When A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder hit shelves in 2019, it didn’t just do well — it won the British Book Awards’ Children’s Book of the Year, got translated into around 40 languages, and turned a debut novelist into a #1 New York Times bestselling name almost overnight. Six years and seven books later, Holly Jackson has built one of the most reliably twisty bibliographies in YA and adult crime fiction, and the Netflix adaptation of her breakout trilogy has only widened the audience hunting for where to start.
That’s where this guide comes in. Below, you’ll find the full rundown of Holly Jackson books in order, spoiler-conscious summaries of each one, the themes running through her work, and honest advice on sequencing — including the one title that trips readers up. If you came here after finishing the show, stick around: we’ll point you toward our adaptation coverage too.
The Holly Jackson Books in Order
Here’s the short version: for almost everything Jackson has written, publication order and chronological order are the same thing — with one exception. Her A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder trilogy plus its prequel novella, Kill Joy, is the only spot where the two orders genuinely diverge, and it trips up more readers than you’d expect. We’ll flag exactly how to handle it below. Everything else — her three standalone thrillers — can simply be read in the order they came out.
1. A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (2019)
- Summary: Five years ago, Andie Bell was murdered in the small town of Little Kilton, and her boyfriend Sal Singh was named the killer before he died by apparent suicide. Everyone has moved on. Everyone except Pip Fitz-Amobi, a straight-A senior who picks the case for her capstone school project and quickly decides the official story doesn’t add up. As Pip starts interviewing witnesses and digging through old files, she pulls Sal’s younger brother, Ravi, into the investigation with her — and discovers that Little Kilton is hiding far more than one closed case.
- Key Themes: small-town secrets, the unreliability of “official” narratives, justice vs. the law, obsession, grief
- Notable Elements: Told through a mix of prose, transcripts, and Pip’s own project notes — the format that would become Jackson’s signature. Introduces Pip and Ravi, the emotional core of the whole trilogy.
2. Good Girl, Bad Blood (2020)
- Summary: Pip swore she was done playing detective. Then her friend Connor’s older brother, Jamie, goes missing — and the police, still stinging from how badly Pip made them look in book one, refuse to take it seriously. Pip agrees to look into it one more time, this time recording the whole thing as a true-crime podcast. What starts as a favor for a friend spirals into something far darker, tangled up with a wealthy, well-connected family and a young woman who vanished years earlier.
- Key Themes: privilege and power, the ethics of true crime as entertainment, escalating personal risk, loyalty
- Notable Elements: Shifts format again, this time incorporating podcast transcripts. Pip becomes noticeably more hardened and morally compromised — the character work that makes book three land.
3. As Good as Dead (2021)
- Summary: Months after wrapping her podcast, Pip is unraveling — plagued by insomnia, panic attacks, and the sense that Little Kilton isn’t done with her. Then someone starts stalking her, leaving anonymous threats that suggest they know exactly what she did to close her last case. As the threats escalate, Pip realizes the danger isn’t hypothetical anymore, and the choices she makes to protect herself and the people she loves take the trilogy somewhere far darker — and morally murkier — than the first two books ever went.
- Key Themes: trauma and its aftermath, vigilante justice, how far is too far, consequences catching up
- Notable Elements: The trilogy’s most divisive book — Pip’s decisions here split readers hard, and it’s the one entry where going in unspoiled genuinely matters. This is the finale; read the first two before you touch it.
4. Kill Joy (2021)
- Summary: Before any of it — before Andie Bell’s case, before the podcast, before the stalker — there was a murder mystery party. Pip’s friend Connor throws a 1920s-themed game night, casting everyone as suspects in the fictional death of “Reginald Remy.” Pip, never one to let a puzzle go unsolved, gets pulled into playing detective for real stakes disguised as a game, foreshadowing exactly the kind of person she’s about to become.
- Key Themes: the making of an amateur detective, friendship, the thin line between game and obsession
- Notable Elements: A short, fun prequel novella released for World Book Day. Chronologically it happens before book one, but it was written for readers who already know and love Pip — reading it first genuinely blunts its charm.
5. Five Survive (2022)
- Summary: Jackson’s first standalone thriller strands six high schoolers in an RV on a spring-break road trip gone catastrophically wrong. When the vehicle “breaks down” in the middle of nowhere, they realize it wasn’t an accident — someone outside is shooting out the tires, and they won’t stop until whichever friend is hiding a deadly secret comes forward. Over eight claustrophobic hours until dawn, buried grudges and hidden histories surface as the group tries to figure out who the target really is.
- Key Themes: trust under pressure, secrets within friend groups, survival, class and resentment
- Notable Elements: No Pip, no Little Kilton — Jackson’s first fully standalone cast. Real-time, single-location structure is a real departure from the trilogy’s sprawling, document-heavy style.
6. The Reappearance of Rachel Price (2024)
- Summary: Bel has spent her whole life defined by an absence: her mother, Rachel, vanished when Bel was two, and two-year-old Bel was the only witness. Sixteen years later, Bel’s family agrees to a true-crime documentary revisiting the case — and then the impossible happens. Rachel Price comes back. Alive. With a story about where she’s been that doesn’t quite add up, Bel has to decide whether to trust the mother she never knew, all while cameras keep rolling and the truth gets harder to separate from performance.
- Key Themes: unreliable memory, the commodification of true crime, identity and abandonment, media manipulation
- Notable Elements: Jackson’s sharpest satire of the true-crime industry itself, with the documentary crew functioning almost as a second, competing investigation running alongside Bel’s own.
7. Not Quite Dead Yet (2025)
- Summary: Jet Mason has seven days to live. A violent attack on Halloween night leaves her with a brain injury that her doctors say will trigger a fatal aneurysm within a week — and Jet, instead of undergoing a risky surgery that might not even work, decides to spend her remaining time doing the one thing she’s never finished: solving her own murder before it happens. With her childhood friend Billy at her side, she starts working through the people who might want her dead — family, an ex, a former best friend — racing a clock only she can hear ticking.
- Key Themes: mortality and unfinished business, family and wealth, identity, found family, the cost of avoidance
- Notable Elements: Jackson’s first novel written for an adult audience — sharper edges, a swearing protagonist, and a premise that’s darker and more emotionally raw than anything in her YA catalog. A Good Morning America Book Club pick.
Publication Order vs. Chronological Order
Here’s the thing about Kill Joy: it’s set roughly two months before the events of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, which technically makes it chronologically first in Pip’s story. But Jackson didn’t write it that way, and neither should you read it that way. It was published after the full trilogy, specifically as a treat for readers who already knew Pip, Ravi, and Little Kilton — and it leans on that familiarity for its emotional payoff.
Read in publication order if… You’re new to the series and want Kill Joy‘s quieter character beats to actually land. This is the order Jackson herself recommends, and it’s the order that avoids spoiling the trilogy’s arc.
Read in chronological order if… You’ve already finished the trilogy and are just curious how the timeline technically fits together — in which case, sure, Kill Joy slots in “before” book one. Just don’t start there.
Why Read the Holly Jackson Books in Order?
For the AGGGTM trilogy specifically, sequence isn’t optional — it’s the whole engine of the story. Pip doesn’t stay the same person across three books; she gets harder, more secretive, and more willing to cross lines, and that transformation only makes sense if you watch it happen in order. Read As Good as Dead without the first two books and her choices will feel unearned instead of devastating. Each book’s mystery also builds on ongoing relationships (Pip and Ravi, Pip and her family, Pip and the town itself) that carry real weight by book three. Jackson’s standalones don’t have this problem — Five Survive, Rachel Price, and Not Quite Dead Yet can be read in any order relative to each other, and relative to the trilogy — but within the trilogy, reading Holly Jackson books in order isn’t a suggestion, it’s basically required.
Tips for New Readers of Holly Jackson
- Where to start: A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. It’s the entry point Jackson herself intended, and if you only remember one rule from any Holly Jackson books in order guide, make it this one.
- Age range and content notes: The AGGGTM trilogy and Kill Joy are YA (roughly 14+), but don’t let that fool you — there’s discussion of sexual assault, addiction, and suicide, especially in As Good as Dead. Five Survive and Rachel Price skew slightly older YA/crossover. Not Quite Dead Yet is Jackson’s first adult novel, with stronger language and more explicit violence — treat it as adult, not YA.
- Best format: The full-cast audiobooks of the AGGGTM series are genuinely worth seeking out; the podcast-transcript sections in Good Girl, Bad Blood land especially well with multiple narrators voicing different characters.
- Companion material: Kill Joy is the only true companion piece. There’s no separate spin-off universe (yet) — everything else Jackson has written is a standalone.
- Pacing advice: The trilogy reads fast, but give yourself a short breather before As Good as Dead. It’s a tonal gear-shift, and going in with some emotional runway helps.
Fun Facts About Holly Jackson
- Jackson wrote her first (self-described “poor”) attempt at a novel at age fifteen, long before A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder became her debut.
- The AGGGTM trilogy has sold millions of copies worldwide and been translated into roughly 40 languages.
- A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder won the British Book Awards’ Children’s Book of the Year in 2020 — a rare feat for a debut.
- Five Survive, The Reappearance of Rachel Price, and Not Quite Dead Yet have all been instant #1 New York Times bestsellers, proving Jackson’s appeal extends well beyond the trilogy that made her famous.
- The Netflix/BBC adaptation of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder became a global hit after its 2024 premiere, and Jackson herself joined the writing team for season two — a level of creative control most authors never get.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What order should I read the Holly Jackson books in? Start with A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, then Good Girl, Bad Blood, then As Good as Dead, and save the prequel novella Kill Joy for last. Her three standalones — Five Survive, The Reappearance of Rachel Price, and Not Quite Dead Yet — can be read whenever you like.
Do I need to read Kill Joy? It’s not essential, but if you loved the trilogy, it’s a quick, satisfying bonus that deepens Pip’s origin as a detective. Just read it after the main three books, not before.
Is A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder appropriate for younger teens? It’s marketed 14+, and while there’s no graphic content in book one specifically, the series as a whole deals with murder, sexual assault, and trauma — parents of younger or more sensitive readers should know that going in.
Are Holly Jackson’s standalone books connected to the trilogy? No. Five Survive, The Reappearance of Rachel Price, and Not Quite Dead Yet are entirely separate stories with new characters and settings — no crossover with Pip or Little Kilton.
Is Not Quite Dead Yet a good starting point if I’ve never read Holly Jackson? It works as a standalone, but it’s also her only adult novel, so it’s tonally different from the YA books that made her famous. If you want the “classic” Jackson experience first, start with A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder instead.
Conclusion
However you come at it, getting the Holly Jackson books in order right makes a real difference — especially for the AGGGTM trilogy, where character growth and buried secrets only pay off if you read them the way they were meant to be read. Start with Pip’s story, save Kill Joy for dessert, and pick up the standalones whenever a good stranded-with-a-killer premise calls to you. Got a favorite in the lineup, or a hot take on how As Good as Dead ends? Drop it in the comments and share this guide with a fellow mystery addict who needs the order sorted out.
For More: Holly Jackson on Wikipedia
Happy sleuthing — and watch your back in Little Kilton.
