Not Quite Dead Yet by Holly Jackson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Jet is a 27-year-old woman still living at home after a failed law school attempt. She’s attacked from behind on Halloween with a hammer, but somehow survives. Only she suffers a bone fracture at the base of her skull which will almost certainly result in a fatal aneurysm. She has a week to live and is determined to find her “killer” although, as the title says, she’s not quite dead yet. She and her best friend from childhood, Billy, set out to do so. Billy is devoted to some unnamed woman he has loved since forever. Of course Jet is the only person too dense to figure out who that is. It’s an original plot setup. The family dynamics are very complicated. Jet has an older brother who is a rather angry sort and dealing with a father who doesn’t value him as he should. Their sister Emily was the rock star of the family, but died as an 11-year-old when her hair got caught in the pool drain. Billy’s mother took off and abandoned her family some years earlier. Everyone is blaming everyone else for these things. All these play into the final plot resolution. I couldn’t get excited about it, but the book was interesting enough to keep me reading to the end. Perhaps it qualifies as a beach read.