Publication Date August 8, 2023
Over the past several years, I have generally read and enjoyed Lisa Jewell’s books including I Found You (2017), Watching You (2018), The Family Upstairs (2019), and Invisible Girl (2020) o I was happy to receive a copy of sNone Of This Is True from Atria Books and NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Still in a slow spot in my pandemic reading frenzy, I was hoping for one of those books…you know, the ones where if you are reading and someone interrupts, it is REALLY annoying, no matter how much you love that person? Yeah, one of those. Over the years, my rating of Jewell’s books dropped, with a 5-star in 2017, 4 in 2018, only 3 stars for 2019’s The Family Upstairs, then 4 for Invisible Girl. I was definitely hoping the latest book would rekindle my Jewell appreciation!
I’m a big fan of the “domestic thriller” genre, and spend a fair amount of time listening to podcasts, so a book featuring a podcaster as one of the main characters sounded intriguing. Josie Fair is out for dinner on her forty-fifth birthday, when she sees and meets popular podcaster Alix Summer. Josie is a mess, totally insecure, and she feels that “…everything, literally everything about her is wrong and that she’s running out of time to make herself right.” Although Alix seems like one of those women who gets everything right, her marriage is less than perfect. Looking at her husband Nathan, “…she is struck by the sheer blandness of him, the impenetrable wall of nothingness between his physical being and the rest of the world.”
Alix and Josie are birthday twins, born in the same hospital on the same day. Josie approaches Alix with an idea to make a podcast about the huge changes she is planning in her life. Alix finds Josie unsettling, but she can’t quite resist the temptation to make the podcast. In a story that draws the reader in with increasing creepiness and tension, Josie’s dark past and secrets both old and new just keep coming.
In recent years, there have been several novels about podcasts and podcasters, and none of them really grabbed me and kept me reading all night. UNTIL NOW. I could NOT stop reading this. Deliciously unsettling and well-written with interesting characters, it was a solid five star read, and I am grateful to Atria and NetGalley for providing a copy in exchange for this honest review.