CJ Skuse Books in Order

CJ Skuse was born in 1980 in Weston-super-Mare, and she grew up in a family that ran pubs and hotels. That mix of seaside small-town life, everyday chatter, and the oddness simmering under ordinary routines feels close to the world of her books. She has said she started writing at 17, which means her career began with years of trying, failing, rewriting, and trying again.

She kept at it for more than a decade. After early rejections, Skuse went back to study, earning first-class degrees in creative writing and writing for young people at Bath Spa University. She also picked up experience in local newspapers and later worked in publishing at Chicken House, which gave her a view of books from both sides of the desk.

That long apprenticeship shows.

Her debut novel, Pretty Bad Things, arrived in 2010 and introduced the kind of characters she still writes so well, bright, bruised, funny people making bad choices for reasons that make emotional sense. Then came Rockoholic, a story about fandom, grief, and an accidental kidnapping, followed by Dead Romantic, which turns teenage longing into a cheeky, creepy spin on Frankenstein. Even when the setup is wild, Skuse keeps the feelings recognisable.

Her YA books kept getting darker and sharper. Monster traps a group of girls at a remote boarding school over Christmas, with a missing brother, a snowstorm, and something nasty on the grounds. The Deviants brings old friends back together in a seaside town where grief, revenge, and old secrets have had years to curdle. Readers who like Skuse usually like the same things in all these books, the pace, the dark humour, and girls who are angry enough to make the story dangerous.

She has never had much interest in writing spotless heroines.

That made her move into adult crime feel like a natural next step. With Sweetpea in 2017, Skuse created Rhiannon Lewis, a bored, bitter young woman whose inner life is far more violent than anyone around her suspects. The book clicked with readers, and Rhiannon's story continued in In Bloom and Dead Head. A television adaptation of Sweetpea arrived in 2024, which brought Skuse's work to a wider audience without changing what makes it hers in the first place, the nasty jokes, the sharp observations, and the sense that rage can be both funny and frightening.

Alongside the novels, Skuse has spent years teaching creative writing at Bath Spa University, working with students at undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctoral level. That part of her career makes sense too. She knows what it is to spend a long time finding your voice, and she has talked about how important it was to trust her instincts rather than chase whatever the market happened to want at the time.

What runs through her work is a taste for outsiders, antiheroines, uneasy friendships, and people who are trying to stay in control when they are anything but. Her books can be very funny, then suddenly cruel, then oddly tender a page later. That balance is a big part of the appeal.

Now, with a body of YA novels, adult thrillers, teaching, and screen adaptation behind her, Skuse looks like one of those writers who built a career the steady way. Book by book, voice first, and with very little interest in behaving nicely on the page.