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A review by banaamelia
None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
This book did what it came to do. It’s a thriller through and through. It was unsettling and left me on edge and uneasy. It’s not (in my opinion) a page turner in the way that The Housemaid was for me, but a page turner in the sense that I just wanted to finish it. At times, it dragged - especially at the beginning where I felt the setup went on for so long and I kept thinking “okay we get it, you both hate your lives and your husbands, now what?”. But overall it wasn’t a bad book.
At the beginning, the structure confused me but when I understood it, I eventually really enjoyed it. Lisa Jewell was brilliant at writing this story exactly like a netflix true crime documentary - in fact it reminded me of one I recently watched. She made each of the characters feel extremely real, as if we all know someone like them. A person like Nathan, Pat, Alix and even the Fairs. They were written authentically and it made it all the more real and disturbing.
The title was both a spoiler and wasn’t, because we all knew Josie wasn’t the little victim she made out to be and we all knew there was more sinister things taking place but the ending does a good job at making you flit back and forth at the possibility that maybe they weren’t all lies and perhaps they were all lying about something.
What got me was, as bad as Josie was, there’s not nearly enough blame placed on Pat and Walter. Pat never saw Josie as a child and maybe if she did, Josie wouldn’t have become what she was. So much blame was placed on Josie and as if she was so smart and manipulative to have seduced Walter - a grown man who was also married with children and already having an affair with Pat before he started another with her underage daughter. Like hello???? And of course Josie is to be blamed for what she became later in life but I’m not buying the cock and bull story that Walter was overpowered by Josie throughout their marriage until finally he succumbed to old age weakness.
Nathan, the children and Alix all were the victims in this harrowing story. Because of Jewell’s realistic portrayal of the characters, I genuinely felt pangs of sadness for the kids and for Alix for losing such an important person who like a lot of people, had their demons but wasn’t a bad person and didn’t deserve the end he got.
None of This is True only gets 3.25 stars for me because like I said, the title was a spoiler so the “reveal” wasn’t shocking to me. A good thriller to me is one where I’m almost on the trail of the plot twist because of the clever crumbs left by the author but she still hasn’t revealed enough that the twist is a true shock. But it was still a well written book, chilling and unsettling like a thriller should be with excellent, realistic characters.
At the beginning, the structure confused me but when I understood it, I eventually really enjoyed it. Lisa Jewell was brilliant at writing this story exactly like a netflix true crime documentary - in fact it reminded me of one I recently watched. She made each of the characters feel extremely real, as if we all know someone like them. A person like Nathan, Pat, Alix and even the Fairs. They were written authentically and it made it all the more real and disturbing.
The title was both a spoiler and wasn’t, because we all knew Josie wasn’t the little victim she made out to be and we all knew there was more sinister things taking place but the ending does a good job at making you flit back and forth at the possibility that maybe they weren’t all lies and perhaps they were all lying about something.
What got me was, as bad as Josie was, there’s not nearly enough blame placed on Pat and Walter. Pat never saw Josie as a child and maybe if she did, Josie wouldn’t have become what she was. So much blame was placed on Josie and as if she was so smart and manipulative to have seduced Walter - a grown man who was also married with children and already having an affair with Pat before he started another with her underage daughter. Like hello???? And of course Josie is to be blamed for what she became later in life but I’m not buying the cock and bull story that Walter was overpowered by Josie throughout their marriage until finally he succumbed to old age weakness.
Nathan, the children and Alix all were the victims in this harrowing story. Because of Jewell’s realistic portrayal of the characters, I genuinely felt pangs of sadness for the kids and for Alix for losing such an important person who like a lot of people, had their demons but wasn’t a bad person and didn’t deserve the end he got.
None of This is True only gets 3.25 stars for me because like I said, the title was a spoiler so the “reveal” wasn’t shocking to me. A good thriller to me is one where I’m almost on the trail of the plot twist because of the clever crumbs left by the author but she still hasn’t revealed enough that the twist is a true shock. But it was still a well written book, chilling and unsettling like a thriller should be with excellent, realistic characters.