What to Read After 'None of This is True'
Loved Lisa Jewell's podcast-centered thriller about a woman who might be a sociopath? These psychological thrillers explore the same dark territory.
Met a stranger at a birthday party? Maybe keep your distance.
In None of This is True, Lisa Jewell masterfully plays with the "toxic stranger" trope. When Alix Summer meets Josie Fair at a birthday party, she thinks she's found a fascinating subject for her podcast. What she actually found was a woman determined to hijack her narrative—and her life.
If you were hooked by the unsettling atmosphere, the unreliable truth, and the slow-burn realization that everyone in the story is hiding a jagged edge, these thrillers are for you. They explore similar territory: the weight of old secrets, the damage of sibling rivalry, and the awful suspicion that the person sitting across from you isn't who they claim to be.
Here are four psychological thrillers that hit the same dark notes.
You Did This
Jamie Millen — Claire Wolfe Thrillers, Book 1
Detective Claire Wolfe is back in her hometown, and she has a secret: she's here to solve her sister Tina's twelve-year-old murder. But as teenage girls matching Tina's description start turning up dead again, Claire finds herself caught between a copycat killer and her own fractured memories of the day her sister died.
Like Jewell's Josie Fair, Millen's characters are rarely what they seem on the surface. You Did This shares that same propulsive sense of a past that refuses to stay buried, and a narrator who is constantly questioning whether she's the hero or the villain of her own story. If the midpoint shifts in None of This is True kept you up at night, the final act here will leave you reeling.
Local Woman Missing
by Mary Kubica
Eleven years ago, Shelby Tebow went missing. Then Meredith Dickey and her daughter Delilah disappeared. Now, Delilah has suddenly returned. Kubica masterfully weaves multiple timelines and perspectives to reveal the rot beneath the surface of a quiet neighborhood, capturing that same "something is very wrong here" energy that made Jewell's novel so addictive.
View on Amazon
Rock Paper Scissors
by Alice Feeney
A weekend retreat to the Scottish Highlands is supposed to save Adam and Amelia's marriage. But someone is lying, someone is watching, and someone is determined to make sure they don't leave. With a narrator who suffers from face blindness and a plot that relies on the fundamental unreliability of memory, Feeney delivers a twisty, claustrophobic experience for fans of high-stakes domestic suspense.
View on Amazon
The It Girl
by Ruth Ware
Ten years after her best friend April was murdered at Oxford, Hannah begins to doubt the conviction of the man she thought was responsible. As she reconnects with her old circle of friends, she realizes that everyone has a reason to keep the past distorted. Like None of This is True, this is a story about the stories we tell ourselves to survive—and what happens when those stories finally fall apart.
View on Amazon