This Story Might Save Your Life: A Novel
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"Both a riveting mystery and a love story, This Story Might Save Your Life is one of the best thrillers I’ve read this year." —Amy Tintera, bestselling author of Listen for the Lie
“A heart-pounding thriller and a heart-melting romance, this is the most compelling novel I’ve read in years.” —Annabel Monaghan, New York Times bestselling author of It’s a Love Story
Best friends Benny and Joy like to say they’ve been saving each other’s lives since the moment they met. Until the day Joy disappears and Benny is suspected of murder . . .
Benny Abbott and Joy Moore host one of the most beloved podcasts in the world. Each week, they delight listeners with a different “against all odds” survival story, gleefully finding the weird, life-affirming humor in near-death experiences. Since their first episode on Joy’s experience with severe narcolepsy, they’ve been the best friends everyone wants to befriend—and thanks to the meticulous management of Joy’s husband, Xander, they’ve built a lucrative empire.
The problem is, their next survival story may be their own. When Benny arrives at Joy and Xander’s one morning to record, he finds shattered glass and an empty house. The one clue shedding light on the couple’s disappearance is the incomplete, previously unseen first draft of Joy’s memoir. Benny is desperate to find them, even when the police soon zero in on him as their prime suspect.
Millions of devoted listeners think they know the “real” Benny and Joy. But as the hours tick by, and the odds seem increasingly stacked against Joy and Xander being found alive, not even the most devoted fans could guess the terrible secrets their favorite famous BFFs have hidden from the world—and from each other.
“I truly loved reading This Story Might Save Your Life. The pace was terrific, and it was so smart and engrossing. The pages practically turn themselves in this nuanced thriller. I couldn't put it down!”
—Nina Simon, bestselling author of Mother-Daughter Murder Night
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Community Reviews
What Bookclubbers are saying about this book
✨ Summarized by Bookclubs AI
Readers say *This Story Might Save Your Life* offers an engaging, uniquely structured read blending memoir, podcast tidbits, and multiple perspectives...
Yeah. That was me the entire time I was reading this.
The setup is fantastic: Benny and Joy host a wildly popular podcast about people surviving the unsurvivable. They’re charming, funny, and beloved by millions. Then one day Benny shows up to record and finds Joy and her husband missing, glass shattered, and the only clue is a mysterious draft of Joy’s memoir.
Podcast fame. Missing persons. Secrets. Dual POVs. Suspicion.
In practice… it never quite had the spark I was hoping for.
Part of it might be the dual POV structure, which should have built tension but sometimes just made the story feel a little scattered. Part of it might be the characters, who I never fully connected with despite spending a lot of time in their heads.
And part of it might be the emotional affair subplot that the book treats with a surprising amount of… romantic lighting. And listen. I am simply not here for the glamorization of emotional cheating. That whole situation had me side-eyeing the pages a little bit.
The story definitely has moments where the intrigue kicks in, and the concept itself is strong. I kept waiting for the plot to really ignite the way a high-stakes podcast mystery should.
The pacing kept feeling a little… muted? The tension was there in theory, but it never fully grabbed me by the collar and said, “Cancel your evening plans—you’re finishing this tonight.”
A solid concept with plenty of intrigue, but for me it landed more in the ‘interesting idea’ category than the ‘drop everything and read’ one.
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