Audiobook Review: A Twisted Tale

None Of This Is True by Lisa Jewell

Read By Kristin Atherton and Ayesha Antoine and cast

Summary from Goodreads:

Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summers crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins.

A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

Josie’s life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can’t quite resist the temptation to keep making the podcast. Slowly she starts to realise that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it, Josie has inveigled her way into Alix’s life—and into her home.

But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.

Who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?

Confession:

First off, this was an excellent audiobook. I loved the whole feel of it, from the two main narrators to the nine others who handled the other small parts. It just gave a sense of authenticity to the whole story, which is partly a podcast within a documentary within a narrative. This was also quite the story with two main characters that were so believable yet totally unreliable, and at times I wasn’t sure who was the reliable one.

Kristine Atherton and Ayesha Antoine both do an excellent job bringing the two main characters of Alix and Josie to life. I’m not sure who did which character, but they both sounded believable and the emotions and attitudes of both women were very distinct which made it easy to tell them apart. Especially with Josie, who sounded so vulnerable and naive right from the start. The narrator played on those and really had me believing that Josie was the victim in all of this, even when I started to suspect that she was not a reliable narrator, I just wanted to give her a hug. The rest of the cast also do a marvelous job. They played the various other characters that are interviewed years later for a documentary about the podcast. I really liked how they added in background noises and music to make it an immersive experience. I’m not sure this story would have worked so well as an audiobook if they hadn’t done it the way that they did.

The story itself is one of those mind blowing psychological thrillers that starts off somewhat normal, but the creepiness just keeps simmering in the background until it reaches that full on raging boil that will keep you glued to the story until the end. What starts off as an innocent chance encounter between two women, becomes an obsession for one of them and a chance to escape her life for the other. Plus once you think you know the truth about Josie’s life, you learn something new from another character and you start to doubt the truth of either story. Even at the end I wasn’t sure what the whole truth of Josie’s life was, only what she had done in the present. The ending is a bit on the open ended side, but in a good way. You are left feeling unsettled and unsure of the truth and I think that was the point of it.

If you enjoy audiobooks, this needs to be on your must listen list. I am assuming because of the high rating on Goodreads that people enjoyed reading it as well. At this point though this will definitely be on the top of my favorites for the year. This was my first book by this author, but I don’t think it will be the last.