If you’re American and you’ve just watched the Netflix adaptation of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder I imagine there’s one question on your lips: why is everyone British?

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is a young adult mystery series set in a small town where a girl, Andie Bell, disappeared 5 years ago. Everyone agrees that her boyfriend, Sal Singh, killed her and when he killed herself, no further investigation was done.

But Pip isn’t so sure. She’s never really believed that Sal could have done it so when she’s given the chance to choose a topic for her final year school project then she decides to reinvestigate the Andie Bell case.

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder has 2 versions – one set in Little Kilton in the United Kingdom, and another set in Fairview in the United States of America.

So which edition of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is the original?

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder was originally published in 2019 in the United Kingdom by Electric Monkey, which is an imprint of Harper Collins. 

It was then published in the United States about a year later in 2020 by Delacorte Press.

The UK edition is the original. The author, Holly Jackson, is British!

What are the differences? 

The overall storylines are pretty much identical so if you can only get your hands on the edited US edition, you’re still bound to have a fantastic time reading! However, there are a lot of small differences that make the UK edition slightly better (in my opinion, of course).

The biggest difference is that the US version is considerably shorter. You might not notice big changes if you’ve just read the US edition, but if you look at them side-by-side it is quite obvious. The US has several paragraphs removed. It doesn’t change any of the major storylines but it does change some of the characters quite a bit! For example, the main character Pippa Fitz Amobi. Pip is slightly more ‘eccentric’ in the original UK edition.  People think she seems more neurodivergent in the UK edition and I agree. 

There are a lot of minor differences as well. In the UK edition, Pippa reinvestigates the case for her EPQ (Extended Project Qualification), and for her Senior Capstone Project in the US edition. When Pippa is nervous in the UK edition she becomes slightly posh and tends to start spouting off a bunch of random facts, and she does neither in the US edition. In the UK edition, there’s a line about Pip’s dad always made sure she was fully aware of their different experiences in the world because of their race. This is not mentioned at all in the US edition which seemed odd.

So, which edition do you prefer? And, if you haven’t read any of them yet, which one will you be picking up?

5 differences between A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder book and tv show