Double Lives cover art

Double Lives

 Preview

Get 30 days of Standard free

£5.99/mo after trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options

Double Lives

By: Kate McCaffrey
Narrated by: Zoe Trilsbach, Cam Ralph, Felicity Jurd
Try for £0.00

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £11.63

Buy Now for £11.63

LIMITED TIME OFFER

£0.99/mo for 3 months - terms apply. Offer ends 31 August 2026.
Truth is like a lens we apply to everything we see, it is malleable and transformative, we can bend it, mould it, shape it, vanish it. We do this to present the versions of ourselves we want the world to see, and to hide the versions we can't bear to reveal.

Newly returned to Western Australia, journalist Amy Rhinehart pitches a crime podcast to increase her radio station's ratings. Her idea: to use the listeners of the show as its co-creators, with live-time calls and suggestion boards. The case: Jonah Scott, charged and imprisoned for life for the murder of his girlfriend, transgender woman Casey Williams.
Jonah went to great lengths to hide the body - but when arrested, confessed immediately and pleaded guilty, negating the need for a trial. Amy believes there is something darker at the heart of this case and sets about finding the truth, investigating a world of drugs, sex, gender identity and religious cults.
Threaded through the main narrative, the podcast transcripts represent a story-within-a-story, exploring the characters of Jonah and Casey and the relationship between them, interwoven with Amy's investigation into the cult run by Jonah's family and its potential involvement in Casey's murder.©2022 Kate McCaffrey (P)2022 W. F. Howes Ltd Crime Crime Fiction Family Life Genre Fiction Women's Fiction Fiction
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
All stars
Most relevant
This book was unusual. It focused a lot on interviews and “radio” clips. I’m glad there were multiple narrators, I think it was necessary when there were so many characters involved. It was also interesting in that the story is pretty much laid out for you early on, and there isn’t much change in the overall story for a large chunk of the book barring a few points, but the details kept it from feeling slow or boring. It’s also a short book, I think it works best being slightly shorter than average but it could have been a bit longer than it is. It would have been nice to learn more about the characters involved in order to connect with them more. I also would have enjoyed learning more about the, er, “group” at the centre of the story.

The topic of gender identity is a complicated one and I don’t think there’s ever a way to handle it that will appeal to everyone, even everyone on the same side. It’s bound to be divisive. But I felt it was handled well. There’s a lot of ignorance from characters in the book, sometimes malicious and sometimes not. It would have been nice to have had another major character who was more well informed to balance the others out. Maybe even an LGBTQ+ character. But there IS a lot of ignorance and bigotry in the real world, so although some of the comments from otherwise “good” characters were slightly grating, the overall tone wasn’t unrealistic.

This book gets very heavy in parts, especially right near the end. The end was done well and I felt like it cut off at a good place, but I did find myself teary and wanting a hug afterwards! I read a lot of heavy books but that ending was still an uncomfortable (but good!) listen.

It won’t be for everyone for several reasons but I’d recommend it. It’s a solid 4.5* from me, rounded up to 5 :-) narration was fine, no strong opinions either way but it was all okay and I’d have no problem listening to these narrators again.

Good

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.