Review: None Of This Is True by Lisa Jewell

I was excited to see Lisa Jewell’s book, None Of This Is True as a Book of the Month release in August, and for once I got around to reading it shortly after it arrived.

None Of This Is True was a bit slow to capture my attention in the beginning. I actually read the first chapter, then set it aside for about a week before coming back to it. Once I picked it up again, and read a bit more, it really drew me in.

The story is told from the points of view of Alix Summer, a successful podcaster, and Josie Fair, a housewife who shares Alix’s birthday. Some chapters also have transcripts from a Netflix documentary, which I thought made the storytelling interesting.

For a good portion of the book I couldn’t decide if I actually liked any of the characters, or cared what happened to them, but then something happened that made me realize that, yes, I did care, although I’m still not sure any of them were really likeable.

There were some comments  in the book regarding one of the daughters of one of the characters which were kind of unexplained given some later information in the book. I will not spoil anything by saying more. I think if you read it then by the end of the book you’ll know what I’m talking about.

Additionally there have been some comments about making a  victim out of an adult man having a sexual relationship with a young girl. While we don’t see that relationship as it’s happening, we only see it once both characters are much older, it does make a good point. Regardless of how we view the female character of the piece at the time the story takes place, at one time she was a victim. It doesn’t matter what her behaviour was at the time that people perceive as the cause of the inappropriate relationship, she was a child, and he was an adult.

I’m still not sure how I felt about the ending of this book. I think maybe there were a couple of things that left me dissatisfied, but that seems to be the way of a lot of thrillers these days. I’m the type of person who likes to see everything nicely wrapped up at the end and I don’t always get that.

In the end, I thought None of This is True was a very good read, and I would recommend it to anyone who loves thrillers.