Holly Jackson has an uncanny ability to scratch that itch in my brain that craves a good mystery. She did it with the A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder trilogy and she’s done it again with Not Quite Dead Yet. Only this time, Jackson sets us up with a unique premise that had me on the edge of my seat humming Stick Season by Noah Kahan for almost 400 pages.
Margaret “Jet” Mason is a twenty seven year old who lives with her parents in the picturesque small town of Woodstock, Vermont. Oh, and she’s a law school dropout who has no idea what she wants to do with her life. Although, like many before her, Jet has half a notebook’s worth of ideas. For context of how dire things are for her, there’s even talk of a dog walking app before… well, before.
Everything changes for Jet Halloween night.
At the annual town fair, Jet does her best to avoid people (relatable) and the sense that while everyone she knows has been moving forward, Jet is the only one stuck standing still. After some standard condescension from her mother, Jet skips out on the rest of the fair (and fair cleanup) and goes home.
It’s while she’s treating herself to a Halloween cookie that someone breaks into her parent’s home and hits Jet not once, not twice, but three times over the head. (Can we all just agree that cookie eating is a sacred event and really if there’s ever a time for peace it’s then? Like, can you imagine?? I personally wouldn’t mind going out eating a cookie, but the sheer disrespect of it all makes me sick.)
Anyway, when Jet wakes up in the hospital her whole family is looking at her like she’s already dead. Turns out, not quite. Yet.
See, those repeated hits over the head from the Cookie Sacrilegist knocked a piece of her skull loose so deep in her brain that it’s pretty much impossible to remove. With any other twenty seven year old, it’d probably be fine, but among the list of things Jet inherited from Scott and Dianne, her parents, chronic kidney disease was one of them.
Meaning, Jet gets blood clots super easily.
Meaning, Jet is barely given time to catch her breath when she wakes up before she has to make a choice.
The Choice, really.
Get a surgery to remove the wayward piece of skull from her brain with a less than 10% chance of survival or live another seven days and die when the blood clots in her brain inevitably pop.
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Yeah, one might say, Jet is in a dilemma.
Except, she chooses what I would have.
Looking down the barrel of guaranteed death, Jet chooses the option that allots her more time. She takes the seven days and finally knows what she wants to do with the rest of her life.
“I’m going to solve my own murder.”
Jet manages to be brave and fearless, despite or perhaps because of what’s happened to her. She remains snarky and caustic, flexing that macabre sense of humor all over town. What a legend. For the first time in her life, Jet is dedicated to succeeding. It’s pretty much her dying wish… to catch her killer.
“She wanted what she’d always wanted. To do something, achieve something big, something undeniably great, to prove that she could.”
Jet knows that she’s not everyone’s cup of tea. Most days, she isn’t even her own cup of tea, but she can’t imagine there’s anyone out there who hates her enough to kill her.
As Dianne does everything in her power to get Jet to change her mind about the surgery, Jet decides she’s spending her last week alive with the man who granted her that extra time: Billy Finney.
Billy’s the one that heard the Mason’s dog, Reggie, screaming like a lunatic Halloween night. He found Jet lying in a puddle of her own blood, called 911 and made sure she was still breathing by the time they got there. Billy grew up next door to Jet and they were childhood best friends. He’s a kind, sensitive man willing to do anything to help the people he loves. Even if it’s subjecting himself to a new roommate and one last, law breaking, insane week with Jet Mason.
As she recklessly investigates that night, Jet uncovers a treasure trove of family secrets. In her mind, she’s got nothing left to lose and nothing to be afraid of. The worst that could happen already did. I mean, she’s already dead. It’s not like she can die twice.
“Was this what it felt like to be a man? Walking on this creepy dark bridge, not scared for a second that she wouldn’t make it out the other side, because it didn’t really make a difference whether she did or not. The night belonged to her now too. A dead woman walking. And dead women had no use for fear.”
What follows is a story of twists and turns with an inevitability that rips your heart right out of your chest, while somehow warming you up from the inside out. (Make it make sense?)
The least Jackson could’ve done was let us know we’d have our own less than 10% chance of survival after finishing this one.
I cannot recommend this highly enough and it’s the perfect book to read as we rapidly approach Halloween and Spooky Season. Seriously, let’s hope however your Halloween is this year, it’s nowhere near as bad as Jet’s.
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