None of This is True: The new addictive psychological thriller from the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of The Family Upstairs

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Having grown up in such a household, I fully understand people being broken and needing help, but I found it a little insulting to be asked to see the character as a "good person" in light of the damage done. But then it's revealed, amidst a sea of lies, that one story was TRUE: a character involved in grooming a young woman really DID groom said teenager. Walter is retired now, his hair has gone and so has a lot of his hearing and his eyesight, and his midlife peak is somewhere so far back in time and so mired in the white-hot intensity of rearing small children that it’s almost impossible to remember what he was like at her age. A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Lets just pack all the toxicity into one novel shall we - a pedo, a narcissist, an alcoholic and a psycopath!

Lisa Jewell is an incredibly talented storyteller, as she can really take the odd day-to-day occurrences and entwine them with clear and concise character development, giving birth to novels that allow the reader to fully engage with the cast of characters, no matter if they are likable or despicable. It means she’s wrong, that everything, literally everything, about her is wrong and that she’s running out of time to make herself right. On their 45th birthdays, Josie Fair and Alix Summer meet at a pub and discover they were born not only on the same day, but in the same hospital. Although one of the twists that comes later on is easy to work out, the rest of it lies largely in the realm of unpredictability. Rather than a plot device, it felt like an evocative and intriguing way to leave a tiny trail of breadcrumbs throughout the story to keep you dying for more detail, more insight, and that next provocative interview.It took me awhile to sort out my thoughts on this one, as it was not quite what I expected, but that isn’t a bad thing. This started very slow for me, and I wasn’t sure I was going to like it, but once Alix’s podcast about Josie got underway, things started to get juicy! Alix's inability to read the situation, her apparent blindness to several red flags in Josie’s behavior and her insensitivity to some extremely disturbing aspects of Josie’s life was off-putting. If I had my MSW daughter read this she would say Josie's actions throughout the book all stemmed from that unresolved trauma and she wouldn't be wrong.

We learn about Kate’s possibly stalling career and Leo’s plan to apply to acting schools against his mother’s wishes. None of This is True is a psychological thriller about two women who, through a chance encounter, learn they are birthday twins. After all, Alix’s husband, Nathan, has a drinking problem, and Alix knows what it’s like to be reluctant to leave a bad situation. The softly spoken, fifty-something babysitter left half an hour ago and the house is tidy, the dishwasher hums, the cat is pawing its way meaningfully across the long sofa toward Alix, already purring before Alix’s hand has even found her fur. Josie ponders her life and choices throughout the novel, at one point wondering how she might leave her family and live elsewhere.

While not my favorite Lisa Jewell novel, it is an immensely enjoyable read that will be a fantastic book club choice, brimming with copious discussion material. She uses a similar technique here but with a little more subtlety, as a key moment takes place in the plot that opens up several different possibilities, especially when the transcripts from the Netflix documentary are added to the mix. In Alix, her birthday twin, Josie sees an opportunity to change it all by convincing Alix a couple days later to feature her in her next podcast, promising to share her secrets and show listeners her transformation. She glances at Walter, at the fading glory of him, and she wonders how different things would be if she hadn’t met him. but… there’s something about Josie… 🤔…something bizarre…she wears denim… ALL the time… heck her curtains are denim… look 👀.

The revelation sparks a tense and compelling journey into the depths of manipulation and control within the dynamics of their relationship. When Josie proposes she be a guest on Alix's podcast to tell the story of her life, Alix is curious about this strange woman. WARNING ⚠️ There IS an “ICK” factor to this book, and some of the subjects in the podcast include pedophiles, child abuse, and incest.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. Not only is this not the first time Jewell has done this sort of thing, but it took what was SUCH a disturbing and powerful narrative to a sort of icky place.

The supporting cast of narrators that lent their gifted voices to the ‘podcasts’ were phenomenal as well! Alix is a successful journalist, and Josie convinces Alix that her story is worth telling: Josie met her husband when she was 13 and he was 40. As Alix digs deeper into Josie’s life and her secrets trickle out, a much more troubling picture emerges. Alix is a podcaster of some renown, but now her series of podcasts has come to an end and she wants to start something a little different.

I finally got my turn last weekend and got through most of it over two days while I worked on the painting I’m doing for my brother’s Christmas gift (he requested “ugly art”). I felt it was too ambiguous, and was confused what kind of conclusion the reader was supposed to make.