None of This Is True

None of This Is True

Author	Lisa Jewell
Genre	Thriller
Publication date	2023
Pages	380
ISBN	1982179007

None of This is True is a 2023 thriller written by British author Lisa Jewell.

The book follows the story of Alix Summer, a popular podcaster, and Josie Fair, a woman with a painful and shadowed history who wants her story told.

Premise

Josie Fair and Alix Summer share more than a birthday. They're the same age, they were born in the same hospital on the same day, and now, at the age of forty-five, they share a curiosity about how their lives might have turned out differently.

Since she was a teenager, Josie has been controlled by a husband nearly thirty years her senior. After meeting Alix by chance on their shared birthday, she decides there are parts of her story that must be told. Alix, meanwhile, has hit a creative roadblock with her popular podcast and, amid frustrations with her husband's drinking, decides to take a chance on Josie's tale. The more Alix hears, however, the darker the story becomes, and the closer that darkness comes to her own doorstep.

The story is told through a combination of present-tense prose, interview transcripts, and scenes from a fictional Netflix documentary about the book's events.

Plot

Josie Fair and Alix Summer meet by chance at a local pub where they are both celebrating their forty-fifth birthday. Josie speaks to Alix in the bathroom, introducing herself as Alix's birthday twin, and learn they were both born at the same hospital as well. Josie has been married to her much older husband Walter Fair for nearly all her life, and begins to yearn for something different while watching the social and popular Alix. Alix is a podcast host for a series called All Woman where she interviews women about their success stories, but has grown bored of the series and wants to do something new. The next day, Josie convinces Alix to interview her for Alix's next project, saying she wants to make changes to the life she's been living for several years and wants Alix to document her progress.

The facts of Josie's life quickly become troubling to Alix, but she senses that her interviews with Josie might result in a career-defining story. Josie met her husband, Walter Fair, when she was just thirteen years old and he was forty, then married him at eighteen. Erin, their elder daughter, is now in her twenties and stays at home, refusing to leave her room or eat anything except baby food. Their younger daughter, Roxy, had a violent record in school, ran away at sixteen, and has not been seen since.

Despite Alix's misgivings and Josie's growing attachment to her, Alix continues to interview her for the podcast. She also interviews Josie's mother Pat, who manages the estate she and Josie grew up on. Seeing how narcissistic she is, Alix wonders if this is the cause of Josie's unusual behaviour. Josie compares Walter to Alix's husband, Nathan Summer, who is outwardly loving and charismatic but shows signs of alcoholism and regularly goes on benders. Though offended by the comparison, Alix continues the interviews. Her story becomes even darker, with details about Walter grooming and having sex with Brooke Ripley, one of Roxy's high school friends, and sexually abusing his own daughter Erin.

Alix asks if she can meet Walter, hoping he will agree to contribute to the podcast. Alix and Nathan invite Josie and Walter to dinner at their home, but Nathan gets drunk and does not appear and Josie insults him to Alix. While showing Walter for recording studio, he attempts to warn Alix about Josie's controlling and manipulative behaviour and tendency to misrepresent the truth. Alix dismisses this as him attempted to gaslight her. After she and Walter leave, Josie feels angry and humiliated, believing Alix could have been a better host and disgusted by Nathan's alcoholism. She argues with Walter, threatening to unveil his secrets to Alix. In the early morning of the same day, she appears back at Alix's house with blood on her clothes claiming Walter attacked her prompting her and Erin to flee.

Josie refuses to call the police or her mother for help, insisting she'd feel safest with Alix. Reluctantly, Alix lets Josie stay at her house to recover. As they continue the interviews, however, parts of Josie's stories begin to fall apart. Alix learns that Brooke disappeared around the time Roxy ran away. Josie's presence in Alix's house also frustrates Nathan, who feels judged by Josie. Though Josie attempts to stay longer, she finally agrees to leave after a week due to Alix's sisters coming to stay. Believing that Nathan is having an affair, Josie secretly withdraws large amounts of cash from Erin's bank account, which she earned as a professional gamer, as part of a plan to convince Alix to leave him.

The day after Josie leaves, Nathan disappears. Alix realizes that he was entrapped and abducted by Josie, who thought that Alix deserved a better husband and a clean slate for her life. Desperate to find Nathan, Alix goes to Josie's house, where she discovers Walter's decomposing body and a barely alive Erin trapped in a closet. Roxy, Josie's missing daughter, also appears and tells a new side of the story on Alix's podcast. Roxy reveals that no abuse from Walter ever occurred; in fact Josie was a controlling and abusive mother. Roxy also reveals she and Brooke were in a relationship before she disappeared and that Josie was jealous of her because of how much Roxy liked her. Pat also contributes to the podcast, revealing that Josie sabotaged any relationship she had until she started dating Walter, who Josie secretly convinced to be with her instead. She denies that Walter groomed Josie like she claimed and corroborates Walter and Roxy's claims of Josie being manipulative and controlling.

After a nationwide manhunt, Josie is tracked down to a holiday park in Ambleside, where Nathan's body is discovered in a lake in front of a lodge where Josie kept him prisoner. Josie is not caught and sends Alix a voice message insisting that killing Nathan with an overdose of sedative had been an accident and she had been planning to only hold him prisoner for a few days to help her see how much better her life would be without him. She begs Alix to tell the world she's a good person before going on the run. Brooke's body is later discovered in the boot of a Morris Minor kept in a garage behind Walter and Josie's flat. After recovering, Erin claims that Josie murdered Brooke in a fit of rage after blaming her for Roxy running away.

A heartbroken Alix uses the hours of audio interviews at her disposal to create the podcast series during the COVID-19 pandemic, earning money for her family after Nathan's death and attempting to break through Josie's psychopathy. She eventually sells the rights to the podcast to a US production company to have it turned into a Netflix documentary titled "Hi, I'm Your Birthday Twin!". In her final episode, Alix expresses her frustration at Josie having not been caught and denounces her as an evil person and nothing more than a basic bitch. While on the run, Josie sends a final letter to Alix, berating her for turning her truth into a true crime documentary and insisting all the awful things people have said about her are lies.

Sixteen months later, Josie is sitting on a bus and overhears a conversation about the podcast and remembers the night Brooke died. Josie's recollection is that Roxy killed Brooke in a violent outburst and that she and Walter covered up the death in order to protect her. When Josie threatened to reveal this to Alix it caused Walter to have a fatal heart attack. She insists to herself that this is what really happened and that she is a good person.

Characters

• Josie Fair — The wife of Walter Fair, whom she married when she was eighteen, and the mother of Erin and Roxy Fair.
• Alix Summer — A popular podcast host, and the wife of Nathan Summer.
• Walter Fair — The husband of Josie Fair, whom he married when he was forty three.
• Nathan Summer — The husband of Alix Summer, and an alcoholic.
• Erin Fair — The older daughter of Walter and Josie Fair.
• Roxy Fair — The younger daughter of Walter and Josie Fair
• Brooke Ripley — A high-school friend of Roxy's.
• Maxine and Zoe - Alix's sisters.
• Eliza Summer - The older daughter of Alix and Nathan Summer.
• Leon Summer - The younger son of Alix and Nathan Summer.

Reception

The book received largely positive reviews for its pace and twists, though many reviewers noted the darkness of the book's plot and themes. A review from Publishers Weekly stated that fans of Jewell's work "will be satisfied by this pitch-black outing and its shocking climax, but readers with a lower tolerance for nastiness should turn elsewhere." Likewise, Kirkus Reviews noted that the book was "hard to read but hard to look away from." A review of the audiobook by The Guardian describes the book as "deftly plotted" and "gripping."

The novel holds a rating of 4.09/5 stars on Goodreads, with more than 950,000 reviews.