Reviews with content warning for Toxic friendship - None of This Is True

Reviews tagging 'Toxic friendship'

None of This Is True by Lisa Jewell

161 reviews

crazybooklady89's review

challenging dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Wow! Every single time you think you have this story sorted out you turn the page and realize you have it all wrong. Even until the very last page, everything continued to change and turn. What a ride!

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dusktreader's review against another edition

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challenging dark sad tense fast-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

Jewell does a good job of creating tension and twists and in that way it’s a well-crafted book. I found it compelling and wanted to keep reading and found some of the ambiguity and questions the book were really interesting to think about, like

who really killed Brooke and why, and who knew what about it. The audio narration and production was really engaging.

I had a lot of trouble with the position the book put me in as a reader where

we are set up to question whether Josie was groomed by an older man and whether it was not his fault after all if she made advances at him. It’s already so disgustingly common for people to doubt and question survivors of abuse, and look for ways that even children must have done something to deserve it, and just write it off. I was so uncomfortable being put in that position.

I think Jewell could have created the same experience for readers of a character who is either trapped and desperate or an evil mastermind or somewhere in between without leaning on common misconceptions about abuse, or by subverting them instead of conforming to them, which I think is a real missed opportunity and could have been a much stronger book.

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vbarker91's review

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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emilymazzara's review

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challenging dark mysterious 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? It's complicated

2.0

This book held such promise but did not live up to the hype for me. While the premise was so intriguing, I found the characters to be kind of flat, even Josie. At around the half way point, everything started to feel really tedious. Nothing much in the story itself was progressing and the promise of more from the small post-events “clips” were only keeping my attention for so long.
The exploration into the lengths people will go to convince themselves what they’ve done is right could have been really interesting, but the lack of even one character we could trust the opinion of made the theme a hard sell for me. I would have loved if Alex pushed more or Josie’s mom let more slip. I needed something to hold onto in the middle of the crazy to ground the reasoning behind it all.
It was when Alex fully admitted to knowing Josie was trying to control her and did JACK ALL about it that the book really went from a 3 star to a 2 star for me. By the end I couldn’t abide her obsession with the podcast not ending crossed with her disregard for the safety of her family.
I’m sad I didn’t like this more.

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youmns's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

Significantly better than I thought it would be at first. Horrifying as a train wreck, equally difficult to look away.

I didn't think I'd enjoy this listen. Boy, was I wrong. The fully-voiced interjections add a lot to the story, adding a layer to the experience. This sort of thing isn't in my wheelhouse - trauma porn, beach read, that sort of thing - but, wow, was it well-written.

Josie starts out totally sympathetic, a pitiful woman who lost so much of her life trapped in an early marriage to a much older man. The more you hear about her life, the less sympathetic she is. Alix starts out the golden goddess, like so many influencers out there, putting out a certain image on her socials, but her life is shown to be just as normal as (or more dramatic than) the average person. None of the principal characters is who they appear to be. The title is pretty spot-on.

Just a note:

They're not actually birthday twins. Alix makes a comment about how they met in a pub on the eve of their birthday, meaning her own was on Sunday while it's established right away that Josie's is on Saturday.

Surprised nobody thought to check, frankly.

I don't think I'll seek out anything else by Lisa Jewell, but I wouldn't necessarily turn my nose up if a friend recommended it. What a ride.

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