Find twisty YA mystery thrillers like A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, with amateur sleuths, secrets, and page-turning suspense.
Updated June 10, 2026
Holly Jackson's A Good Girl's Guide to Murder works because Pip Fitz-Amobi investigates like an actual student would. She reopens the closed Andie Bell case as a school capstone project, and the book shows her work: interview transcripts, suspect lists, production logs, maps. That mixed-media, follow-the-evidence format, plus a small town where everyone already agreed on the answer five years ago, is what separates it from generic teen thrillers. Pip is methodical rather than reckless, and the case unravels through legwork, not luck.
Most readers finishing it want one of three things, and the list below covers all of them. If you want more teen-sleuth mysteries with that investigative, evidence-driven feel, start with One of Us Is Lying, Sadie, or Kara Thomas's The Cheerleaders and Little Monsters. If it was the unreliable narration and the rug-pull twist you loved, We Were Liars and The Wife Between Us lean hardest into that. And if you want the amateur-detective setup pushed in a different direction, The Girl I Used to Be puts the protagonist inside her own cold case, while The Hazel Wood takes the search-for-the-truth structure into dark fantasy.
A practical note: most of these are YA and read fast, often in a sitting or two. The Wife Between Us is the one adult thriller here, and Sadie is markedly darker than the rest, so check content notes if that matters. Each entry below says which part of Jackson's book it actually matches.
Read this if you want another twisty YA whodunit where everyone is hiding something.
Karen M. McManus's debut is the book most often shelved next to A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, and the pairing makes sense. Five students walk into detention, only four walk out alive, and the dead one ran a gossip app holding secrets on each survivor. Like Jackson, McManus builds the mystery around a tight cast of teenagers in a school setting, where the investigation forces buried secrets into the open and the obvious story turns out to be the wrong one.
The structure is different in a way that matters: instead of one determined investigator, you get four rotating suspect narrators, so it reads more like a puzzle box than a case file. There are no transcripts or evidence logs, and the suspects are doing the sleuthing on themselves. Pick this if the whodunit and the high school pressure-cooker were your favorite parts; pick Sadie or The Cheerleaders if you specifically want the investigation format.
Read this only if you want the mystery structure carried into dark fantasy.
Melissa Albert's novel is the outlier on this list, but the spine is recognizable: a teenage girl's mother disappears, and Alice has to investigate, following clues through her reclusive grandmother's cult-classic book of fairy tales toward a truth adults have kept from her. The first half reads like a missing-person mystery, with the same momentum of a young woman pulling on threads nobody wants pulled, and the family-secrets payoff lands in roughly the spot Jackson's reveals do.
But this is fantasy, and it commits. The fairy tales turn out to be real, the back half crosses into their world, and the tone is eerie and Grimm-dark rather than procedural. There is no case to solve in the forensic sense. Choose it if you liked Pip's search for truth but are open to atmosphere and strangeness over evidence boards. Skip it if you came strictly for crime.
Read this if the twist was what got you, and you can handle an unreliable narrator.
E. Lockhart's novel shares Jackson's core machinery: a wealthy, image-conscious community, a tragedy everyone has agreed not to talk about, and a young woman piecing together what actually happened. Cadence Sinclair spends her summers on her family's private island, but an accident has shredded her memory, and the book is her reconstruction of the truth. The reveal is one of the most talked-about in YA, and it recontextualizes everything the way Jackson's best chapters do.
The difference is that there is no investigation here in Pip's sense. Cadence is not interviewing suspects; she is an unreliable narrator excavating her own mind, and the prose is spare, fragmented, almost poetic where Jackson is brisk and procedural. It is a shorter, sadder, more literary book. Pick it for the gut-punch ending and the toxic-family atmosphere, not for sleuthing mechanics.
Read this if you want the closest match: a teen reopening her town's closed case.
Kara Thomas writes the grittiest version of what Holly Jackson does, and The Cheerleaders is her best. Five years ago, five cheerleaders in Monica's town died in quick succession, the cases were closed, and the town moved on. One of them was Monica's sister. When she finds letters in her stepfather's desk suggesting the official story is wrong, she starts digging, and the setup mirrors A Good Girl's Guide to Murder almost beat for beat: a cold case, a complacent town, an amateur investigator with a personal stake.
Thomas is darker and less reassuring than Jackson. The tone is closer to true crime than to a clever puzzle, the adults are more compromised, and the answers are messier. Monica is also angrier and more damaged than Pip, which some readers find more believable and others find harder to spend a book with. If you want the same plot engine with the safety rails off, this is the pick.
Read this if the true-crime, podcast-adjacent format was what hooked you.
Courtney Summers's Sadie is the strongest book on this list as a piece of writing, and it directly serves the format itch. Half the novel is the script of a Serial-style podcast called The Girls, in which a radio journalist traces a missing teenager; the other half is Sadie herself, on the road hunting the man she believes killed her little sister. Jackson's interview transcripts and case-file chapters scratch the same surface; Sadie builds the entire book out of that material, and the two timelines converge with real dread.
Be clear about what you are signing up for, though. This is not a fun whodunit. It deals head-on with abuse, poverty, and grief, the violence is not stylized, and the ending refuses the tidy resolution Jackson provides. It is the most emotionally heavy pick here. Choose it when you want the documentary format with literary weight, not when you want another satisfying case cracked.
Read this for a fast, lean thriller where the cold case is the narrator's own.
April Henry's novel flips Jackson's premise inward. Olivia was three when her mother was murdered and her father vanished, presumed the killer. Years later, new DNA evidence clears him, and Olivia returns to her hometown under a new name to find out what really happened the night her family was destroyed. Like Pip, she is a teenager working a case the authorities consider settled, in a small town where the killer is plausibly still around, and the danger escalates as she gets close.
Henry writes short, propulsive thrillers, and that is the trade-off: this is considerably leaner than A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, with less character texture, fewer suspects, and none of the mixed-media apparatus. It reads in an evening. Pick it when you want pure forward momentum and a personal-stakes cold case, and do not expect Jackson's layered, slow-burn plotting.
Read this if you are ready to graduate to adult psychological thrillers.
Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen's bestseller is here for readers who loved Jackson's misdirection more than her teen detective. The setup looks familiar, a jealous ex-wife obsessing over her replacement, and then the book pulls the kind of assumption-breaking reveal that A Good Girl's Guide to Murder fans tend to love, where what you thought you were reading turns out to be something else. The layers of deception and the slow exposure of a controlling relationship give it the same secrets-under-the-surface energy.
This is the one adult novel on the list, and it shows: the protagonists are grown women, the subject matter is marriage, gaslighting, and obsession, and there is no school, no investigation project, no podcast. It is domestic suspense rather than detective fiction. Choose it as a bridge out of YA when the twist is what you are chasing; skip it if Pip herself, the smart kid building a case, was the appeal.
Read this if you want a missing-girl mystery soaked in friend-group paranoia.
Kara Thomas's Little Monsters trades the cold case for a live one. Kacey is the new girl in a small Wisconsin town, folded into a tight trio of friends, and then one of them disappears after a party Kacey attended. As the town turns its suspicion on her, she starts investigating the friends she thought she knew. Like Jackson's book, it runs on small-town claustrophobia, secrets between teenage girls, and the gap between a community's official story and the truth.
It is less procedural than A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, more psychological. The unease comes from not knowing who in the friend group to trust, including the narrator's own read on events, and interspersed diary entries do the work Jackson's transcripts do. The ending is colder and more cynical about teenage girls than Jackson ever gets. Pick it for atmosphere and betrayal; pick The Cheerleaders if you want Thomas doing a straight investigation.
What should I read after finishing the A Good Girl's Guide to Murder trilogy?
One of Us Is Lying by Karen M. McManus is the most natural next step, a twisty YA whodunit with a school setting and a full series behind it. If you specifically loved Pip's investigation format, go to Sadie by Courtney Summers for the podcast structure or The Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas for another teen reopening a closed case. Holly Jackson's own standalones, such as Five Survive, are also worth a look.
Which book on this list is most similar to A Good Girl's Guide to Murder?
The Cheerleaders by Kara Thomas is the closest structural match: a teenage girl reopens a supposedly solved set of deaths in her own small town and finds the official story does not hold. Sadie matches the true-crime, podcast-transcript format most closely, and One of Us Is Lying matches the overall YA mystery tone and popularity best.
Are these books appropriate for younger teens?
Most are standard YA, similar in content to Jackson's books: murder, some drugs and drinking, mild language. Two run heavier. Sadie deals frankly with sexual abuse and is best for older teens, and The Wife Between Us is an adult psychological thriller about a controlling marriage. The Girl I Used to Be and One of Us Is Lying sit at the lighter end.
Is there a podcast-style book like the AGGGTM format?
Yes, Sadie by Courtney Summers is the standout. Half the novel is written as episodes of a fictional investigative podcast called The Girls, complete with interview transcripts, which echoes the case-file and transcript chapters in A Good Girl's Guide to Murder. The two storylines, the podcast and the missing girl's own narration, converge as the investigation closes in.
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