48 pages • 1 hour read
Holly JacksonKill Joy
Fiction | Novella | YA | Published in 2021A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Pippa “Pip” Fitz-Amobi
Pip is the protagonist of the text. Through the fictional murder-mystery game, Pip hones her investigative skills, deciding at the end of the text to use them to solve another lingering mystery in her town of Fairview, Connecticut.
At the beginning of the text, Pip is a bit of a killjoy herself: “Sure, she hadn’t seen her friends all together in weeks, and maybe this would be fun. But she had work waiting for her at home, and fun, after all, was just a waste of time” (2). Pip struggles to let go and enjoy herself, viewing typical teenage activities like hanging out with her friends as a “waste of time.” This establishes Pip as a serious person, one whose focus is hard to tear away from what she deems important. It is not until the game is underway that Pip realizes that she can approach the game like another task to accomplish: “Maybe solving murders wasn’t too different from homework after all. She could feel herself falling headfirst into it, the rest of the world fading out” (31).
Once Pip’s perception of the game changes, she goes into investigator mode and fixates on solving the mystery. The events of the game begin to blur the edges of reality, and Pip finds herself physically reacting to stimuli as if the murderer is really still at large. Trying to solve the mystery makes her feel alive, her body reacting to the adrenaline of trying to put together clues in pursuit of justice.
When Jamie reveals that Pip’s theory about the outcome of the game is wrong, Pip feels a deep sense of disappointment: “The whole world outside this house had disappeared; it had been just Pip and her mind and a problem to solve. Exactly the way she liked it. Exactly when she was most herself. But she’d been wrong” (112). Pip is frustrated not only with being wrong but also with the oversimplified explanation that the game gives for the mystery’s solution. Instead of wallowing, however, Pip turns her attention to another problem to solve and decides to pursue the case of Andie Bell as the subject of her senior capstone project. In doing so, Pip achieves multiple goals: the pursuit of justice, figuring out her thesis topic, and solving a problem.
Jamie Reynolds
Jamie is Connor’s older brother and helps orchestrate the gameplay. Jamie helps move the game’s narrative along in his role as the investigator, Howard Whey, and through his orchestration of different game elements. Through his role in the game, Jamie plays a crucial role in encouraging Pip to hone her investigative skills, ultimately leading her to want to solve the mystery of Andie Bell’s murder.
One of the most important aspects of Jamie’s role is when he hides an additional secret clue downstairs in the basement for the person who can fix the fuse box to find. After staging a blackout, Pip is the only one in the group that knows how to reset a fuse box. When she resets the box, she finds the clue: “Sneaky Jamie Reynolds […] It was all part of the game: the blackout, Jamie pretending he didn’t know what to do with a fuse box” (95). Jamie helps weave the night’s events, blurring fact and fiction to create an immersive gameplay experience and inspiring Pip to want to solve the mystery.
Pip’s investment in the game, in large part due to Jamie’s craftsmanship, comes to a halt when Jamie reveals that Pip’s theory is incorrect. Jamie takes no pleasure in Pip being wrong, seemingly preferring Pip’s far more intricate theory. His face crumples, and he stammers through his apology, as if he is just as disappointed that Pip is wrong as Pip is herself.
Ant Lowe
Ant is one of the other game players and ostensibly a friend of Pip’s, although she frequently feels frustrated with his behavior. Ant acts as an antagonist by playing pranks that feed off the tense and anxious mood of the murder-mystery game. Ant also plays a significant role in evoking the murder of Andie Bell multiple times throughout the night, bringing the specter of the town’s own murder mystery to the forefront of Pip’s mind.
Ant does not take the game or the real-life murder mystery in Fairview seriously. He plays pranks on his friends, disappearing during the gameplay and reappearing outside, producing a jump scare from the others. Ant’s reaction is cavalier: “Oh god, that was so funny; you should have seen your faces” (67). His reaction to his friends’ distress at his disappearance illustrates how little stock he puts in the feelings of others.
Ant also functions as a contrast to Pip within the text, with his lack of tact and compassion being the foil to Pip’s strong moral compass. For example, when Pip finds out that her character is not the murderer in the fictional game, she is overwhelmingly relieved. Ant’s reaction to his character possibly being the murderer is one of enthusiasm: “‘Yeah, baby!’ Ant shouted, suddenly, making Pip flinch. He stood up, raising his arms above his head in victory. ‘I’m the killer, bitches!’” (110).
Aside from Ant’s immature antics, he displays a lack of compassion and empathy when he mentions the real-life murder of Andie multiple times, accusing Sal Singh of the murder each time. Pip and her friends live in a town where a horrible murder took place, yet Ant uses it as fodder for weak jokes. Later on, when the players are sharing their hypotheses of who the game’s murderer is, Ant responds again in jest: “‘Well, the only murderer around here is…Sal Singh,’ he said with a grin. ‘Must be his ghost. Andie Bell and now poor Reginald Remy’” (100). Ant is a representation of the town at large: someone who easily believes the foregone conclusion that Sal is guilty without turning a critical eye to the case.
Cara Ward
Cara is Pip’s best friend and one of the other players in the game. Cara provides comic relief in an otherwise tense setting, offering a playful and lighthearted contrast to Pip’s single-minded focus and serious demeanor. Pip and Cara’s relationship goes back years, and Cara understands Pip better than anyone else at the party. While others, like Ant, grow easily exasperated with Pip’s serious attitude and resistance to having fun, Cara is able to view her friend’s intelligence and hyper-focus with a sense of levity.
Cara also brings out a more playful side to Pip, encouraging her to not take life so seriously. When Cara can tell that Pip is falling deeper into the mystery, she tries to bring Pip back with an old joke: “‘Oh boy, the demon has awoken,’ Cara said with a playful prod between Pip’s ribs. She’d been doing that since they were six years old, whenever Pip was too serious. ‘This is for fun, remember, Celia’” (30-31). This quote illustrates Cara’s warm familiarity with Pip’s nature, quirks that Cara finds endearing but also knows how to navigate after so many years of friendship.
Cara is also not afraid to play the game. When the game guide instructs Pip to leave the room, unnoticed, so that her character can destroy evidence of her character’s identity as a spy, Pip feels guilty about “lying” to Cara. Cara, on the other hand, has no such compunction, easily following Pip out of the room and grabbing the evidence from her friend: “Pip reached for it. Just within her grasp. And then Cara whipped it away again, hiding it behind her back. ‘LOL, joke,’ she giggled, backing away toward the dining room” (79). When Pip is entirely invested in solving the mystery, Cara serves to, quite literally, pull Pip back to more solid ground so that Pip does not become totally subsumed in the game’s mystery.
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