Good Girl, Bad Blood

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2020

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue and Chapters 1-9

Chapters 10-19

Chapters 20-30

Chapters 31-43

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Prologue and Chapters 1-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue and Chapters 1-4 Summary

This summary section includes Prologue: “After and Before,” “One Month Later…Thursday:” Chapters 1-2, “Friday:” Chapter 3, “Saturday:” Chapter 4.

Pippa “Pip” Fitz-Amobi is an 18-year-old high school student living in the small town of Fairview, Connecticut. Her chief claim to fame is her true crime podcast, called A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder:

The real story of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder has been the journey, from a seventeen-year-old sleuth’s hunch about a closed case—the murder of teenager Andie Bell, allegedly by her boyfriend, Sal Singh—to the spiraling web of dark secrets she uncovers in her small town. The ever-shifting suspects, the lies, and the twists (7).

A year earlier, Pip solved a five-year-old cold case involving the disappearance of teenage girl, Andie Bell, who had been having an affair with a high school teacher named Elliot Ward. One night, Andie and Elliot had a fight, and Andie accidentally hit her head against Ward’s desk. She then left without a word. When Andie didn’t turn up days later, Ward assumed the head injury had killed her. To cover up his involvement in her death, he murdered her boyfriend, Sal Singh, making it appear that Sal killed Andie and then took his own life.

This story was accepted by everyone until Pip uncovered additional evidence and revealed it on her podcast. In reality, Andie Bell went home after her fight with Ward. She then got into another fight with her younger sister Becca. Becca had been to one of the town’s notorious house parties, known as calamity parties. During the evening, someone slipped a date rape drug into Becca’s drink. She was later sexually assaulted and blamed Andie because Andie was known to sell drugs at these parties. Becca found proof in Andie’s room that she sold drugs to a college student named Max Hastings, who was probably Becca’s attacker. The two sisters fought until Becca knocked Andie out. Andie later died of asphyxiation from choking on her own vomit. Not knowing this and fearing that she killed her sister, Becca then hid the body. As a result, Andie was considered a missing person, not a murder victim.

Months later, Ward found a girl walking along the side of the road who he assumed was Andie. He was relieved that she didn’t die but also needed to hide her in his loft to keep from exposing his murder of Sal. Five years later, Pip broke through this web of deceit and learned that the girl in Ward’s loft was a mentally unstable young woman who thought she was Andie Bell.

Pip’s podcast eventually gets Ward and Becca sent to prison. She also forms an emotional bond with Sal’s younger brother, Ravi, and the two begin dating. Pip herself isn’t very popular for having exposed so many secrets in her small town. When Pip’s 10-year-old brother, Josh, starts sleuthing at school, she discourages him, saying that investigators end up accidentally hurting people and concealing facts to protect others when maybe they shouldn’t. Josh promises to stop detecting after this warning.

Pip vows never to do another cold case podcast, even though she continues to cover the sexual assault trial of Max Hastings. His attack on Becca was no isolated incident. Another of Pip’s suspects in the Andie Bell case, Nat da Silva, testifies to being drugged and raped by Max. Pip is determined to prove that Max is a serial rapist who deserves to go to prison. Pip also tells her listeners that she will continue to report any developments in the Andie Bell case.

Now that all the facts are publicly known, the entire town decides to hold a memorial service for Andie and Sal on the town common. Over a thousand people show up for an outdoor evening ceremony. Pip listens from the audience as Ravi and his family take the stage to commemorate Sal’s life. As the ceremony proceeds, Pip notes that many of her schoolmates have come out for the event. She spies her friend Connor and Connor’s older brother, Jamie, in the crowd. At the end of the ceremony, two lanterns are lit and sent skyward to commemorate Andie and Sal.

The following day, Pip is at home, trying to rest. She is exhausted after retrieving her drunk friend Cara from a calamity party that took place after the memorial. Cara texted in the wee hours of the morning to have Pip come and get her. Pip also received several texts from Connor but hasn’t responded to them. At five in the evening, she hears a knock on the door. Connor has arrived in person to announce that his brother Jamie is missing.

Chapters 5-9 Summary

This summary section includes “Saturday:” Chapters 5-8, “Sunday 2 Days Missing:” Case Notes-Chapter 9.

Connor is clearly upset when he stops by to see Pip. He says that Jamie never came home the night before. Pip recalls seeing Jamie at the memorial, and he appeared distant and distracted. Connor begs Pip to help find his brother, but she refuses. Pip thinks back to all the unpleasant things that happened because of her last investigation. She suggests that the Reynolds family file a missing persons report with the police.

Connor protests that his brother isn’t a minor, so the police have made the case a low priority. Even though Jamie has occasionally disappeared in the past, Connor believes this time is different. He also notes that his brother has been edgy and irritable lately. Pip still refuses to create a podcast around the missing young man, but she does agree to see if she can escalate the urgency of the case with the police.

Pip immediately goes to visit Detective Hawkins, who was involved in the cold case she solved. Despite her pleas, Hawkins says that there’s nothing he can do. Jamie is 24 years old, and adults are allowed to wander off if they choose. Frustrated, Pip leaves the station, gets in her car, and calls Ravi. She still resists starting another podcast and begs Ravi to tell her what to do. He refuses, saying that Pip will do the right thing. After he hangs up, Pip secretly admits to herself that she knew what she intended to do all along. She immediately calls Connor to inform him that she has agreed to do the podcast.

That evening, Pip goes to the Reynolds house to tape interviews with Conner and with Jamie’s mother, Joanna. Jamie’s father, Arthur, doesn’t want to cooperate. He thinks that Jamie has simply run off. Connor confides that Arthur and Jamie have a troubled relationship. Before the interviews begin, Pip cautions Joanna and Connor that nothing will be off-limits. Their private lives won’t be private anymore, but they agree to go ahead. After asking Connor to leave the room, Pip begins her interview with Joanna.

Joanna says that her eldest son doesn’t have much focus or sense of direction and still lives at home. Jamie dropped out of college. His only confidante is Nat da Silva. Jamie has a crush on Nat, but he never spoke up. Then, Nat got a new boyfriend, which really depressed Jamie. Joanna notes that he hasn’t been his usual laid-back self lately. He was crying in the car on the way to the memorial.

The family drove there together, but Joanna and Arthur went out to dinner with two other couples and returned home separately. When Joanna got back, only to find Arthur and Connor asleep, she texted Jamie at 12:36 a.m. The text never went through, which means Jamie’s phone was shut off and still is. From Connor’s interview, Pip learns that Jamie intended to spend the evening at Nat’s house after the memorial. Clearly, he never arrived.

After the interviews, Pip requests a current photo of Jamie for a Missing poster she intends to circulate. Then, she asks to inspect his room. His bedroom is a mess. Jamie’s computer is still on, but no one knows the password. Pip thinks there might be some valuable information in his recent browsing history. While searching through Jamie’s belongings, Pip finds a woman’s wristwatch and a slip of paper in the trash with the words “Hillary F Weiseman left 11.”

Despite her misgivings about starting a new investigation, Pip creates a poster to be distributed around the neighborhood with a photo and information about Jamie. On Sunday morning, she meets Ravi and Connor to give them copies of the poster to distribute. Then, Pip goes to the town newspaper, the Fairview Mail, to meet with Stanley Forbes, who volunteers his time there. He, too, was involved in her previous investigation. She asks him to feature the missing persons story in the paper. Despite Stanley’s misgivings, he trusts Pip’s hunch that foul play is involved and agrees to publish the story.

Chapters 1-9 Analysis

The first segment of the novel begins with a long recap of Pip’s first podcast the year before. She confides how much her inquiry cost her on a personal level. She even feels a strong sense of betrayal related to the man she helped convict because he was a trusted teacher at her school. She not only literally replays the podcast but replays the events it represents in her head. “She’d listened to it maybe a hundred times. Maybe even a thousand. And there was nothing, no giveaway, no change as he slipped between lies and half-truths. The man she’d once looked to as an almost father” (1).

In the novel’s earliest pages, Pip is already displaying the conflict in her own mind regarding The Pursuit of Truth and Justice. The price for her pursuit of truth is a loss of innocence, since she can no longer see her former teacher as a trustworthy man. Pip’s bitterness at solving the case doesn’t end in the book’s introductory pages. It colors her perception of everyone around her. When her younger brother seems inclined to follow in her footsteps, she actively discourages him. “That’s what happens when you’re a detective. The people around you get hurt. And you hurt people, without meaning to. You have to keep secrets you’re not sure you should. That’s why I don’t do it anymore, and you shouldn’t either” (15).

Pip continues her morbid meditation on the steep price for truth even after Jamie disappears. In fact, she refuses to pursue the investigation because she’s still suffering the blowback from her earlier case. She tells Connor, “Last time I almost lost everything: I ended up in the hospital, got my dog killed, put my family in danger, destroyed my best friend’s life. It’s too much to ask. I promised myself. I…I can’t do it anymore” (52).

Pip continues to focus on the personal cost of truth for much of this segment. She is forced out of this morbid meditation on past failures only when it becomes apparent that she is the only person taking any interest in solving Jamie’s disappearance. She reaches this conclusion when her desire for justice is once again thwarted, thus providing the motivation for her involvement. The authorities who are supposed to protect the town’s citizens do nothing. Detective Hawkins tells her, “Jamie is an adult, and even his own mother admitted this isn’t out of character. Adults have a legal right to disappear if they want to. Jamie Reynolds isn’t missing; he’s just absent. He’ll be fine. And if he chooses to, he’ll be back in a few days” (56).

The detective’s mention of a time element is significant because Pip realizes that waiting a few days may be a few days too long. Time becomes a central factor in the way the story unfolds. The author chooses to title each chapter with a day of the week along with a countdown of how many days Jamie has been missing. As Pip frequently says, the 72-hour point is the dividing line between a missing persons case and a homicide. The reader is constantly reminded that the clock is ticking with each subsequent chapter title.

Stylistically, the novel also mimics the procedures of a true crime podcast by incorporating additional materials with the main narrative. Once Pip decides to take on the investigation, she opens a case file, complete with notes, maps, and witness interview transcripts. These materials are incorporated into the novel and help tie the story more closely to social media, the internet, and true crime podcasting techniques.

Pip even insists that the Reynolds family sign release forms before speaking to her. While this is a procedural part of podcasting, Pip also uses it as a chance to warn Joanna and Connor about what they may face. In doing so, she touches on not only the theme of the consequences of pursuing truth but also The Use and Misuse of Social Media. Pip tells them, “It might lead us to potentially unsavory things about Jamie, secrets he might have kept from you and wouldn’t want exposed. […] [Y]ou have to accept that your private lives will be laid bare. Nothing will be off limits, and that can be hard to deal with” (61). In exploiting social media for a good cause, Pip recognizes that she may be a harbinger of doom for the family requesting her help:

She couldn’t help but wonder whether the Reynoldses had just given her permission to blow up their family, like she had with the Wards and the Bells. They’d come to her, invited her in, but they didn’t really understand the destruction that came in with her, hand in hand through that front door, which looked like a smile (62).