C.J. Skuse
C.J. Skuse has published 11 books across 3 series. The recommended reading order starts with Pretty Bad Things (2011).
C.J. Skuse is a British author who writes young adult novels and adult crime thrillers. Born in 1980 in Weston-super-Mare, England, she holds First Class degrees in Creative Studies in English and Writing for Children, credentials that laid the groundwork for a dual career as both novelist and educator. She made her debut in 2010 with Pretty Bad Things, a young adult novel that launched a body of work spanning two audiences and two registers.
Her young adult titles include Rockoholic, Dead Romantic, Monster, and The Deviants, while her adult fiction centers on crime and suspense. The Sweetpea series and The Alibi Girl brought her voice to readers drawn to darker, more violent territory. Alongside writing, Skuse works as a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, teaching the next generation of storytellers. She has spoken openly about her enthusiasms, which range from Masterchef and gummy bears to murder sites, and her aversions, among them carnivals, hardboiled eggs, and coughing.
Shelf & Shadows
Order of Alibi Books
- TagsromancemysterysuspensethrillerDescriptionThe Alibi Girl is a psychological thriller about a woman who lives entirely through false identities. Joanne Haynes is not her real name, and nothing in her life belongs to her — not the flat, not the cats, not even the hair. She cycles through personas: the romance novelist buying doughnuts at the seafront, the pregnant woman at the dental surgery, the chemo patient in the supermarket. Each one is an alibi, a mask that keeps anyone from discovering who she actually is. Then someone gets too close. The careful distance Joanne has maintained begins to collapse, and the alibis that have protected her start to fail. The question driving the novel is whether she can stay hidden when the system she has built around herself unravels — and what will be exposed if she cannot.Publication dateJanuary 26, 2021Amazon rating4.1/5Print length384LanguageEnglishPublisherHQ
Order of Standalone Novels
- TagscrimeDescriptionPretty Bad Things is a novel about sixteen-year-old twins who rob fast-food restaurants to get on television and find their father. Paisley and Beau Argent made headlines once before: at six, they were the wonder twins, found alive in the woods after three days searching for their dad following their mother's death. A decade later, they live with their money-grabbing grandmother, still with no idea where their father is. Then they find an old letter from him. The twins steal their grandmother's Pontiac and head for Las Vegas, holding up donut shops and drive-throughs along the way. The plan is simple: get their faces back on the news, tell their dad they need him, and wait for the reunion they've wanted since they were six. But their father is an ex-con with a criminal past, and the twins are now wanted themselves. The closer they get to finding him, the less certain it becomes whether the man they've been searching for all these years is the one they actually need.Publication dateJuly 1, 2011Amazon rating4/5Print length256LanguageEnglishPublisherChicken House
- Tagsyoung-adultfantasyDescriptionSixteen-year-old Jody has been obsessed with Jackson Gatlin, frontman of The Regulators, for as long as she can remember. When her best friend Mac scores concert tickets, Jody finds herself front and center at the sold-out show. Then she gets crushed in the moshpit, loses her moon rock, and bodysurfs her way backstage with a concussion. By the next morning, the strung-out rock star is coming down in her garage. She has somehow kidnapped him. By accident. Rockoholic is a 2012 young adult novel about what happens when fantasy collides with a reality neither of them expected. Jackson Gatlin does not want to leave. Jody now has her idol trapped in her garage, high and crashing and refusing to go back to his life. The situation spirals from misunderstanding into something stranger: a rock-star abduction neither of them can explain and neither seems to control. The question at the center is not just how this happened, but who is really holding whom.Publication dateNovember 1, 2012Amazon rating3.6/5Print length368LanguageEnglishPublisherChicken House
- Tags---DescriptionCamille wants to find the perfect boy — an athlete's body and a poet's brain — but after she's mocked at a college party, she decides no boy alive will ever measure up. Dead Romantic, part of the Order of Standalone Novels series, is a 2013 retelling of Frankenstein in which her brilliant but strange best friend Zoe offers a solution: she can create Camille's dream boy from scratch, biology homework taken to a whole new level. Zoe builds him, piece by piece, and he's everything Camille imagined — except for one problem she never considered. A boy assembled in a lab doesn't come with feelings built in. The question that drives the novel forward is whether Camille can make a creature designed to her specifications love her, or whether wanting perfection was the wrong wish all along.Publication dateFebruary 4, 2013Amazon rating3.9/5Print length328LanguageEnglishPublisherThe Chicken House
- TagshorrorDescriptionNash is sixteen and fighting to become Head Girl at Bathory, a prestigious boarding school, when her brother disappears and she finds herself trapped at the school over Christmas with a handful of misfits. Monster is a horror novel set during a blizzard that turns the empty halls into something stranger and more dangerous than Nash anticipated. Legends of the Beast of Bathory — a big cat said to roam the moors outside — begin to feel less like folklore and more like warning. Then the girls' Matron goes missing. Whatever is stalking the school is not the creature from the stories, but something darker, and the snowstorm has cut off any chance of escape. The girls who remain — thrown together by circumstance, not choice — will have to rely on one another if they want to make it through the night. The question is whether they can trust what they see in the hallways, what they hear in the dark, and each other long enough to survive until morning.Publication dateJanuary 1, 2015Amazon rating4.1/5Print length318LanguageEnglishPublisherGARDNERS VI BOOKS AMS006
- TagschildrenDescriptionThe Deviants is a 2016 psychological novel about five childhood friends reunited by revenge. Ella, Max, Corey, Fallon, and Zane were inseparable growing up in a quiet English seaside town, but when Max's older sister is killed, the Fearless Five fall apart. Years later, only Max and Ella remain close — best friends since childhood, a couple since thirteen. Ella is hiding something, though, a reason she cannot take their relationship further. When Corey is bullied, the five come back together to settle scores with everyone who has wronged them. The plan works until the secrets each of them has been keeping begin to surface. Once the truth is out, the question becomes whether their old bond can survive what they have done — and what they have been hiding from each other all along.Publication date2016Amazon rating4.4/5LanguageEnglishPublisherHARPER COLLINS
Order of Sweetpea Books
- TagshorrorDescriptionSweetpea is a psychological thriller about a woman who keeps a kill list and the revenge she is ready to take. Rhiannon looks like the girl next door — settled with her boyfriend and a little dog, working as an editorial assistant, listening to friends plan weddings and babies. She is also a serial killer who has not taken a life in three years. Her childhood was haunted by a famous crime that made her briefly notorious, but that celebrity has faded. Now she is overlooked, demeaned at work, invisible to nearly everyone. And she is making a list. The man at the grocery checkout who mishandles her apples. The driver who cuts her off. The people who have it coming. Rhiannon has started killing again, and this time she feels nothing — no guilt, no bad dreams, only a blissful sleep and a sense of balance she has never known. The question is whether the girl everyone ignores can keep getting away with murder, or whether the fame that once defined her childhood will find her again.Publication dateApril 20, 2017Amazon rating3.9/5Print length480LanguageEnglishPublisherHQ
- Tagsthrillergraphic-novelsDescriptionA serial killer who framed her fiancé for her own murders discovers she is pregnant. In Bloom is a dark comic thriller that follows Rhiannon Lewis, who has gotten away with everything — her cheating fiancé sits in jail for the killing spree she committed, her ex-lover is chopped up and buried, and her kill lists still have names waiting to be crossed off. Then she finds out she is carrying a child. Rhiannon wants to keep killing, but a small voice inside her is trying to make her stop. The choice she faces is stark: motherhood or murder. The novel, part of the Order of Sweetpea Books series, tracks what happens when someone built for violence confronts the one thing that might make her reconsider — and whether the instinct to nurture can override the instinct to kill.Publication dateAugust 1, 2018Amazon rating4.3/5Print length432LanguageEnglishPublisherHARPER COLLINS
- TagsthrillercrimemysteryDescriptionDead Head is a thriller about a serial killer who has confessed to everything and fled the country, only to discover that escape is harder than murder. Rhiannon Lewis, now known to the world as the Sweetpea killer, has boarded a cruise ship bound for a new life. She left behind her murder spree, her notoriety, and Ivy — the baby she gave up so she could keep killing. The cruise should be freedom. Instead Rhiannon is trapped on an oversized floating tin can with families and screaming children who remind her of exactly what she walked away from. Worse, she has lost her taste for blood. The urge that defined her is gone, and she doesn't know who she is without it. The question trailing her across the ocean is whether the change is real or whether the killer inside her is just waiting for the right provocation to surface again — and whether there might be something worth living for beyond the next body.Publication dateFebruary 18, 2021Amazon rating4.5/5Print length480LanguageEnglishPublisherHQ
- Tagsgraphic-novelsDescriptionRhiannon Lewis has gone more than 800 days without killing anyone. Thorn in My Side, a darkly comic thriller in the Order of Sweetpea Books series, follows the woman once known as the Sweetpea Killer as she tries to hold onto the normal life she has built with her fiancé Rafael and his family. The pandemic forced her to keep a low profile, and for the first time she is surrounded by people who love her — or who love the version of herself she has let them see. Wedded bliss is finally within reach. Then Rafael's sister has a run-in with her abusive ex, and Rhiannon rediscovers her taste for revenge. One murder breaks the streak. This time the stakes are different: she has a loving family who believe she is someone else entirely, a wedding on the horizon, and everything to lose. The question is whether a serial killer who has tasted ordinary happiness can walk away from what she is, or whether the urge she thought she had buried will destroy the life she wants more than she wants to stop.Publication dateDecember 28, 2023Amazon rating4.5/5Print length418LanguageEnglishPublisherHQ Digital
- Tagsgraphic-novelsDescriptionRhiannon Lewis, former serial killer turned newly married woman, has her life upended when her husband is shot and the daughter she left behind in the UK falls desperately ill. The Bad Seeds forces her to flee the United States and return home, where recognition means arrest and every street corner holds the risk of her past catching up to her. Nothing waits for her as she expected. The daughter, the danger, the choices piling up in front of her — all of it twists into something she did not prepare for. The authorities are closing in, and Rhiannon is trapped in a hole that deepens with every decision she makes. She needs a way out, and she needs it fast. Help arrives from places and people she never would have predicted. But in a life built on bad choices and bodies left behind, trust is the riskiest gamble of all. The question is whether Rhiannon can dig herself out before the weight of her past buries her for good.Publication dateOctober 24, 2024Amazon rating4.6/5Print length383LanguageEnglishPublisherHQ Digital
Frequently Asked Questions about C.J. Skuse
To read C.J. Skuse's books in order, it is best to approach them by series or as standalones. The Sweetpea series should be read in publication order: Sweetpea (2017), In Bloom (2018), Dead Head (2021), Thorn In My Side (2023), and The Bad Seeds (2024). The Order of Alibi books, with The Alibi Girl (2021), can be read separately. The standalone novels, including Pretty Bad Things (2011), Rockoholic (2012), Dead Romantic (2013), Monster (2015), and The Deviants (2016), can be read in any sequence. Beginning with the first Sweetpea book or one of the earlier standalones is a common entry point.
A good starting point for C.J. Skuse's work is the first book in the Sweetpea series, Sweetpea (2017). This series establishes a distinct tone and narrative style. Alternatively, readers might begin with one of her earlier standalone novels, such as Pretty Bad Things (2011) or Rockoholic (2012), to get a sense of her broader range before diving into the interconnected stories of the Sweetpea books or the Order of Alibi series.
For the Sweetpea series, reading the books in publication order is recommended to fully follow the narrative arc and character development. The standalone novels, Pretty Bad Things (2011), Rockoholic (2012), Dead Romantic (2013), Monster (2015), and The Deviants (2016), do not require a specific order as they are independent stories. The Alibi Girl (2021) is part of its own small series. Reading the Sweetpea books out of order may diminish the impact of their unfolding plot.
C.J. Skuse writes both standalone novels and series. Her standalone novels include Pretty Bad Things (2011), Rockoholic (2012), Dead Romantic (2013), Monster (2015), and The Deviants (2016). She is also known for the Sweetpea series, which consists of multiple interconnected books such as Sweetpea (2017) and In Bloom (2018). The Alibi Girl (2021) is part of a separate series, the Order of Alibi Books. This variety allows readers to engage with her work in different formats.
C.J. Skuse has written a total of thirteen books across her various series and standalone works. This includes five standalone novels: Pretty Bad Things (2011), Rockoholic (2012), Dead Romantic (2013), Monster (2015), and The Deviants (2016). She has also authored the five-book Sweetpea series, starting with Sweetpea (2017) and concluding with The Bad Seeds (2024). Additionally, she has written one book in the Order of Alibi series, The Alibi Girl (2021).
The first book C.J. Skuse wrote was Pretty Bad Things, published in 2011. This novel is part of her collection of standalone works. Following this debut, she released Rockoholic in 2012 and Dead Romantic in 2013, continuing with standalone stories before beginning her longer series. These early books introduced readers to her characteristic style and thematic explorations.
C.J. Skuse's most recent book is The Bad Seeds, published in 2024. This novel is the fifth and final installment in the Sweetpea series. The series began in 2017 with the book Sweetpea, followed by In Bloom (2018), Dead Head (2021), and Thorn In My Side (2023). The Bad Seeds concludes the narrative arc for the characters introduced in the earlier books.
C.J. Skuse primarily writes in the thriller and horror genres, often incorporating dark humor and psychological elements into her stories. Her novels frequently explore themes of obsession, toxic relationships, and the darker aspects of human nature. The Sweetpea series, in particular, is known for its edgy content and intense plotlines. Her standalone novels also tend to lean into suspenseful and often disturbing narratives.
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We verified the reading order for C.J. Skuse's books by cross-referencing official publication dates, ISBN databases, and publisher catalogs.
Last verified: July 2026
Shelf & Shadows. (…). “C.J. Skuse Books in Order.” Retrieved …, from https://www.shelfandshadows.com/authors/c-j-skuse