Every Holly Jackson Book, Ranked—From 'A Good Girl's Guide to Murder' to 'Not Quite Yet'
If you love Netflix's adaptation of her debut hit series, the British author has so many more thrillers worth reading.
Countless mystery-thriller authors have cult followings and ascend to the top of bestseller lists, but not all of them straddle YA and adult audiences. British phenom Holly Jackson, however, does—and has followed all of the clues and gathered all of the evidence to know how to be damn good at it.
In less than a decade, Jackson has become one of the top-selling crime authors in the U.K., thanks in part to her largely teen-girl readership, whom she reveres and have followed her with each release since her 2019 debut, A Good Girl's Guide to Murder. The book, following teenage detective Pip's investigation into a cold case, peaked at No. 1 on the New York Times Best Sellers list, where it spent over 77 weeks, and its Netflix adaptation went on to reach No. 1 on its streaming charts in roughly 80 countries.
With a highly devoted fan base and a healthy Easter egg-hiding habit, the author has even earned the nickname “The Taylor Swift of books,” selling more than 10 million novels in the process. It checks out, considering how intricately she plans her whodunnits. "I am obsessive about it," she has said. "I don't quite have a 'murder board' because it's not on the wall, but it is on the floor."
Whether you’re just discovering the British writer thanks to her recent foray into adult thrillers, you’re a diehard fan, or obsessed with Netflix's A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, there's much to dive into. Below, we ranked every one of Holly Jackson's books so you know which one to pick up next.
Every Holly Jackson Book, Ranked
Kill Joy, the prequel to A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, doesn’t seem to have quite the same chokehold on readers as the rest of the series. Maybe it’s because this one is a novella, or maybe it’s because the stakes are much lower—it’s centered on a murder-mystery party that Pip is wrapped up in, rather than an actual crime—but the consensus among Jackson’s fanbase is that it’s her weakest link. Still, it’s a fun little read if you’ve breezed through the rest of Pip’s series and want to revisit the heroine’s world.
The Reappearance of Rachel Price turns the usual mystery trope on its head. It follows 18-year-old Bel, who's lived her life in the shadow of her mother's disappearance 16 years ago, and is forced to rehash her feelings about the incident when a true crime documentary is in the works about it—all of which is complicated when her mother reappears.
"I don’t want to do the type of thrillers people have done before…I obviously thought of books about people disappearing, and I’m going to do the opposite,” Jackson said in an interview with Stylist. That's crtainly the case here, and it makes for an entertaining read, but unlike A Good Girl’s heroine Pippa "Pip" Fitz-Amobi, Bel isn't for everyone. Some fans have found the complicated narrator's unlikability a bit challenging at times.
Five Survive marked Jackson’s first standalone novel. While it had a respectable showing, spending 55 weeks on The New York Times Best Sellers list for YA hardcovers, some felt that this eerie tale about six young friends who wind up stranded in the woods with a sniper on their tails got a bit stagnant midway through. With its confined setting and intensity, we'd bet this one would make for a killer book-to-movie adaptation!
Inspired by two criminal cases in the U.K., the second novel in Jackson’s Good Girl series sees Pip’s detective skills put to the test once more when her friend’s big brother Jamie goes M.I.A. It also offers closure for fans of the first book, as Pip navigates Max Hastings's trial. The verdict? Wholly enjoyable—almost as much so as Jackson’s debut.
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder may be Jackson’s most well-known work (no doubt in large part to its popular Netflix adaptation), but as great as it is, it’s not even the very best of her bunch. Inspired by “small parts of a whole load of true crime cases,” the book's heroine is a senior named Pip, who turns a local cold-case murder into a school project—and somehow manages to solve the case. Though it spent more than 100 weeks on the NYT Best Sellers list, Jackson has not one, but two novels to her name that fans hold in even higher regard.
Not Quite Dead Yet stands out among Jackson’s catalog in more ways than one. For starters, the 2025 hit was her very first adult novel. Following Jet, a woman who has just a few days left to live after suffering a catastrophic head injury in an unprovoked attack (and an unrelenting desire to find out who did it), it’s also No. 1 in Jackson’s heart, even if fans have another favorite. “I think it’s the best thing I’ve written yet,” she told PEOPLE. “I am sure my existing readers will feel right at home in Not Quite Dead Yet, with all my signature thrills and unhinged twists."
Who said a sequel can’t be as good as the original? Not Jackson, who really outdid herself with the finale of Pip’s murder mystery series. Widely cited by fans as their favorite of the bunch, Jackson went deep for her research with this one, joking to Radio Times, “I was quite surprised I wasn’t arrested in the middle of the night for the types of things I was Googling." The result? A Goodreads Choice Award nomination for Readers' Favorite Young Adult Fiction, plus a truly haunting conclusion to the mystery of who’s been stalking Pip that will linger in your mind long after you've finished reading it.
How to read Holly Jackson's books in order:
There are several different ways to approach Holly Jackson’s novels. If you want to dive straight into the young adult series that made the author famous, you’ll want to start with A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, followed by its sequels, Good Girl, Bad Blood and As Good As Dead, and its prequel novella, Kill Joy.
Five Survive, The Reappearance of Rachel Price, and Not Quite Dead Yet can be read in any order, since they’re all standalone novels.
If you prefer to read your books in the order that Jackson wrote them, however, you’ll start with the same first two books, but switch up the order of Kill Joy, which was released in February 2021, and As Good As Dead, the final book in the Good Girl’s Guide series, which was released in August 2021.
You can see Jackson's full chronological list below:
- A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (2019)
- Good Girl, Bad Blood (2020)
- Kill Joy (2021)
- As Good As Dead (2021)
- Five Survive (2022)
- The Reappearance of Rachel Price (2024)
- Not Quite Dead Yet (2025)
Zain Iqbal and Emma Myers bring Ravi and Pip to life in Netflix's adaptation of A Good Girl's Build to Murder.
Which of Holly Jackson books are being adapted into TV shows or movies?
So far, two of Holly Jackson’s books—A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder and Good Girl, Bad Blood—have been adapted for the small screen. The first season of the series debuted on Netflix and BBC Three in 2024, and season 2 will premiere on May 27, 2026.
While Poppy Cogan adapted the novel for the screen for season 1, Jackson told Variety that she had a lot of input into the final product. “I was very heavily involved in the show,” she said. “I was doing script notes throughout. I was basically…working 24/7 on the show.”
According to the author, the work came naturally. “I like to joke that I’m a screenwriter trapped in the body of a novelist,” she once told the New York Times. “I’m very visual. I need to be able to run the entire story, kind of like a movie in my head, before I put it down on paper.”
As such, she had opinions on the series, which she said was originally “far too different” from the book. She told Variety, "I just made it very clear at that point that if they weren’t going to adapt the book as an adaptation, I could take it elsewhere."
The author added, "If I hadn’t offered my sage advice and guidance and butted in, the show wouldn’t look the way it is today."
Season 2 debuts on Netflix on May 27, 2026.
Season 2, which adapts the sophomore novel, Good Girl, Bad Blood, sees Jackson even more involved. This time around, she has a co-writing credit with Cogan. "I am BEYOND thrilled that we can continue Pip’s story and, this time, I’m writing on the show!" she said in a statement to Netflix's Tudum.
She expounded upon her role to Radio Times, saying, "I’ve always wanted to write for the screen as well as books, and with season 2, this is my take on what the show should be. I’m confident fans will love it—I’m really proud of it."
We'll have to wait and see if Book 3, As Good As Dead, or even the prequel, makes it to the screen. We certainly hope we'll see more of Pip's story play out; after all, the material is there!
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