None of This Is True Book Review
Publisher: ATRIA BOOKS, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
What you can expect
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This book contains several potential triggers or sensitive content elements that readers should be aware of, including:
Psychological Manipulation & Gaslighting – A central theme of the novel is psychological manipulation, particularly from one character towards another. This could be unsettling for readers who have experienced or are sensitive to manipulation and gaslighting.
Mental Health Issues – The book explores themes related to mental health, including anxiety, depression, and trauma, which could be triggering for those with similar experiences.
Violence – While not overtly graphic, there are some violent situations depicted in the book that could be distressing for certain readers.
Death & Loss – There are references to death and grief, which may be difficult for readers who are processing loss or trauma related to the death of a loved one.
Manipulative Relationships – The book features complex and sometimes toxic relationships, which may be difficult for readers who have been in emotionally abusive or unhealthy relationships.
It's always a good idea for readers to approach this type of psychological thriller with caution if they are sensitive to these themes.
Why you can trust my review of None of This Is True
Preferences in books are widely subjective, but I tried to come up with a methodology for rating thriller books that focuses on the elements of the genre. My rating and review are based on how well None of This Is True incorporates all of those elements. While I can't promise complete objectivity, you can trust that my rating and review are not completely biased.
Summary of None of This Is True
Alix Summer is a podcaster, a wife, and a mother. On her forty-fifth birthday, she meets her birthday twin while both are celebrating at a local pub. The woman calls herself Josie Fair. Days later, Alix runs into Josie while picking up her children from school. Josie tells Alix that she could be an interesting podcast subject as she’s on the verge of great life changes. Alix takes her on as a subject and while she finds Josie a bit weird, she forges forward. She begins to discover some secrets that Josie’s been keeping, but not before Josie has infiltrated Alix’s life. Suddenly, Josie disappears, leaving horrifying truths for Alix to uncover. This leaves Alix with the realization that she and her family's lives are in trouble and that she has now become the subject of her very own podcast.
Judging the book by its cover
I’ve actually had None of This Is True on my to-be-read list for quite some time and finally decided to give it a read. My expectations for this book to actually thrill me are pretty low though I’m intrigued to see how the storyline of the podcaster becoming the subject of her own podcast turns out.
My take on None of This Is True
I had a hard time classifying this book. It’s a thriller, for sure, but it’s also so much more than that. The twists and turns were subtle. Rather than being jaw dropping, they were eye-popping. After being introduced to the characters and learning a bit about their back story, I felt a steady hum of suspense. Some of the revelations were less shocking and more disheartening to have the thing you suspected be confirmed. Conversely, other revelations were absolutely shocking when they turned out to not be the truth. Here’s where I think the author sophisticatedly wove the title into the book: it was a bit of a mind bender trying to decipher which parts were actually true! This is what ultimately led me to classify None of This Is True as a psychological thriller.
The book opens up mysteriously with an odd exchange between two characters who remain nameless. Then, it’s like we’re given an early peek at a script for a documentary. This initially confused me as I thought this was supposed to be a podcast not a documentary (or a podumentary as it’s jokingly referred to in the introduction), but this bonus form of narration ends up coming together nicely.
We’re then introduced to Alix Summer and Josie Fair as they kick off the one-off podcast about Josie. But then we’re taken back in time to the day that Alix and Josie met: on their birthday. At this point, Josie seems unassuming: just a birthday girl out celebrating with her husband at a hip, new spot in the neighborhood. But then she fixates on Alix and goes out of her way to run into her in the bathroom. After this, Josie’s fixation turns into obsession.
Maybe the summary of the book was a dead giveaway as it signaled that “Alix finds her unsettling”, but I found Josie to be creepy almost from the start. Observing your surroundings and the people around you is normal, but fixating on someone the way that Josie was fixating on Alix seems to cross a line. This may have also biased my perception of Alix in the beginning. I found Alix to be one of those women who are able to draw you into their circle of friends and be absolutely sincere about it. While I found this to be endearing in the beginning, I later found it to be naive and did the equivalent of screaming at the TV (but the book version) when she was allowing Josie to infiltrate her life.
This infiltration into Alix’s life was so stealthy. Josie read Alix like a book and knew exactly what strings to pull to creep her way into not only Alix’s professional life through the podcast, but into Alix’s personal life by pulling on her heartstrings. Josie was a master manipulator and extremely narcissistic, which is how she was able to stealthily infiltrate Alix’s life. What I didn’t fully understand at first was Josie’s goal. At first I thought it was an obsession with Alix to the point that Josie wanted Alix’s life, but that wasn’t really it. Then I thought about Josie’s boldness to state with confidence that her “story is extraordinary and it deserves to be heard.” (page 41) and it hit me that her goal was to be validated and be the center of attention. Her narcissistic desire to shine and literally be the subject of a podcast that she knew would be disseminated to a wide audience bolstered her forward. Her attachment to Alix stemmed from a belief that she and Alix were one-in-the-same: special women who would shine bright if they weren’t tied down to deadbeat husbands. However, Josie’s version of their lives couldn’t have been more different than Alix’s outlook of her own life.
What I found interesting about how this story was told was the two narration formats: the script of the podumentary and a third person (seemingly objective) narration. The script was a compilation of people’s points of view of Josie and the topic of the podumentary. The narration was a deeper look into what was going on while it was happening. Psychological thrillers typically have an unreliable narrator and third person narration is typically objective because it’s omniscient and outside of the actual events of the story (if you think about they’re side, they’re side, and the truth, third person narration is often the truth). The narration from the script of the podumentary is almost expected to have unreliable aspects since this is literally people giving their account of the story. However, the third person narration is expected to be that omniscient, objective voice and that wasn’t exactly the case in this book. We do get the omniscient point of view, but I don’t think we get the objective point of view and I thought this was brilliant because I ended the book not actually knowing what was true and what was delusion.
Speaking of the ending… everything that Josie did was somehow simultaneously revealed in slow motion and all at once. This may have been just my take on the ending as I didn’t want what I already knew to be true revealed and yet I needed the confirmation that it was all true. The most brilliant part of the ending of this book was the lack of confidence that anything that was told was actually true.
Who should read this book?
Any adult who enjoys a good book should read None of This Is True. When I shared that this was the book I was reading, I kept being told just how good it was from all sorts of people. So unless depictions of domestic violence and child abuse are a trigger in any way, I think a wide range of people would enjoy reading this book.