I will lead off with the caveats that I do not usually like this type of book, and I also found the bells and whistles added to the audiobook largely distracting. With that said, None of This is True is a story of two women with very different lives, and the randomness that brings them into each other’s lives.
Podcaster Alix Summer is out celebrating her 45th birthday when she is approached by Josie Fair, who is also celebrating her own 45th birthday. Casual chitchat reveals that they were also born in the same hospital. It’s just a fun coincidence until Josie runs into Alix again a few days later and, having listened to Alix’s shows, pitches herself as a subject for her next series. Bewilderingly, Alix agrees and begins to interview Josie in her home studio.
Josie’s story, which she reveals to Alix in dribs and drabs with plenty of obfuscation to boot, is not particularly cheerful. She is married to the much older Walter, who she met as a teenager and who is very controlling and abusive. They have two children: Roxy, who had severe anger issues and left home for good at 16 with no contact since, and Erin, a socially-regressed young woman who spends all her time in her room gaming and whom Josie hasn’t physically seen in ages.
Josie begins to worm her way into Alix’s life, disturbing Alix’s husband Nathan, who has developed a drinking problem, and her kids. Alix knows Josie is bad news but feels so bad for her she struggles to enforce boundaries, even as small items start disappearing from her home and Josie’s constant presence becomes unnerving to her.
From there, a series of unsettling events proceeds apace, each more unlikely and absurd than the last. This is Thriller Lit 101, with plausibility the first casualty of the genre’s need to provide ever more elaborate plot twists. Jewell takes a spaghetti-to-the-wall approach, throwing as many trendy issues and possible diagnoses at the reader as she can think of, only to pick her favorite two or three and try to wrestle them into a suitable ending.
Does any of it hold together? Is everything wrapped up in a neat little ball? I sure can’t tell you, I stopped caring long before that point.