As Good As Dead question

I think I'm in the minority here. I think she was justified. Was it moral? Of course not. But it was the right thing for HER to do. I also disagree that it was a 180 in her character. We saw her anger building up for so long throughout the trilogy and it finally came out. Max deserved to be locked away, even though he didn't kill Jason. What he did to Jason's daughter was enough to deserve going down for it.

Honestly? No. But I don't feel bad for Max or Jason.

I know some people don't get the character shift, but I think they just weren't paying enough attention because it had been building for basically all of the second book and into the third.

They continually ignore her and her statements to them. They treat her like she's crazy when she goes to them about the stalking incidents.

It's perfectly in line for her to believe they'd side with Jason over her. He's a friend of the lead detective in town, and his life has been screwed up by Pip (finding out it was Becca.)

Her faith in people caring about the truth vs narrative crumbles when people turn on her after Max is declared not guilty, and people begin to theorize she set up Jamie's disappearance. This combined with the police in fairview generally being useless, demonstrably, makes perfect sense for her to assume they will not listen.

Killing Jason was absolutely self defense. And if the police HAD listened, even remotely, she would have been cleared. She left so much evidence everywhere of her being held captive for them. But honestly, I don't think they would have.


So do I think she was right, morally? No. Not to set up Max. But I'm glad he went to jail. I'm not even a little sorry he was framed.

But I feel like it compounds the fact that the cops never would have listened to her, just based on the fact she could tell Hawkins suspected her. Despite all the evidence pointing to Max, and her alibi. He never once thought to trust her before, even with evidence.

I dont think what Pip did was *morally* right, but from a fictional standpoint I think its a brilliant plot-twist. Killing Jason was 100% in self-defence, but would the police have listened to her? through the last two books we had seen her slowly change and loose all faith in the justice system, one example of this is in her conversation with Charlie in book two. We see her change through the books, through her experiences, possibly trauma, and when law enforcement keeps on failing her. Her covering up the killing, even though it was in self-defence, likely came from two things. a) General anxiousness and fear of her ending up in jail or B) Her lack of faith in law enforcement and how they probably wouldn't have listened anyway. We see her morals and thoughts change over the books until the final culmination being in this act. I think its beautifully written and meticulously planned out by Jackson, and that although framing Max may be morally wrong it ties it altogether and i can certainly see why she did it.

Honestly. I hated the twist at first. Closed the book and stopped reading. But I think what she did made complete sense for her character at that point in the story - she has gone from someone who started the book series as black and white - right vs wrong and wanting to make everything fair and then through all of her experiences realise that justice isn't always there and her mroals coming somewhat grey,

The police can't be fully trusted. They don't listen to her when she tries to help solve the Andie/Sal case only comes down to her and the fact the two (Elliot/Becca) confess. She discovers Max's crimes and yet he gets found innocent anyway even though she had a recording of him admitting it which cant be used in court. Then he is able to turn around and sue her.
They ignore her when she reports Jamie missing and again she has to discover and find him whilst also revealing Charlie Green/Child Brunswick mystery.
Again when she takes her stalker theory to the police she is ignored and not given some credibility in her voice. It said a few of the towns people call her crazy/pyscho and that she is losing it and turned on her after the Stanley ending or just didn't believe the Jamie case. Plus she has seen the Billy interview where he is clearly led by a policeman into making a false confession and leading him with all the details.

Why after all of this would she have any trust in the police or those around her apart from her most trusted friends? Did I like the twist - no, but I understand why Pip did it. I understand why she picked Max - a man who had gotten away with serial rapes and already manslaughter when he hit that person with a car and co-erced the others to drive away and yet has no remorse or care and will no doubt continue to carry on.

She found a way to get justice even if not the right way it should happen - but then again when has the justice system in her life got it right?

i think she should have explained what happened. she left enough dna to prove she was kidnapped. i get why she did whhat she did and she did cover her tracks very well.

Was it morally right? Well, no, not really. And would Book 1 Pip have done it? Definitely not, and that's the point; all the things Pip has seen and lived through have changed her throughout the series. I'd say that by Book 3, her own idea of "justice" (whether the reader agrees with it or not) is more important to her than the truth. It shows how radically her character changes over the course of the books.

As for whether I AGREE with what she did, or find it defensible... well, I'm a sucker for revenge, especially revenge against people who commit crimes like Max's, so I'm biased. Kinda sucks when someone slips something in your drink and ruins your entire life in the span of a few hours, huh Max?

Pip would've seemed crazy if she showed up at the police station saying a well known white male who was the father of a girl who was murdered was the murderer of many women and tried to murder her. It was best if she covered it up. MAX DESERVED IT.

Igen is meg nem is. Azért igen, mert nem akarta a többieket is belekeverni ebbe az egészbe. Főleg nem a családját. Viszont a gyilkosság az gyilkosság.

I kept wanting to yell at her through the books to just go to the police as she started covering it up, but I realized as I was reading why she didn’t. I don’t agree with it, I think in a real life scenario she could have gone above the Fairview PD if they didn’t believe her - like somehow invoking the FBI (I mean this man was a literal serial killer, and he wasn’t exactly that hard to catch - he literally had the trophies in his house, she had the email draft, he could show them how his DNA was all over her and un the back of his car, etc). I also understand how the justice system does not serve everyone, and her distrust of it. However, there’s no way that in real life, she would have gotten away with this as neatly as she had.

yess girlboss

absolutely agreed with all the comments above! i love pippa as a morally grey character after her constant type A personality being shown, the goody two shoes, the rule abider, homework reminder. this shows what situations can do to alter a person. it really makes you think about what kind of situations have caused any person has experienced for them to be who they are. anyway, it was a great twist and i loved it!

I always reach this conclusion when reading books where the main character does something wrong, was it justified, No, was it a great plot and did it make sense with all the trauma and suffering Pip had to go through, yes.
I think the disscussion here is not wether or not it was ok, but we should be talking about how great of an author Holly Jackson is, to the point were she made us question if murder and blaming an 'inocent' person is justified by any means.
Edit: I know it was technicly self-defense, but if you read carefully you'll realise that she had alredy scaped and was free and outside the building when she decided to go back and kill him. So it is not not really self- defense as much as it was revenge, kinda justified revenge.

I know Jason deserved it, but honestly it just seems REALLY WRONG to kill someone (even if they killed 5 people themselves and almost murdered Pip) and then frame someone. She could have said it was an accident or self defense. So I’m kinda in 2 minds here.

Why so many people criticize this book and Pip for the plot twist?Pip's murder was the whole point of the book and the best part.

I think it all was to choose between the truth or justice and Pip chose justice. I can't blame her. If you see the context, she couldn't have gone to the police, but she should have. Because ecen thought they wouldnt believe her, she would be safe and innocent. But is it a point in being innocent, when your dead? Because if then the police wouldnt believe her or not finding proof that Jason is DT killer- he would come back either for Pip or her family and wouldn't that be even worse??
Wouldnt she feel more guilty if Jason had killed her little brother (example) because she was scared of going to jail?

But honestly, it agree with the skeptical people here also because.. yes it was wrong and she hadn't a right to do it but.. (look over) and i would TOTALLY go to the police but I live in a different place, different people and different situation than Pip. I don't judge her and remember how she did protect her friends and cut them off which was superr hurtful just to make sure they were safe.

No creo. Y menos echándole la culpa a Max. Debería estar en la cárcel por violación, pero no por asesinato, el no lo hizo. Ella pudo simplemente huir y ya.

Eilidh wrote: "Pip had previously been very black and white when it came to what was right and wrong especially in the first book when she was all about finding the truth. After killing Jason she ends up going co..."

]At first, I think that pip is very smart, efficient, and responsible. I believe that (that person's death) was a big mistake. he shouldn't have died however she did very well covering up the situation. also, if she hadn't-lied about it she'd have definitely ended up in jail. moreover, how could they blame her when she herself went to the police and reported a suspect stalking her. the justice system failed her, she had to do it herself.

I honestly think it made sense seeing the shift in Pip's character throughout the first two books. Was it moral? Absolutely not, but Pip no longer believed in the justice system. She had faced to many terrible things that she thought it was the only option. I think finding the killer after seeing so many horrible things that when unknown really wore on Pip. You have to remember she was still in high school while seeing horrors that caused so much trauma and anger within her. While some may have wanted the ending to show the justice system work, the author made it realistic for Pip's character.

Oh. absolutely not. I know she was traumatised and all but killing is just so wrong in my moral book so I just could not understand how they passed it as something ok to do to the point where even her friends helped her. I also think the whole plan sucked a bit and don't see it passing in real life so it was kind of painful to even get through. And to think she did that all by just being a true crime fan? Yeah, right.

while it was DEFINETLY wrong morally and never something done in real life, i can see Pips reasoning and how this works in the fictional world. Lets face it, the police were never going to believe her and a murderer was going to walk free, so she had to kill him. So, while it wasn't my favorite moment in the series, its justified. Also, it fits Pip's character arc as we see her become more unhinged throughout the first part, so i can see her use this logic lol.

I don't think it was right, however I can see why she thought that was her best option. She watched Max walk free after assaulting multiple girls, including one of her friends. Then she saw a transcript that shows the police leading and forcing a confession out of a man who didn't do anything. She had lost her faith in the justice system and she didn't believe that they would believe her story. Multiple police officers were friends with Jason Bell and she didn't think that they would believe that he tried to kill her or that they wouldn't do anything about it.

I absolutely agree that it was nothing but moral AND it was not self defence. She went back and killed him out of her own free will... And I absolutely loved it. I cannot explain the delight when she started working again and got out of that slow and hard to read slump and as you can tell I am not someone who cares about about morals in fictional world.. I liked how Ravi and Pip worked together no matter what and honestly I do not blame her for neither killing DT nor framing Max Hastings. And I think that the ending was the cherry on top for these series because the excitement of the possibilities and especially when you know that they will 99% go back to each other is delightful.

I was disappointed when she murdered him

I honestly don’t think we’re really even supposed to view Pip as a stable or protagonistic character by the end of AGAD. Maybe they would have freed Pip and let her go, because it truly was in self defense, but she doesn’t believe that, which brings us to the final stage of her character that had been building up slowly and steadily over the past two books. After the justice system and law enforcement fail her time and time again, combined with the amount of trauma and anger she had built up, she just kind of cracked. It wasn’t right by any moral means, but to her, it was the only way.

After Pip killed Jason, I was like, "ummm okay why is there still so many pages left of the book?" And then everything started to change, and I can't say I agree with what she did. I feel as though the police would have believed her if she was just honest and explained everything that went down exactly as it had happened. Even though Max deserved to be in jail, he shouldn't have been framed for something he didn't do, especially since Pip was all about finding out the truth in the first two books. Why all of a sudden did she think she was above the truth? Why go to such great lengths to distort the truth? Her killing Jason is self-defense to me. Obviously, Jason was good at getting away with murder, so do you really think if she just ran into the woods and left him, that he, A. wouldn't have found her and finished the job, B. wouldn't have continued to target young girls and kill somebody else, or C. wouldn't have turned the whole thing around on Pip and claim his "innocence". But, after she killed Jason, I think she should have been honest, she had evidence that he was the DT killer already, and she had physical evidence as well. Why go to great lengths to destroy it all, to pull off framing a murder?

I was so upset with this book. Pip spent the first two books working so hard to uncover truths about things that happened. For the most part she was logical and collected data. While she did some of that with the stalker, this one was almost a complete 180 for her character and made me dislike her so much. As much of a creep as Max was, she had no right to take the law into her own hands.
Especially at the end where she just decided to ghost every single person who helped her, which (I would think) would make her look even more suspicious. I loved the first two, and I was left so disappointed with this one.

I think that Max had something like this coming to him but I have mixed emotions. I feel like her killing DT kinda ruined her character. Although dont get me wrong- i still love pip. its just..idk...

I think the author wanted to show the change that Pip went through while witnessing the murder in "Good girl, bad blood". She feels responsible and is losing faith in the justice system (also regard the rape trial) and that make sense. Yet, I feel is too much of a stretch. Yes it's plausible, but I still believe she should have just called the police and expose Jason Bell straight away.

YES