Holly Jackson’s trilogy on the Good Girl Guide to Murder book was adapted into a 6 episode series on Netflix. The book “Good Girls Guide to Murder” is about a 17-year-old high schooler named Pippa Fitz-Amobi who revisits a five year old murder case on Andie Bell, an old classmate in Fitz-Amobi’s town, who was murdered by her boyfriend, Sal Singh, who then killed himself. Fitz-Amobi suspects that the case isn’t open and shut, and chooses to investigate it for her final year project. She also teams up with Sal’s younger brother Ravi to solve the mystery.
The Netflix series stars Emma Myers as Fitz-Amobi (“Wednesday” star), the Netflix series and the book are really different. In the book, the setting is placed in a place called Fairview, Connecticut, whereas in the Netflix series, it’s set in England, in a fictional town called Little Kilton. In the Netflix series, a character named Nat da Silva is Bell’s best friend. In the book, it’s the opposite. Sliva is Bell’s enemy, they hated each other. Bell had posed as a boy Sliva liked, and texted her, asking for a topless video- which Sliva sent and bell spreaded it around the school. Bell also blackmailed Sliva and threatened to go to the police station to put out a false report on her brother causing Silva to drop out.
Fitz-Amobi digs deeper into the truth as she does, she gets messages from the killer threatening her to drop the case. While Fitz-Amobi was out on a walk with her dog, Barney, gets stolen. The killer tells her to destroy all the evidence or else the killer will kill Barney. Even though she obliges, the killer ends up killing Barney regardless. In the Netflix series, Barney gets taken during a birthday party. The night before Fitz-Amobi had posted a video on social media, calling the killer out. The killer tells her to take the video down, which she does, Barney ends up killed in both.
Fitz-Amobi found out that Elliot Ward was the one who had been in a relationship with Bell. The night of Bell’s disappearance she went to see Ward. The two had an argument and he pushed her, causing her to be injured. He went to go find her but ended up finding another girl who looks exactly like Bell on the road. He took her and kept her in his second home’s attic. When Fitz-Amobi followed him to the second home and found her, the girl truly believed she was Andie Bell- which was the biggest plot twist.
In the series, this was changed. It is one of the biggest changes in the series- and the worst. It was changed to the girl knowing who she was, not thinking she was Bell, ultimately changing the whole story. By changing the story, Elliot Ward’s villainous status is further cemented, further cementing the story’s villainy. Based on the fact that his wife died of cancer, the man seemed to be a clearly disturbed man, although pitiful, one you could almost sympathize with. In the show, Elliot is depicted as a creep and a cold-blooded killer.
It was greatly enhanced in the show that Pip and Becca, Andie’s sister, face off at the underground labyrinth where the calamity parties are held, instead of in the woods behind Becca’s family house in the book. That’s a symbolically significant change for the series: how appropriate that it happens where everyone’s secrets began and ended, at the source of the town’s tragedy.
Becca’s convoluted “abandoned house” plot line, in which she buried Andie’s body in an old septic tank, is also dropped from the series. The show instead places Andie just beneath the town itself, beneath a trap door in the underground labyrinth. Where Becca suffered at the hands of Max-and as a victim of Andie-is the same place she chose to seek revenge against her sister, burying her there where she suffered. Becca, five years later, repeats her torture, drugging Pip and asserting physical dominance over her, in “the-abused-becomes-the-abuser” fashion. It’s a picture of a vicious cycle-but one that works better than the book’s ending.
In addition, the Netflix series never shows the contact Fitz-Amobi made with Stanley Forbes who is an significant figure in the second book. Elise stated, “Quite disappointed honestly.. I’ve read the whole series and this is barely like the books…., so there’s not any reason to alter so much. Expected a lot more.” There are similarities in the book against the series. When following a book, there is already a script made for you and yet theNetflix series has changed a lot of important plot points..
