Josie lets Alix into her life and history through the podcast and Alix, in turn, gradually lets Josie into her life too. The narrative is interspersed with transcripts from Alix's interviews with Josie's neighbors, friends, and family members, revealing so many versions of events that readers will have some trouble deciding where the truth lies. As Josie’s life seems to implode, she goes to Alix’s house and stays, and stays, and stays… created a creepy, cloying, menacing, and claustrophobic atmosphere.

One thing leads to another, and Josie convinces Alix they should make a podcast about Josie’s life, sharing her truth and making some big changes. When Josie starts to tell her about her traumatic life, Alix thinks she already found the distraction she needed. None of This is True is a psychological thriller about two women who, through a chance encounter, learn they are birthday twins. The other woman is Josie Fair, married with her husband two times older than her, mother of 2 daughters in twenties, a teen mother, who is unsatisfied with her life and her unaccomplished dreams. Since then she has written another twenty novels, most recently a number of dark psychological thrillers, including The Girls, Then She Was Gone, The Family Upstairs and The Night She Disappeared.Revolving around a podcast about a seemingly ordinary woman, it becomes a dark insight into a character who is altogether more sinister, and leads to a mystery that keeps hanging on the edge with little idea of how it is going to end. Josie is adamant to involve in Alix’s life, creating coincidences to bump into her around her children’s schoolyard. She has to go back to her husband and her flatbread and let Alix go back to her friends and her party. Imagine if Lisa Jewell had chosen a different narrative structure from this novel and only told it from one point of view. 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.

I adored being inside Josie’s head, and it wasn’t until I got to the very end that I realized that her head was actually broken. Soon they are all seated, and the first bottles of champagne are popped and poured into fourteen glasses held out by fourteen people with tanned arms and gold bracelets and crisp white shirtsleeves and they all bring their glasses together, those at the furthest ends of the table getting to their feet to reach across the table, and they all say, “To Alix! Josie is such a slippery character that she turns elusive, even more so when the story takes a major abrupt turn with the sub-plot about Nathan. Told in a multimedia format, the way it is all laid out is easy to follow even allowing for the curious lack of page breaks, and it also ensures that the plot moves at a reasonably brisk pace. At the same time, themes include pedophilia, alcoholism, and physical and emotional abuse, so it is not a fun read.

Transcripts from Alix’s interviews alternate with the narrative, offering increasingly varied perspectives on Josie’s story as told by her neighbors, friends, and family members. Lots of short, punchy chapters, interspersed with a Netflix documentary and podcast extracts, all make for a very fast-paced read.

Josie tells Alix that she is on the brink of making some very drastic changes and she'd like Alix to document the process. The paths of two women – Alix Summer and Josie Fair – cross when they are out celebrating their birthdays in the same restaurant. Shortly after, they bump into each other again outside of the school that Alix's children currently attend, and Josie's attended years ago. After reading a few pages, you find yourself drawn into riveting psychological thriller with unreliable characters, shocking revelations in podcast meets documentary blending in narration of incidents by hours and dates. So the impetus for using birthday twins as an opening into the novel definitely did not spring from my own experience.

A thrilling thriller, a chilling reminder to pick your friends carefully, and an immersive read that should keep you hooked. Lisa Jewell is on top-form with this pitch-black fever dream of a book - darker, twistier and more compelling than ever. All along I’d been painting Roxy in these tiny splashes of dark back story without every really exploring what a child like that might end up being capable of, especially with a pedophile for a father, a narcissist for a grandmother, and a sociopath for a mother. Alix is convinced by Josie to make her the subject and storyline of her next podcast which reaches out to thousands of women suffering domestic and psychological abuse, and women who enjoy hearing other life stories.