Holly Jackson, the YA author worried her blood-soaked books are too dark for her teen readers

First there was the elbow to my ribs, then the whispered: “Look! Mum!” I was on the train with my 11-year-old daughter Pearl; she had noticed the little girl across the carriage from us was “reading the same, actual book as me!”. The book: Holly Jackson’s YA (Young Adult) phenomenon, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder. The New York Times No 1 bestseller is a crime novel, the plot of which gives a shy schoolgirl permission to ask the adults in her community some tough questions. When we got home, we learnt that the forthcoming BBC series based on the book had just been cast, and would star Emma Myers (who played werewolf Enid in Wednesday, the most popular English language series of all time on Netflix). “Could you maybe interview Holly Jackson so you can get me a signed copy of her new book?” wheedled Pearl. “It’s called Five Survive, I already put it in your Amazon basket...”

Like most mothers of screen addicts, I would walk over hot coals to get my kids reading during the summer holidays. So a few days later, I’ve wangled a Zoom call with a “sleep-deprived and hungry” (yet still lively) Jackson, who is fresh from a long night shoot with the BBC. The 30-year-old novelist is, she tells me, “still buzzing” that her first novel is being turned into primetime telly.

“The book came from such humble beginnings,” she says. “I didn’t get one of those splashy big book deals that’s plastered all over Publishers Weekly. In fact, when I joined a debut authors’ group I found out I’d received the lowest advance – four figures – of any of them.” She shakes her head. A Good Girl’s Guide... was a slow burner with sales and – unlike Pippa, the novel’s teenage detective – Jackson says she’ll “never solve the mystery of why it took off in the way it did. And when my publishers began to suggest the book might top the NYT bestseller list I began catastrophising like a teenager, terrified of disappointing them. Then there was a lot of screaming and jumping around when I got the call. This was all just before Covid.”

Jackson’s timing was good. The pandemic saw a huge jump in YA sales. Print fiction sales in that market have increased by 48.2 per cent since 2018, surging by 24.7 per cent in 2020 and 27.5 per cent in 2021. As of 2022, 35 million print copies of YA fiction books are sold each year. The same period saw an equivalent boom in audiences for the true crime podcasts which Jackson says inspired A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder.

It’s a novel set in a small town in Buckinghamshire – similar to Amersham, where Jackson grew up as the nerdy, messy-haired middle child of a camera operator and a BBC production assistant. Like Jackson, the novel’s heroine is a headstrong, straight-A student. Unlike Jackson, Pippa opts, for her end-of-sixth-form project, to investigate the murder of a former student at the same school five years ago. “I listen to true crime podcasts all the time,” says Jackson, “and I like the way the good ones weave together phone and face-to-face interviews, official reports, old facts and fresh information. I wanted the book to have a similar texture, with documents, interview transcripts and screenshots of text exchanges. It allows the reader to feel more like they’re directly involved in analysing the evidence.”

Jackson notes that, for most kids, negotiating high school social life itself can feel like detective work. “Teenagers are constantly having to sift the rumours from facts, assessing the reliability of witnesses. Did she really cheat on that test? Who kissed who after the school disco? Human curiosity means we’re always spotting patterns and clues, solving mini mysteries.” All teenagers have skeletons in their lockers? “Absolutely. And the feelings are at a thriller pitch of intensity. You do think you might die if anybody finds out your embarrassing secrets.”

YA authors joke they’ll usually break the ice with each other at meetings by discussing how they’ve chosen to kill off their characters’ parents in various books. “Parents do get in the way,” nods Jackson, who grew up – the middle child of three girls – devouring fantasy novels before moving on to “the master” Stephen King. “You want your teens off doing naughty things, without a responsible adult.” But she says that when it came to writing A Good Girl’s Guide..., she “really wanted the heroine to have a relationship with them, but start to keep secrets from them. All teenagers are beginning to build a new life that their mum and dad aren’t part of. But those are still hugely important relationships for teens. In all my books there is a big emphasis on the parental connection. Because yes, teenagers have friends and romantic partners, but the family is still pivotal.”

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Because the heroine of A Good Girl’s Guide... is investigating the presumed murder of another teenage girl by her boyfriend (who subsequently died by suicide), Jackson finds readers often seek her views on the way fiction treats violence against women. Today she tells me, firmly, that she “decided, early on, that I would never put one of those gratuitous ‘violence against women scenes’ on the page. We’ve seen too much of it on TV, these shows that focus on a woman’s pain as torture porn. I will never write a rape scene.” She takes a breath. “There are, obviously, references to sexual assault and murder but I prefer to focus on the gratuitous violence against the fictional men who commit those crimes. To tip the balance. That’s the way forward.”

Jackson also gets a little antsy when I tell her that my 11-year-old daughter (and her friends) are huge fans. “That kind of thing can bring me out in hives,” she admits. “Because these are books that contain adult themes.” Then she backtracks as she concedes she’d binge-watched all her dad’s DVD boxsets of the Kiefer Sutherland series 24 at the same age, before moving on to adult crime novels by Harlan Coben, “And I turned out OK-ish.”

She notes that many of her readers are also adults. “I suspect there are a lot of women in their twenties and thirties, revisiting the high school era. I think they’re craving the stuff they know YA stories deliver. Pacey plots, coming-of-age character development and the often darker themes.” I tell Jackson that I’m in my late forties and I’m still a sucker for all those high school movies. “Yup,” she agrees. “We all like to look back on those halcyon days, don’t we – or more likely the horror of those days.” Then she tells me that the only time she’s ever spotted somebody reading one of her books on a train, “she was in her late fifties, at a guess. And she was reading the second book in the series – Good Girl, Bad Blood – so she must have enjoyed the first one. She did look pissed off when I tried to sneak a photo of her, though, and rightfully so. Oops!”

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By the time Jackson’s third novel – Five Survive – was published last December, her fame was such that the book launched straight in at No 1 in the Nielsen YA Fiction Chart, with the highest week one sales of any YA hardback in 2022. The paperback (which came out last month) is currently in the top 10 children’s/YA chart and has been nominated for the YA Book Prize 2023, with Jackson shortlisted as TikTok Author of the Year in the inaugural TikTok Book Awards. BookTok is certainly responsible for helping spread the word about Jackson’s work. The hashtag was first used during 2020 and now boasts 29.1 billion views, with many big box retailers dedicating whole sections of their stores to the BookTok community.

Five Survive – a copy of which is in my daughter’s sticky hands as I type – is a stand-alone thriller in which a group of teens set out on a road trip across America in a borrowed RV. Jackson tells me she got used to writing about the US while producing American versions of her “Good Girl” books. “I got so used to translating that I now annoy my friends by accidentally using words like ‘sidewalk’ and ‘store’,” she jokes.

“Unlike the ‘Good Girl’ books,” says Jackson, “which are based on cold cases, this is a very hot case and one that gets hotter by the minute.” She says that, ever since that formative sneaky viewing of 24, she’s been “drawn to films where the action occurs in real time. Panic Room. Phone Booth. Films where the tension doesn’t let up.” After establishing it takes the average reader eight hours to read one of her books, Jackson decided to set Five Survive over an eight-hour period.

“Then I needed a space constraint,” she says, “Because I wanted it to feel really claustrophobic. I thought about a ski chalet but then I liked the way the RV gave a little bit of movement, but trapped the kids together – with all their secrets spilling – until the end of the book.” She gave herself a rule that there would be “no time skipping, none of the relaxation you might get with a flashback”. And she’s amused to tell me that this meant her heroine – Red Kenny – has to go to the toilet twice during the story. “Because I get annoyed that nobody ever goes to the loo in a thriller. And that can be good thinking time. She only does number ones, though,” laughs the author. “I didn’t think she’d need a number two in that time and things were horrific enough without a poo on a bus!”

And although Five Survive is a thriller, Jackson believes “it’s a drama at heart. It’s about six kids, talking, in a tight space. It’s really about relationships. Truth. Trust. There’s a lot of dialogue. It almost feels like a play. My 12 Angry Men for teenagers.” The worry, for readers, is that Jackson has enjoyed working on the tense script of Five Survive and her TV adaptation so much that she may not return to written fiction. “I do really want to work in film and TV. I love the pace and the buzz. The collaboration of talking with actors and directors and catering staff is so much fun after all the hours I’ve spent sitting alone at a computer screen,” she admits. “But I think I’ll always be a bit of a nerdy, analytical, wannabe-detective writer at heart.”

‘Five Survive’ is out now in paperback