Not Quite Dead Yet: A Novel by Holly JacksonPublication Date: July 22, 2025
Pages: 400
Add on: Goodreads
Rating: ★★★½
Source: From the Publisher
Genre: Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense
Publisher: Bantam / Penguin Random House
After she is fatally wounded in an assault, a young woman uses her last few days to try to solve her own murder, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.
Margaret "Jet" Mason has never been able to finish anything. In her twenty-seven years, she's dropped out of school, quit a promising career, and dumped all her boyfriends. Her town's annual Halloween festival is a pageant of the familiar faces of friends and family, each a reminder of her failure to launch, made more surreal by the ghoulish costumes everyone's wearing. But no matter—she’s about to leave this town behind and get her fresh start somewhere else. Like with everything else, she quits the party and heads home.
But as she walks in her front door, someone attacks her from behind, fracturing her skull—and leaves her for dead.
Thirty-six hours later, she wakes up in the hospital to grim news: The attack has left a small bone fragment that's putting pressure on her brain’s arterial wall. The doctors tell her that a large aneurysm will soon form, and when it ruptures, the hemorrhage will be fatal.
Jet has two choices: Undergo immediate surgery to remove the bone fragment, with less than a ten percent chance of survival. Or don’t, and die sometime in the coming week.
With the odds stacked against her and death a foregone conclusion, Jet knows what she has to do. She has never finished anything in her life . . . until now. With her last remaining week, she’s going to find out who murdered her.
Story Locale: Woodstock, VT
REVIEW
Holly Jackson, best known for her hit YA series A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, brings her trademark suspense and sharp character work to the adult thriller scene with Not Quite Dead Yet—and the result is a gut punch you won’t see coming.
The story centers on Jet Mason, a 27-year-old drifting through life in the shadow of her wealthy Vermont family. After a vicious Halloween night leaves her with a fatal brain injury and only seven days to live, Jet decides to solve her own murder before time runs out. With her childhood friend Billy by her side, what follows is a race through family secrets, small-town grudges, and the looming spectre of mortality.
Jet is the heart of the novel, raw, flawed, and darkly funny. Her voice leaps off the page, balancing regret and resilience in a way that feels painfully real. The slow-burning tension between her and Billy, the tangled family relationships, and the sense of urgency all combine to create a story that’s as emotional as it is suspenseful.
Jackson writes with the same crisp pacing and addictive style that made her YA books impossible to put down, but here she adds grit and a heavier emotional punch. The twists land at just the right moments, and the blend of family drama with the central mystery keeps the stakes sky-high.
What works? The premise is irresistible: solve your own murder before you die. Jet’s narrative voice is unforgettable, the emotional beats hit hard, and the pacing never lets up. If there’s a drawback, it’s that some readers might find the ending polarizing, and a few side characters don’t get quite as much spotlight. Suspension of disbelief is required in a few spots, but the payoff is worth it.
Jackson’s first adult novel is clever, heartfelt, and packs a real punch. If you want a thriller with brains, heart, and a protagonist you won’t forget, Not Quite Dead Yet delivers.
