I have the pleasure of interviewing Holly Jackson, the author of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder and the sequel, Good Girl, Bad Blood. Both are amazing young adult thrillers and I’m so excited to be chatting with Holly! This is all part of a blog tour with Electric Monkey that I’m super excited to be a part of!
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Your first book A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder was an instant favourite for me. I borrowed it from my local library and then immediately had to buy a copy myself so I could own it too. My overwhelming feeling whilst reading was tension and being on the edge of my seat to find out what happened. Did you feel tense whilst writing it or was there an evil calm to your typing?
I’d say, plot-wise, I don’t feel tense while writing as I know exactly what is going to happen next. The main source of tension I have while writing is that sometimes I can play a scene through perfectly in my head, like a movie, and yet what I’ve written doesn’t quite match up to it, and it’s frustrating when you can’t work out why. I edit as I go along so I don’t move on from a scene until it’s just right. The one time I’d say that I mirrored the intended emotions for the reader was a certain scene in book 1 (one I have been much told off for on social media haha).
You have so many interesting characters in this book, with different traits and interesting aspects. Who was your favourite character to write?
Some of my favourite characters to write are Ravi and Cara, Pip’s best friend, as their personalities often give me a chance to explore some comic relief in an otherwise dark/heavy book. But the most interesting character to write for me is Pip, as we are almost in her head and see everything through her eyes. Her character arc across the 2 books has been really fun for me as a writer, as I get to explore how the dramatic events in each book are starting to affect who she is as she gradually moves further and further away from the ‘good girl’ of the title.
Was it always your intention to bring us back to Pippa’s world for a sequel, or was it originally going to be a standalone?
Not at all! AGGGTM was always intended to be a standalone, and after finishing work on that book, I wrote another (completely unrelated) standalone mystery thriller. It was only after the reception to book one was so amazing that I started to think about how the story could continue and what other mysteries the town of Little Kilton could still be hiding. Luckily my publishers were fully behind the idea of a sequel, so I had to very quickly plan and write the book, starting in summer 2019.
If you could put the main characters of your Good Girl, Bad Blood into Hogwarts Houses, which would they be in?
This one is actually quite hard to answer! I think Ravi is a Hufflepuff with shades of Ravenclaw. I think Connor Reynolds (who features a lot more in book 2) is a Hufflepuff. And Cara potentially is a cross between a Slytherin and a Hufflepuff. Pip herself is the one I struggle with. Put it this way, I think Pip started book 1 as a Ravenclaw, but as the series has progressed, I definitely think she has shades of both Gryffindor and Slytherin about her.
Did you have your very own suspect board when you were planning both of these books out? I’d love to know more about your thought process behind creating such a well-told mystery.
I don’t go so far as to make a suspect board, especially as I always know the main players in the mystery before I truly start planning/ researching. But when I am in the plotting stage, I do write all the scenes out on separate revision cards and lay them all out, completely taking over the living room floor. Mapping it out like this helps me to visualize the book as a whole and work out if some scenes need to be shifted/swapped around. But yes, it does look a little like a murder-board. And it can be very stressful when another person walks into the living room with too much flourish and a gust of wind blows the plot all over the place. I lost the 3rd scene of act 2 under the sofa for a while!
You reference Thames Valley Police in your series, and as someone who is from the Thames Valley, it makes me very curious as to the setting on the book. Is it based off of a town in Berkshire or is it entirely fictional?
Ooh, very close! The book is actually set in a fictional town in Buckinghamshire which is also served by the Thames Valley Police. The town of Little Kilton is supposed to replace the real town of Great Missenden (where I lived for a while) on the map, so it references all the nearby towns and places. And, if you look at the map of Little Kilton, you can see that it is very similar to a map of Great Missenden.
Thank you so much Holly for answering these questions and writing two amazing books. You guys should definitely check out A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder and Good Girl, Bad Blood, they’re so entertaining!
Buy A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder | Amazon | Waterstones
Buy Good Girl, Bad Blood | Amazon | Waterstones
Great interview! Hope the sequel is out in the US ASAP.