Review: Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson

Not Quite Dead Yet

by Holly Jackson

Release Date: July 22, 2025

2025 Bantam

Softcover ARC; 400 Pages

ISBN: 978-0593977057

ASIN: B0DJQBXWTS

Audiobook: B0DK4B42SM

Genre: Fiction / Mystery

Source: Review copy from publisher

 

4 / 5 Stars

 

Summary

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.

 

My Thoughts

Not Quite Dead Yet definitely had an interesting premise, and one of the things I liked about this book was Jet and everything she was going through with her head injury and the trauma of having to make life-altering decisions after her attack. While the mystery was interesting, it was Jet's character development and how she reacted to what was happening to her that was the driving force of this book for me.

 

So, let's talk about Jet. When Jet wakes up in the hospital after surviving the attack, she has to deal with the pressure from her family regarding BIG decisions and this is one of the first times she actually stands her ground and makes a BIG decision that is for herself and not for her family, and definitely not to please her mother whom she has been trying to please for years due to another traumatic even in their life. Her character development during those seven days was phenomenal and I enjoyed every step as she realized what was actually important to her and the destructive path she had been on for long.  The injury made her take chances she would not normally have taken, both with the investigation and with her personal relationships, and I have to say I was drawn more to those relationships than to the mystery. And I could definitely relation to her constant sass and sarcasm!!

 

When you look closely, the plot itself was fairly standard and predictable, nothing that really hasn't been done before. But when you combine that with everything that Jet was going through and what the family had to be dealing with as they dealt with Jet's attack, the tension definitely ratcheted up a notch as you knew there wasn't that much time left to figure out what was happening. And as Jet was investigating, the inclusion of her growing symptoms just made the tension that much stronger as you worried about the when and where and how it was finally going to happen. I enjoyed seeing the childhood relationship Jet had with Billy intertwine around the mystery and grow into something more adult as they both realized they needed to mature in order to appreciate the other. However, there was one aspect to the mystery that was not quite fully explained, something that did bother me and it lingered after I finished the book. While the book focused on Jet's injury, it was also a murder-mystery and you can't leave threads hanging as readers will notice.

 

Verdict

Not Quite Dead Yet was an enjoyable read and I definitely thought Jet's character development was a highlight of this book as well as the relationship between Jet and Billy. However, it was a mystery as well and although interesting, it was predictable and not everything was tied up in the end. But, as someone who did not finish one of this author's other series, I am happy that I enjoyed this so much. Highly recommend.