From the Bookshelf of 2025 Reading Challenge…

None of This Is True

Lisa Jewell

Start date: October 1, 2024

Finish date: October 31, 2024

Discussion: August 2025 Buddy Reads

Why we're reading this: Featured Buddy Read for October 2024
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What Members Thought

Feb 14, 2023 Michelle rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: netgalley

Alix Summer is a successful podcaster which features women that have overcome hardships in their life. It is also her 45th birthday and decides to celebrate it with her husband Nathan in a nearby pub. They also have two children.
Josie Fair and her husband Walter are also celebrating her 45th birthday. Not their usual scene but Josie wanted to go somewhere different. Josie comes from a dysfunctional family. Her husband is at least twenty years older than her. She has two grown up daughters which ...more

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Apr 30, 2024 Nadine rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. 2.5 stars.

So much of this book is great, but Lisa Jewell commits an unforgivable sin by victim-blaming Josie.

I think, unquestionably, Pat was simply unwilling to see that her own behaviour played an enormous part in why Josie was the way she was. She was a mother who resented her child from the moment she was born, and it showed. Josie was never going to be well-adjusted after that. Alix doesn’t just decide Pat is shit based on what Josie tells her; she gleans all on her own that Pat is a raving 2.5 stars.

So much of this book is great, but Lisa Jewell commits an unforgivable sin by victim-blaming Josie.

I think, unquestionably, Pat was simply unwilling to see that her own behaviour played an enormous part in why Josie was the way she was. She was a mother who resented her child from the moment she was born, and it showed. Josie was never going to be well-adjusted after that. Alix doesn’t just decide Pat is shit based on what Josie tells her; she gleans all on her own that Pat is a raving narcissist.

Further… It’s not that unusual for pubescent children to have “crushes” on adults. But the point of it is that they are children and they have no way of understanding what it means if the adult reciprocates. It’s not much different than a teenage girl crushing on a movie star; they might like them, even fantasise about them, but if the movie star initiated a sexual relationship with them, the movie star would be a fucking criminal, because children cannot consent. Period. Walter was no angel, and it’s also not unheard of for paedophiles to date women who have children around the same age as their sexual preference. Walter was grooming Josie from day 1, and it is only Pat’s own hubris and her need to continue to demonise her daughter that would suggest otherwise.

As to whether Josie and Walrer really did (view spoiler)!, I would think yes, they did, based on the argument they had. Roxy was (view spoiler)

It is also woeful that Alix slips into a revisionist history of her marriage to view Nathan as barely flawed.

…it feels kind of like the publisher demanded some softening of Walter towards the end so the readers wouldn’t feel so repulsed by (view spoiler), but it doesn’t work. It just feels like forgiving Roman Polanski because it had been ages and people like some of his films. It’s still bullshit, still predatory behaviour, and no fucking way. ...more

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