Introduction

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author known for her “superb pacing, twisted characters, and captivating prose” (BuzzFeed), Lisa Jewell returns with a scintillating new psychological thriller about a woman who finds herself the subject of her own popular true crime podcast.

Celebrating her forty-fifth birthday at her local pub, popular podcaster Alix Summer crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie, it turns out, is also celebrating her forty-fifth birthday. They are, in fact, birthday twins.

A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix’s children’s school. Josie has been listening to Alix’s podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for her series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life.

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.

But, as quickly as she arrived, Josie disappears. Only then does Alix discover that Josie has left a terrible and terrifying legacy in her wake, and that Alix has become the subject of her own true crime podcast, with her life and her family’s lives under mortal threat.

Who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?

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Discussion Questions

From the publisher:

1. Consider how the book’s title influenced your perception of events and characters. What elements were you suspicious of from the start because of the title?

2. What about a shared birthday might make you feel bonded to someone? Would you feel a sense of connection and intrigue the way Josie and Alix do? Why do you think Josie imbues this relatively ordinary coincidence with so much importance and meaning?

3. In what ways are we encouraged to see Josie in a sympathetic light in the early chapters? How does Lisa Jewell’s characterization lead us to think of Josie as just a little quirky or lonely --- and ultimately harmless?

4. When researching Alix online, we learn that Josie has social media accounts but never posts anything: “She’s a consummate lurker. She never posts, she never comments, she never likes. She just looks” (page 21). How does this play out in larger ways in Josie’s life?

5. As Alix learns increasingly dark details about Josie’s life, she is disturbed but doesn’t intervene, nor does she stop the podcast interviews. Do you think Alix should have done something? What do you think the outcome would have been?

6. Josie ponders her life and choices throughout the novel, at one point wondering how she might leave her family and live elsewhere. She thinks to herself, “Alix is the answer to everything, somehow” (page 135). Why does Josie think Alix will change her life? How do you think she envisions a change at this point in the novel?

7. What was your initial reaction to the scene in which Josie screams at and slaps Walter? After knowing the ending, how do you now understand their dynamics?

8. When Josie and Walter come for dinner at Alix and Nathan’s, it becomes clear that Josie hasn’t told Walter about the podcast. Alix thinks to herself that it’s a “classic Josie maneuver, like buying a Pomchi without checking that it really was a Pomchi...a sort of blundering, thoughtless, aimless approach to life. A ‘do the thing and worry about it later’ approach” (page 159). Do you agree with Alix’s characterization of Josie? Or do you think Josie is secretly more calculating?

9. In what ways does class influence the book’s events? How do the two families’ different social classes factor into the plot?

10. What details from Erin and Roxy’s stories about their childhoods and more recent events shocked you the most? Which of Josie’s lies did you assume were true, and why?

11. Toward the end of the novel, we get more perspectives on Josie as a character and the truth of what she did --- from her children, her mother, Katelyn, and others. With these increased points of view, how do you now see Josie?

12. In the very last scene, Josie is on a bus contemplating the past. She is convinced herself that the way she remembers things is what really happened. Do you think we are supposed to believe her, or is she deluding herself?

13. What clues did you pick up on throughout the first half of the novel that made you think not all was as it seemed in Josie’s life? Were your predictions accurate?

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