Hello, my dear readers! I am back here for another review after quite some time. I have recently been reading a lot of books, and YES, I have finished all of Holly Jackson’s Y/A books. 

(By the way, as we all can see, I still haven’t decided on a better intro. Productivity at its finest.)

It’s news that she’s releasing another new book called ‘Not Quite Dead Yet’, but as per the post, it’s supposed to be an adult debut novel, not a teen one like she usually writes.

Anyway, I decided to rank all of her teenage fiction novels in order from least liked to favourite.

Why? 

…..

Why not?

 Holly Jackson is a famous and well known author for her ‘A Good Girl’s guide to murder’ series’. This contains three main books. Besides these she has another prologue to this series, as well as two other stand-alone thriller novels. Because all the names are too long to keep writing all the time, I’m making a reference list here with the shortcuts I’m using.

Original trilogy:

• A good girl’s guide to murder: AGGGTM
• Good girl, Bad blood. : GGBB
• As Good as Dead: AGAD

Prologue to original:

• Kill Joy: KJ

Other standalones:

• The reappearance of Rachel Price: TRORP
• Five Survive: FS

Now, the ranking. I’m going from least to most liked, as I mentioned before. (sigh)

Hope you’re ready!

6. Kill joy: While this book was a prologue to a good girl’s guide to murder, the whole series is fully unaffected by it. Maybe even more so because I read it after finishing the original three, but I don’t think anything in KJ influenced AGGGTM as a whole. It was a fun read, and it entertained me on a very boring train journey. 

It’s not too big, and I finished it in one sitting only. It revolves around a murder mystery party set up at Connor’s house, and his brother Jamie is hosting it. They were all required to dress up as per 90’s fashion, according to the character they were playing. This is directly before Pip takes up Andie Bell’s murder case for her EPQ, and we can kind of see what inspired her to do so. Overall, its a good book, would suggest. There isn’t any specific character I didnt like here, unlike the other books.

5. Five Survive:  ARGHHH I have so much to rant on this book. There is a clear and specific reason it’s second from the bottom, and I’ll tell you why.

It’s so unrealistic. That’s a bit rich, I know, its a fiction book. But this level of unrealism isn’t the fantasy type. It’s the infuriating one! 

The story is set in an RV, specifically, a 31-foot RV, which Simon and Redford (Or just Red) constantly remind us of. 6 friends go off camping, and the car suddenly stops in the middle of nowhere. Then they notice it’s not a puncture. The tires had been shot from long range. Red has a laser dot pointed at her head from far away. It’s not a torch.

Its a sniper.

And the sniper wants to kill one of them specifically, and its up to them to find out who it is and why. I must admit the setting and the plot got me, but the alleged ‘dark secret’ of all the characters and the overall execution was just ‘meh’. Okay, major spoilers ahead, don’t read if you haven’t read yet.

Spoiler alert:

Firstly, there is a nagging thing our main lead, Red, keeps mentioning. The RV curtains. She keeps saying it reminds her of something. And it’s repeated THROUGHOUT the entire book. It covers at least a third of the whole book. Also, since Red’s mom has died, she keeps mentioning it all the time, and it also covers a significant part of the book. Secondly, there is a darker plot, as we know, Mrs Lavoy, Red’s bestie’s mom, is using Red as a false witness against a case of one of the mafia leagues, ‘Gotti’. WHY would a LAWYER take a TEENAGER who is quite obviously not very… let’s say..level-headed, to be a false witness? It would never work! Thirdly, the setting is messed up. Since the sniper is one of the Gotti family members, such a powerful person could just go and kidnap Red and save a lot of time. Nope. It had to be in an RV with 5 others, none of whom are very moral characters. Lastly, ‘Red’, or ‘Redford Kenny’. It isn’t even a redhead. She’s a brunette. Why was she named ‘red’ then? Oh, after her grandfather, who also happened to have died tragically. I 

was envisioning her as a girl of medium height with at least reddish-tinted brown hair 😭

Spoilers over.

I couldn’t even really connect well to the characters, least of all Maddy (red’s bestie) as well as Red herself. I wanted to throw Oliver out of the RV throughout almost the whole book. Arthur is the slightly morally gray character in this book and he’s the main reason Red doesn’t die. Oliver’s girlfriend Reyna was okay, but I hated the way Oliver controlled over everything she did. Also Reyna technically was a stronger character than Maddy, and you’ll find out later in the book. Maddy was SO influenced by her brother Oliver I felt as angry as Red (one of the best things our main character did). The ironic thing is that Simon, who was DRUNK on more than 5 bottles of beer, is the most sensible one.

(sigh)

Anyway, wouldn’t give this above 2 or 3 stars. Some people might have loved it, but it traumatised me. I haven’t reread it, and that’s very rare. On the good side the cover is super, it totally hypes you up!

4. Good girl, Bad blood: I don’t know why but I didn’t like the plot of GGBB as much as AGGGTM or AGAD in fact, maybe because it was too closely related to Pip? FYI: Its about when Connor’s brother Jamie disappears out of nowhere, and they need to find where he is. Pip is fully delving into the mystery, which of course we love, and Ravi is still there. The ending shook me, though, and the plot twists were plot-twisting! 

Now, I didn’t hate this book, I liked reading it. Why isn’t it higher up? I’ve said so before. Why isn’t it lower?

The main thing is, the series would have DRASTICALLY changed without it. This is the point in Pip’s life where she realises that clinging to the truth and shouting it out loud didn’t please some of the public. And it influences her character. The only thing about this is that GGBB wasn’t evenly paced; the first part went SO slow and so timelessly, it was confusing. The end was a rush of chaos, noise, fire and blood. (I’m being serious.) Without reading this book, AGAD makes no sense, and neither does the series. Trust me, read the whole set and you’ll understand EVERYTHING. It makes sense in the end. 

Also, we still hate Max Hastings, and we will always hate him.

3. A Good Girl’s Guide to murder: The first book of Holly Jackson and the one that got us reading more into her stories. It was an essential part of the whole trilogy and started the whole mystery. Almost everything connects back to points in this book, and without it the other parts would be confusing. A catch, though, you’ll never understand the full story without reading the whole series. I bought the trio together and after reading agggtm, I was like: ‘good book but the story didn’t clear out.’

Well, it did in the end! Also, we can better see the relationship of Cara, Pip and Lauren here, even though the last person changed drastically in the next books. But don’t worry, I’m not going to give any more spoilers for that. Just know that we no longer support Lauren in the OG friendship trio they had. The overall story was interesting, and it was my survival mentor during a really boring and long flight trip where half our tour group were scattered far off and I had quite as well nothing else to do.

I was so hooked onto this and I tried to finish it as fast as I could and then proceeded to re-read it over and over again. 

Sooooo

Its third from the top!

Then who’s the second?

Drum roll, please….

2. The reappearance of Rachel Price: One of Holly Jackson’s best works. Awesome plot, and it had me hooked onto it. And again, yes, I did start this at an airport, and yes, I did finish it in one too. I seem to finish all the best thrillers while waiting for the food to arrive in the food court, or the brownie from Flury’s to get heated.

This book follows the story of Annabel Price, better known as Bel to everyone else. Her mother went missing nearly 15 years ago and was assumed dead. Their family agreed to do a documentary in order to let the world know her story better, even though it was a mystery to them as well. In the meantime, guess what?

The real Rachel Price came back.

From the dead.

Only, she never died.

And Rachel herself appears to have no idea what happened to her either.

Yet here she was. Reappeared.

Bel finds her story suspicious and feels that Rachel might be trying to take her dad away from her. So she attempts to investigate this with the help of Ash Maddox from the film crew. However no one is who they say they are. Almost everyone is lying, and Bel doesn’t know it yet. And this could change everything. Will she find out the truth in time?

Anyway this was one of Holly Jackson’s best thrillers and I have reread it too many times. Probably one of my most ‘re-read books’ ever. The only thing annoying about this book is the pacing. Everything at the beginning went all slowly and the end seemed super rushed, even though it was amazing. And also Ash went away to London again 😞

Besides that I would definitely suggest this book to anyone who likes Holly Jackson or thrillers in general case. Now for the one on the top of the list….

1.As Good As Dead: You had probably guessed this would be the one on the top because…well there aren’t any books left to rank. This was the book that made it to the 1st rank, and people who have already read it and liked it would understand why.

Pip is being stalked. And that too by a dangerous, psychotic serial killer who would not just shoot her point blank. No, he (yes it’s a he) would kidnap her, and make her…disappear.

He would twist the story such that no one would ever find Pip, and no one would believe her, on account of her mental state already being less than normal after witnessing someone die in front of her (spoilers from GGBB). Pip found the clues already, but they’re so unrealistic, and so well done that everyone, including her mother, thinks it’s ‘just nothing’.

Inspector DI Hawkins suggested she see a psychologist (whom she didn’t go to) when she showed him the evidence that she was being stalked.

Only Ravi was concerned, and Pip herself was so worried she hardly left the house.

Then, she did something everyone on the internet warns you not to do.

She googled the evidence.

It’s like googling the symptoms of your illness, and then Google will be all, ‘Oh, that’s a fatal disease!’

This was even worse. She typed out all her evidence in random keywords, and then it matched with a notorious serial killer.

The DT killer, the duct tape killer. And every clue which led the police to him (yes, he was arrested and died, and yes Pip was still being stalked by someone EXACTLY like him. Creepy.) matched her own evidence.

What’s more, she fitted the victim descriptions as well.

The killer keeps leaving her chilling messages and coming closer to her every day. Will Pip be able to save herself?

Who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears? – DT

The whole PLOT is awesome, and so is the execution. I was terrified for Pip throughout the entire book, and it built the suspense so well. You can see why I put this one first! 

Anyway, these are just my opinions, if you enjoyed any of the books I’ve ranked lower, it’s completely fine, to each their own!

Goodbye for now!