Review: Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson

Name: Not Quite Dead Yet
Series: Stand Alone
Author: Holly Jackson
Publisher: Penguin
Format: Proof Copy from the Bookmarks team (not for review – as a reward)
Genres: Adult, Crime, Mystery, Thriller, Contemporary
Spice Rating: None

Rating:

Synopsis: Goodreads
In seven days Jet Mason will be dead.

Jet is the daughter of one of the wealthiest families in Woodstock, Vermont. Twenty-seven years old, she’s still waiting for her life to begin. I’ll do it later, she always says. She has time.

Until Halloween night, when Jet is violently attacked by an unseen intruder.

She suffers a catastrophic head injury. The doctor is certain that within a week, the injury will trigger a deadly aneurysm.

Jet has never thought of herself as having enemies. But now she looks at everyone in a new light: her family, her former best friend turned sister-in-law, her ex-boyfriend.

She has at most seven days, and as her condition deteriorates she has only her childhood friend Billy for help. But nevertheless, she’s absolutely determined to finally finish something:

Jet is going to solve her own murder.

Review:

I had high expectations because I loved A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder so much, and Not Quite Dead Yet did not disappoint me, honestly. We follow our FMC Jet, a 27 year old living at home, who is seemingly unable to actually complete anything. She always gives up or moves on to something else before it’s finished…But when Jet wakes up in hospital after having been attacked on Halloween night and is informed that she has two choices – die in 7 days or go for surgery immediately that only has a 10% chance of survival – she has to make a decision on die now or die later? And what will she do with her 7 days if she chooses later… Well, Jet does indeed chose die later and she decides that with her time left – she’s finally going to do something. She’s going to solve her own murder.

I will quite readily admit I did not like Jet, she was a hard FMC to cheer for, honestly… and yet that didn’t stop me from spending the entire book hoping that the Doctors would wrong and that she would survive the attack… Jet and her best friend Billy do a lot of work trying to figure out who attacked her and in the process discover quite a lot about their families and those connected to them. I loved how Holly Jackson told the story (even if I didn’t like Jet) and laid out such an intwined web of happenings and secrets! I think it was really cleverly written.

I found elements of it quite slow but even when that happened I didn’t lose interest in trying to solve Jet’s murder alongside her. It shows that Holly can do both YA thrillers and Adult! Just be aware that this one is quite different to her YA (that I’ve read). But still very very good. I did accidentally refer to this book as ‘How to solve your own murder’ OFTEN! Since I received the book, oops! So if you see me refer to that book, you know now that it is Not Quite Dead Yet.

An easy 4 stars review for this one! And it has proven to me that I absolutely need to read the rest of Holly’s work (of which I plan to!).

“I’ve finally been living. And that’s all because of you.”

Reading With Tyler