Authumn 2025: Not Quite Dead yet by Holly Jackson

Life is a confusing thing, let’s just get that on the table. It is filled with many twists and turns, secrets, social relationships and much more. Having time to navigate these turns and emotions is a vital part of life, but what if you really don’t have the time to deal with them? 

In her latest book, Not Quite Dead Yet, Holly Jackson dives into this question through the framing of a murder mystery. The novel follows Jet Mason, a 23-year-old whose life motto is “I’ll do it later”. However, one Halloween night, she is faced with the reality that the “later” she envisioned might be cut short through unexpected means. Alone at night, she gets murdered, but as the book’s title suggests, she’s not quite dead… yet… 

Although I will try to give a thorough review of this book, with it being a book in the mystery genre, I will try my best to keep spoilers to a minimum, as I do believe that Jackson’s work is best experienced, rather than explained. 

Jackson presents Jet’s story as a subversion of the murder mystery formula. As Jet herself says in the beginning of the book, she’s going to do “something no one had ever done before” and solve her own murder. Because she is the victim in her own case, it allows the clues to be seen through a personal lens. This is because Jet’s personal biases and her own memory form the framework for the discovery of the culprit.  

As is common in most murder mystery novels, the first suspect the book tries to frame, in this case Jet’s ex-boyfriend JJ, serves to be a diversion from the truth. However, because Jet has more knowledge of JJ than most people in the book, she instantly calls out the fact that he was not the one to kill her. Because of Jet’s personal view on the case, it helps speed along the plot progression by giving her insight to clues that the police do not have. This has its upsides and downsides from a narrative perspective. Jet’s personal views and her impending death help her push forward and figure out clues both related and unrelated to her murder, ones that, without her insight, would have gone unnoticed.

Still, while Jet’s impulsive desire to keep pushing forward makes sense (she is on a tight time limit, after all), at some points it feels like rough guesswork that only works for the sake of progressing the plot. The most explicit of these moments is when she goes to a construction site owned by her father’s business and hammers away at the freshly poured foundation to find the next clue. Although it is never explicitly stated, the time spent hammering the concrete would be no more than 15 minutes, in which she either manages to destroy the entire foundation of a large house, or she manages to find the exact spot where the clue is buried based on nothing but pure guesswork. Though I can excuse some coincidences, this whole scene felt forced into the story with no purpose other than to prove Jet’s competence. 

Of course, moments like this are few and far between, and though they can feel a little forced, they are by no means disruptive to the story. Quite to the contrary, moments like this are the minority, with most events or conversations that lead Jet and Billy to their next clue being reasonable at worst and highly engaging at best. Along with that, Jackson poses that most of the clues the duo receives are multifaceted. Almost every clue can be linked to multiple characters to keep the reader guessing who the culprit is. This may not be a groundbreaking concept in the murder mystery genre, but I must commend Jackson’s writing on how few of the clues deviate from this multifaceted formula. 

This multifaceted formula goes beyond merely the clues in the book. Not Quite Dead Yet uses a myriad of themes within its pages to push the general message of life and death forward. Most notably, the notion of time is of utmost importance.  

Although the use of time as a limited resource in similar murder mystery novels is nothing new, Jet’s unique position as the victim with her death looming on the horizon allows the story to double down on these themes. As mentioned earlier, in the opening of the book, Jackson emphasizes Jet’s opinion of the things in her life and the time she has left, with her eternal “I’ll do it later” serving as her answer to most of the questions presented to her. This is flipped on its head when she learns there is no later, with the impending end forming a sense of unshakable dread. 

This looming clock ticking down can be seen in multiple ways. The most obvious example are the references to time in the text that Jet makes. When she still thought she has a lot of time left, she made jokes and puns regarding death, much to the dismay of the people around her. These jokes ranged from actual puns like her saying she is “trying to keep an open mind… well someone bashed it open for me” to her venting her frustrations to others like “I think it’s probably OK if I don’t stick to standard mealtimes. I’ll be dead in a week”. These jokes and frustrations fade as the book progresses, and she is faced with her own mortality. She talks to Billy about how her choices no longer matter and how she would face no consequences anymore, after all, she will be dead in a few days. This mentality comes crashing down when she is forced to face the consequences of her actions, only a few days before her judgement day, where she has a wonderful moment of self-reflection. 

Another way that the relentless march of time is portrayed is in the structure of the chapters. Many chapters in the book only contain a single main revelation or clue, to the point where the events of most chapters can be summed up in about 5 words. This makes the chapters feel segmented. So, although there is definitely a thread of the overarching story present through Jet and Billy, the main plot progression remains rigid.

This rigidity at first struck me as a negative thing, but the more I thought about it, the more it clicked with the themes of time. Sure, the chapters seem rigid to a fault, but I would say that elevates the story more than it hampers it. By structuring the chapters in such a rigid “one main clue each” way, it makes the book read that it is progressing, like the ticking of the clock. It allows the chapters to slowly push forward as if each chapter is another few hours of Jet’s life ticking away, slowly moving forward to the end. By making the progress of the book resemble the constant movement of clockwork, Jackson manages to breathe more life into it by building up the sense of a looming end and the inevitability of time passing

This is further exemplified through two things: Jet’s “not-quite-death” and her actual death. When she is attacked at the start of the novel, it takes place in the Mason’s house. From then on, Jet stays over at Billy’s place. This “death” in one house, followed by the move to another, showcases how, to Jet, her original home is a bad place. It’s a place where she was alone, resulting in her killer having an opportunity to attack her. When she was attacked, she “passed on”, almost dying as Billy found her not-quite-lifeless body there. Jet’s “death” at the beginning of the novel, one which (spoiler alert) happened because of her family’s relations rather than Jet herself, leave Jet to die isolated and alone, as a separate and unloved part of the family. This contrasts with her actual death at the end of the novel, where she dies in Billy’s arms, staying with him until the bitter end, around someone who deeply cared for her. The contrast between dying alone and dying with someone you loved illustrates how Jet’s character has grown more caring and accepting of people in her last two weeks. It shows how she realised that being with Billy (and by extension being in his apartment) has become her safe place and home more so than her parents’ home ever was. 

Speaking of Jet’s death at the end of the book, it is handled in a well-orchestrated manner. While reading, my mind was constantly plagued by the idea that the book was going to be too afraid to commit to the premise it surrendered itself to. That, somehow, Jackson would find a way to make Jet survive so the book can have a happy ending. These fears, however, were proven unfounded and presumptuous as Jackson shows she is not afraid to fully commit to her ideas.

As the book nears its conclusion, Jet dies. Not as the final line in the book, not after all plot threads have been neatly resolved, she just dies. Without any prior warning and before she is scheduled to die, Jet succumbs to the aneurysm that has been haunting her the entire book in a wonderful scene that not only mirrors the book’s opening, but also feels like a perfect encapsulation of all the themes that the book has been working towards. Be it the ever-dwindling time, the meaning of being home, or the point of living, it concludes all that without ending the book.  

Although I could give an in-depth analysis of the scene, I will do no such thing. No words that I could present to you in this essay could quite encompass the emotion, tension and desperation in this scene, that doing anything but urge you to read the book for yourself would be a disservice to the impact it has on the story. 

However, after that wonderful moment, I still have a few gripes. Mainly, the ending after Jet’s death. With Jet out of the picture, the perspective naturally moves on to Billy, continuing the story and drawing it to its conclusion. Be it because of Billy’s (out of character yet justified) cold reception to the events in the ending, or just because of the natural progression of it taking place right after Jet’s tense death scene, the actual ending pales in comparison to the moment before it. It’s hard to fault Jackson for this more unremarkable conclusion – as I said, it’s hard to top the explosion of emotions that comes right before it – but a paragraph or two after, perhaps even a short epilogue, could have helped to smooth out the ending instead of cutting it with the quiet acceptance that the story ends on now. 

All things considered, Not Quite Dead Yet is an engaging novel that does exactly what it sets out to do. From the very first two chapters, it makes clear what it is about, and it sees it through to the end. It dives into the themes and mysteries it sets up at the very start of the book and drags the reader along through the hardships, the laughs, and the moments that are to die for. It’s definitely a good time for those who adore murder mystery books, as well as being an intriguing read for readers who have very little experience with the genre.