None of This Is True
By Lisa Jewell
- Genre
- Mystery, Crime & Thriller
- Publisher
- Century (Penguin Random House UK)
- Publication year
- 2023
- ISBN
- 9781529195972
When podcaster Alix Summer meets a woman who shares her exact birthday, the encounter becomes the basis for a new documentary series. As Alix's subject inserts herself ever deeper into her life, the boundaries between them blur. Lisa Jewell's psychological thriller unfolds partly through podcast...
Two women meet on their shared birthday, and one of them will not let go. 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. For readers who devour psychological suspense, this is prime, propulsive work - the kind of thriller that vanishes an afternoon and leaves you wary of your next new acquaintance.