Not Quite Dead Yet

The idea of the novel came to Jackson while she was writing The Reappearance of Rachel Price.^[4] She stated that doing brain research for the novel was the first time she had to consult an expert.

The novel follows Jet Mason, a twenty-seven-year-old woman from Woodstock, Vermont. On Halloween night, she is attacked from behind and left for dead. She wakes up thirty-six hours later in a hospital with a skull so severely fractured that she is left with the option to either undergo an immediate surgery with a high fatality rate or die of an aneurysm in a week. She declines the surgery, and decides to spend her final week alive finding her attacker.

The novel won a Goodreads Choice Award in the Readers' Favorite Mystery & Thriller category.^[3] It was Good Morning America's book club pick for August.^[5] It reached the number one position on the New York Times Hardcover Fiction Best Sellers List.^[6]

Shelf Awareness praised it for having the same "propulsive plotting" as Jackson's young adult novels.^[7] In a review for the New York Times, Sarah Lyall called it "surprisingly suspenseful and compelling" despite its "bonkers premise".^[8] In a review for the Washington Post, E.A. Aymar praised the sarcastic voice of the novel's protagonist as the book's biggest draw.^[9] However, he stated that the extent of the protagonist's investment in solving her own murder strains credulity at times, and noted that some readers may find her nihilism and constant quips exasperating.