Call me basic, but I love me a good psychological thriller. Trying to guess what’s going to happen, the truth behind the misdirection, the twists, figuring out whether a narrator is reliable or not… They’re just fun. Lisa Jewell is a prolific writer, with over 20 published works. I’ve read a few of her books and enjoyed every one, including this latest. None of This Is True is fun, a gripping story about a podcaster who finds herself in the middle of her own true-crime podcast, and the desperate search for the truth among the lies.
Alix is out with friends celebrating her 45th birthday when she meets Josie, who introduces herself as her “birthday twin”. They were both born on the same day and even the same hospital. It’s a fun coincidence, but not one that Alix spends a lot of time thinking about. Until she bumps into Josie a few days later near her kids’ school, and Josie says that Alix might be interested in doing a podcast about her. Previously Alix has interviewed women who have already undergone massive change and challenges. Josie says that she is about to be changing her whole life, and wouldn’t it be interesting to follow along? Alix, who has been searching for a new project since her previous podcast ended, decides to give it a go. But soon Josie has wormed her way into Alix’s life & home, and things aren’t adding up. Then Josie disappears. And then the bodies are discovered. And Alix finds herself at the center of a missing persons case, a cold case disappearance, and the constant question of who the hell was Josie anyway? The battered wife? The grooming victim? Or the manipulative narcissist trying to control everyone around her?
None of This Is True keeps you guessing all the way to the end. The format is fun; interspersed through the story are flash forwards, almost, clips from the Netflix true crime documentary about Josie and Alix. So from the beginning you know something has gone terribly wrong, and you’re just trying to figure out how all these people are connected to it, and what actually happened. Even the very end is up for debate, as Josie is the very definition of an unreliable narrator. What was the truth? What was a lie? Alix, the reader, and even Josie may never know.