Lost in a Good Book

Published: 05 August 2021 (print)/05 August 2021 (audio)
Publisher: Electric Monkey/HarperCollins UK Audio
Pages: 565/16 hours, 55 minutes
Narrator: Clare Corbett, Maryam Grace, Kristin Atherton, Jot Davies
Format: Audiobook
Genre: Young Adult Thriller
★   – 1.5 Stars

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. . .

I had a lot of feelings about this book so I am going to be very careful and not turn it into a thousand word essay about why Jackson made the decisions she did. My notes and emotional responses are a wild read through and picking out the usable less spoilery ones has been hard because I need to vent about this book.

First things first. I was right. That’s important. Second, I am fascinating that the key moments, the moment you think should happen at the end happens around the halfway mark which is wild and sends your brain in a whole stack of directions about what the rest of the book could be filled with to match the intensity of those middle scenes.

The first half was great, as expected from the first two books, but the second half was a weird change that feels out of character, even for the change in Pip from the events of books one and two. I felt like I needed to skip to the end to find out the outcome to work out if the outlandish second half worked but I felt off. Twenty five plus chapters to go you know there must be consequences but the sudden shift in tone and character makes it hard to care. It’s fascinating to see this sudden shift in characters when you have gone through two and a half books with them.

As a whole this is an incredibly dark book. The second book, Good Girl, Bad Blood, was dark but this goes darker still as Pip has flashbacks and relives the events of the previous book. Corbett is a passionate narrator, lot of emotion in her narration. There’s critical emphasis on the important, tense, and emotional moments and it brings home Pip’s mental stability and the intensity of the events. What Jackson does incredibly well is show the effects of PTSD that’s left improperly treated. Pip’s trauma from books two is evident and there is a great demonstration of her emotional state worsening as the outcomes of book two play on her mind and she keeps lying to her friends, family, and therapist to seem ok.

Pip’s new idea for a podcast takes a while to settle. With no new ideas it’s a jump from idea to idea as Pip’s initial new focus is a cold case, before moving to her own life, or a supposedly closed case. I absolutely loved that Jackson shows the less glamourous side of true crime, especially true crime podcasts, and how the results of an investigation can takes its toll on the person investigating. I never understood the obsession with true crime podcasts but this is a great behind the scenes look at the impact and consequences that can come from it.

The structure of the book remains the same: additional voices to play different characters as well as the use of transcripts and files to look like a dossier is being compiled. I still love this style and it makes the experience unique and a great way to introduce information and tie it back into Pip’s research gathering.

I am pretty sure Pip becomes somewhat psychopathic in this book. I understand the reasoning Pip/Jackson is going for. I do. But the longer it went on it made less sense. If it was supposed to be a reflection of Pip’s broken mind I guess it makes sense. But Ravi should be the voice of reason but he isn’t. There are so many holes in Pip’s approach, it went beyond a plan to being a lot of effort when it was going to fail for so many reasons.

I am trying not to reveal too much, but the second half of this book made me so mad. Infuriated. There was no reason for the entire second half to exist. I don’t care what Pip thinks would happen, there are two books prior to say that wouldn’t be the case. You can’t even chalk it up to her mental state because that isn’t it at all. Her choices are illogical and what’s more infuriating is she ignores a huge amount of evidence. There is So. Much. Evidence. Jackson includes so many other reasonable options instead of what actually happens which is why it’s weird to have Pip ignore them.

I know it’s for the drama, and for Pip’s decisions and mental state but I found it hard that someone that smart, could be that stupid. But I guess we’re supposed to believe that when you are emotionally unstable already with trauma and PTSD, what’s one more? What she does to Max, what she does even before Max was unnecessary. It’s too far fetched that anyone would even succeed in doing what she does. It’s beyond absurd no matter how much true crime you knew about. Ludicrous is the only way to describe her plan.

I’ve wasted 17 hours of my life with this book. It was way too long and I felt betrayed by the ending because even after suffering through all those absurd decisions Jackson throws it back in our face. I can’t give it one star because I enjoyed the first half, but I can’t give it two because I hated the second half more and more the further I went. I ended up listening to it a 2x speed because I was suffering listening to this book, but it still dragged on. It was amazing how long the last few chapters took.

Read this book by all means, finish off the series and see the outcome of book two. My advice is stop at the half way point, work out your own new ending based on the evidence already given, and move on. You will only get baffled by the decisions Pip/Jackson has made. I made up a great new ending myself and tried to forget the second half ever happened.

You can purchase As Good as Dead via the following

QBD | Booktopia | Dymocks

Wordery | Angus and Robinson | Blackwell’s

 Fishpond | Amazon | Amazon Aust | Audible