None of This Is True

Lisa Jewell's slippery psychological thriller follows Alix Summer, a successful podcaster who agrees to make a series about Josie, an unremarkable 'birthday twin' whose life proves anything but ordinary - and who steadily colonizes Alix's own. Jewell tells the story through a canny mix of narrative and after-the-fact transcripts from a true-crime documentary, so the reader always senses catastrophe ahead without knowing its shape.

It is a masterclass in unease, powered by an unreliable voice that is by turns pitiable and chilling, and by the very modern anxiety of letting a stranger inside your life and your feeds. Jewell paces the menace expertly, tightening the screws while keeping her characters human.