Is this why Josie killed both her husband and Alix’s husband? To give them both a clean break? In her twisted mind, she thought she was doing Alix a favor. This book doesn’t have a super-complicated plot, just SO MANY questions at the end. This post will include: Well. To say this one threw ALL of my preconceived notions out of the window COULD be the understatement of the YEAR! Celebrating her 45th 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 45th birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins. Erin recovers and moves in with her sister. Josie is still on the run. She sends Alix a letter claiming that Nathan’s death was a accident.

Alix and Josie bump into each other for the first time in the bathroom of a local pub, coincidentally on the day they were both turning 45. They were birthday twins! Alix has a podcast on women who have overcome hardships in their lives. Josie engineers a meeting with Alix outside her children’s school and asks if they can meet. Have you ever met one of your birthday twins, a person born on exactly the same day as you? I remember being at work one day, taking a woman’s details, and it turned out we were born merely an hour apart, albeit in different parts of the globe. A strange bond, nonetheless. All things said, Jewell did a great job with this and the audio production was top notch. I recommend this to anyone who likes a solid suspenseful psychological thriller/mystery!Lisa Jewell is the queen of neighborhood, domestic thrillers and i love her writing so much. she’s truly an all time fave author and will always remain that way. i was actually DMing with her about this book because she was replying to my IG stories and i just haaaaad to ask her questions about the ending and that just made me love her even more. What becomes of this unwanted house guest? That’s the mystery, and it’s a good one! This started very slow for me, and I wasn’t sure I was going to like it, but once Alix’s podcast about Josie got underway, things started to get juicy! The full-cast audiobook narrators did a wonderful job capturing the personalities at play. Josie’s flat, subdued voicing performed by Nicola Walker added a particular menace to things. She creeped me out! 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 realize 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.

I found myself having this conversation with [a friend], Yasmin, where I embarrassedly told her that I was thinking I’d like to write a novel. She said, ‘I’ve had so many people tell me they want to write a novel. Just do it. Don’t say you’re going to do it; just do it. In fact, write three chapters. If you do that, I’ll take you out for dinner to your favorite restaurant.’ We shook hands, I wrote three chapters, and she took me out to my favorite restaurant. But she also made me send those three chapters out to a load of literary agents, and she made me keep writing by demanding more and more chapters. So, it didn’t just end with the bet. She was there for the full duration of that first novel.”Special thanks to NetGalley and Atria Books for sharing this brilliant novels of digital copy in exchange my honest thoughts. First, if you handed me the first three chapters of a story in a binder, with no title and asked me to guess the author-I could identify her distinctive writing by her often QUIRKY and always well developed characters.

Lisa Jewell is an incredibly talented storyteller, as she can really take the odd day-to-day occurrences and entwine them with clear and concise character development, giving birth to novels that allow the reader to fully engage with the cast of characters, no matter if they are likable or despicable. This book is no different, and the multiple povs really give us insight into the various narrators inner thoughts and feelings while the tension ramps up around them. Josie and Alix couldn’t be more different; they come from different lifestyles and circumstances, and yet… Could they be more similar than originally meets the eye? Q: Were there any plot and character revelations you were especially excited to finally give the reader? I think Walter and Josie were both involved. Josie’s mother says that Walter and Josie are “both as bad as each other.” (I guess I was right about this.) The Hi! I'm Your Birthday Twin podcast has been bought to life! Listen to all 4 episodes and find out more at penguin.co.uk/BirthdayTwin * Jewell's writing is strong and I was thoroughly invested. I could not stand Josie, but that was totally the point. The ending is interesting and really got me thinking. My recommendation is to just go into the reading of this book with an open mind and without any preconceived notions as to what you think is going on, because that will probably change many times throughout.Lots of short, punchy chapters, interspersed with a Netflix documentary and podcast extracts, all make for a very fast-paced read. You know bad shit has happened from the start, maybe reeeaaaaalllly bad shit, but I didn't have a clue what, exactly, had gone down, and I was desperate to find out. Overall, I am not as enthusiastic about this thriller as I had hoped to be. I’m still a fan of Jewell and will gladly read her next thriller. It feels like there are many plot mistakes in this summary – ex, it says Josie is out with her husband Nathan (but he’s Alix’s husband). It says “one night Josie shows up…” but it’s the same night of the dinner party. It also says Josie turned over the key to the police, but it was Alix who did because Josie left the key behind and disappeared.