) boyfriend.
Meanwhile, the book character of Nat da Silva is an embittered twenty-something with a temper and a history of violence. She hates Andie’s guts and has for years, ever since Andie leaked Nat’s nude photos in high school, earning the latter the nickname “Nude-Gate Nat.” While the onscreen Nat da Silva (Jessica Webber) is the same “Nude-Gate Nat,” she is, in fact, a former member of Andie’s old trifecta, replacing Chloe Burch. In the show, it seems that Nat had a catty yet loving relationship with her ex-best friend Andie, describing her earnestly as “the best friend ever.”
The Plot
The show tweaks the clues pointing to the Ivy House Inn.
In the book, Pip discovers a clue inside Andie’s planner: the initials “IV,” which eventually lead Pip and Ravi to the Ivy House Inn. But in the show, she instead discovers a similar clue hidden inside Andie’s stuffed rabbit—which she only knows to search thanks to her conversation with Howie at the calamity party. Inside the rabbit, Ravi and Pip discover Andie’s secret stash of drugs, as well as a cryptic note revealing a list of initials and time blocks. This note happens to be written on heavy stock paper, with an imprinting of “Ivy House Inn” on the top. That provides a much more obvious place to search than the “IV” initials written in Andie’s planner from the book.
The events at the Ivy House Inn also play out differently in the series versus the book. In the book, a confused elderly lady refuses to share old guest records. In the series, it’s a younger stern host (James Meunier) who insists his guest books are available to guests only. That switch-up leads to a fun chase scene—a welcome change of pace—and a way for Pip and Ravi to stumble into a guest bedroom, where Pip realizes the tile-floored bathroom is the same as in an explicit photo Andie took of herself before her death.
Elliot Ward doesn’t spill all his secrets at once.
The last time Pip sees her teacher, Elliot Ward (Matthew Bayton), in the book is when he’s arrested for his involvement with Andie and Sal’s homicides. When confronted with Pip’s accusatory remarks, Elliot’s arsenal of secrets seemingly melt right out of him, pouring into the reader’s consciousness all at once. Not only that, but he seems to genuinely believe the girl he’s kept in his attic for five years is the Andie Bell.
In the show, Pip also gets Elliot to confess to his relations with Andie (and the accident that left her injured), but Elliott in turn makes no initial mention of his involvement with Sal’s murder. It’s only after Pip confronts the girl in the attic that she learns the larger story: that Elliot killed Sal, too, to save himself and cover up the truth. I think this small tweak was necessary for the onscreen adaptation, as it seems more in alignment with what a real kidnapper would do.
The “girl-in-the-attic” plot line is more dramatic.
The first scene of the final episode reveals all the ways in which the “girl in the attic,” Isla Jordan (Georgia Lock), is different in the show than in the book. In the book, Isla’s a homeless woman with an intellectual disability whom Elliot mistakes for Andie and continues to convince himself is Andie. But Isla’s abduction played out differently in the show. We soon learn that Elliot had approached Isla at a bus station on the night Andie went missing, initially confusing her for Andie. But even after he’d realized his mistake, Elliot invited Isla to come home with him, and there he admitted to Isla exactly how he’d killed Sal. Once Isla got spooked and tried to make a run for it, Elliot would not let her escape, making her his non-consenting prisoner of five years.
This change to the story makes a world of a difference for Elliot Ward, further cementing his villainous status in the story. In the book, he was a clearly disturbed, albeit pitiful man, one for whom you could almost yak up an inkling of sympathy for, considering his wife had died of cancer. Instead, Elliot is depicted as a creep and a cold-blooded killer in the show.
Pip and Becca’s showdown gets a makeover.
A huge enhancement is made to the epic face-off between Pip and Becca, Andie’s sister: In the book, this duel takes place in the woods behind Becca’s family home; in the show, it happens inside the underground labyrinth where the calamity parties are held. That’s a symbolic shift for the series: how appropriate that such a finale should occur at the source of all of the town’s “calamity,” where everyone’s secrets seem to have started and ended.
Even better, the series does away with Becca’s convoluted “abandoned house” plot line, in which she stored Andie’s body in an old septic tank. Instead, in the show, Becca has placed Andie just beneath the surface of the town itself: beneath a trap door in the underground labyrinth. It’s equally fitting that the place where Becca suffered at the hands of Max—and as a victim of Andie herself—would be the location where Becca would choose to seek vengeance against her sister, burying her in the place where she had been wronged. Now, five years later, in “the-abused-becomes-the-abuser” fashion, Becca selects Pip as her subject in recreating her past torture, drugging her and asserting physical dominance over her. It’s a portrait of a vicious, terrible cycle—but one that works even more effectively than the finale in the book.
Sofia Bianchi is a Business Assistant on the Creative Operations Team at HearstMade and a culture writer covering film, television, and entertainment.