When two women who share a birthday meet, a journalist becomes the subject of her own true-crime mystery. On their 45th birthdays, Josie Fair and Alix Summer meet at a pub and discover they were born not only on the same day, but in the same hospital. Alix is a successful journalist, and Josie convinces Alix that her story is worth telling: Josie met her husband when she was 13 and he was 40. "I can see that maybe I was being used, that maybe I was even being groomed?" she confesses to Alix. "But that feeling of being powerful, right at the start, when I was still in control. I miss that sometimes. I really do. And what I'd like, more than anything, is to get it back." From this premise Alix creates a Netflix series, Hi! I'm Your Birthday Twin! which investigates Josie's life as she reconciles what happened to her as a teen and seeks a new path. With the story unfinished, the narrative unfolds in the present tense, with prose that jingles like song lyrics: "He turns to see if the girl is behind him, and sees her wishy-washy, wavy-wavy, in double vision through the glass windows of the hotel." Alix is both intrigued and repulsed by Josie, but she initially gives her the benefit of the doubt. After all, Alix's husband, Nathan, has a drinking problem, and Alix knows what it's like to be reluctant to leave a bad situation. But Josie seems more interested in being part of Alix's seemingly glamorous life than she is in fixing her own, and when three people end up dead and Alix's life is turned upside down, the evidence points to Josie--and turns the TV series into a murder mystery. Transcripts from Alix's interviews alternate with the narrative, offering increasingly varied perspectives on Josie's story as told by her neighbors, friends, and family members. With so many versions of events, the ending shatters, leaving readers to decide whose is the truth. It's hard to read but hard to look away from. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

In this edgy thriller from bestseller Jewell (The Family Remains), meek housewife Josie Fair and true crime podcaster Alix Summers meet by chance in a pub where both are celebrating their 45th birthdays. Immediately obsessed with her more successful counterpart, Josie engineers several "chance" meetings with Alix--including one outside her children's school--in order to forge a friendship. Instead of feeling threatened, Alix decides to feature Josie on a podcast about the lives of ordinary women. Before long, though, Josie divulges that beneath her modest middle-class home life lie instances of pedophilia, child abuse, and even murder. But are any of Josie's stories true? As Alix digs deeper, she begins to question her new friend's motives for meeting her in the first place, and through a series of reversals, comes to fear she's been set up in a twisted game of cat and mouse. Jewell devotees who love the author's signature twisted characters and acidic cultural commentary--here focused on the travails of internet celebrity--will be satisfied by this pitch-black outing and its shocking climax, but readers with a lower tolerance for nastiness should turn elsewhere. Gillian Flynn and Paula Hawkins fans, this one's for you. Agent: Deborah Schneider, Gelfman Schneider. (Aug.)

On the heels of first-rate thrillers, The Night She Disappeared (2021) and The Family Remains (2022), Jewell's newest could be her best yet. Alix Summer is a podcaster looking for a new subject. One evening she meets a woman named Josie in her local pub. Improbably, they are both celebrating their forty-fifth birthdays. Several days later they meet again at the school where Alix's children are students, and Josie suggests herself as an ideal subject for Alix's podcast: a woman who shares her birthday and whose life, Josie says, is full of fascinating material. Alix agrees, though once she begins to see what sort of person Josie really is, she develops minor misgivings that turn into serious doubts and then terrifying suspicions. Jewell is great at creating characters with ambiguous motivations whose position on the line between good and evil continues to shift as the story progresses, and both features are on prime display here. A terrific novel from a consistently satisfying writer.