Book Title: None Of This Is True
Author: Lisa Jewell
Genre: Thriller
Page Count: 366
Started/Ended Date: April 6 – April 9
Total Reading Time: 5 hours 13 minutes

Lisa Jewell returns with a scintillating new psychological thriller about a woman who finds herself the subject of her own popular true crime podcast.

Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summers crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins.

A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realise that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home.

But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.

Who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?

This was a quick read for me. After finishing The Secret History while on a trip, I picked up None Of This Is True from the airport. By the time my flight landed, I was about halfway done with it. It was an easier read, but I was also hooked right from the start.

The story was great and I loved the way that it was written. The book is interspersed with snippets from a “script” of a Netflix documentary covering the case. I’ve never read a book like that and I thought it was a really clever way to introduce a character in the story, and then have that character speak for themselves through the “script”.

The title being what it is and Josie’s character being as sketchy as she is, I knew that most of the tale she was spinning was just that: a tale. However, I did not see the twist at the end coming. I was so used to all of Josie’s lies being spun in order to make herself look better, that I wasn’t expecting a lie to protect someone else.

This book will stick with me in a way that I wasn’t really expecting. There is a part where Alix is grieving the loss of her husband and is thinking of all the things she misses about him, including the things that used to annoy her. This part of the book has been coming to mind whenever I find crumbs on the counter or when my boyfriend is on his phone while we’re watching a show and then asks me who a main character is. It has made me more grateful for everything in my relationship, even the annoying things, because I know I would miss them if I didn’t have them.

What did you think of this book? Let me know in the comments!