Joy Moody Is Out of Time

• Author: Kerryn Mayne
• Genre: Mystery
• Publication Date: August 19, 2025
• Publisher: St. Martin’s Press/Macmillan Audio

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Macmillan Audio for providing me ARCs of this book in exchange for an honest review.

From the author of the beloved novel Lenny Marks Gets Away With Murder comes another quirky and irresistible new crime novel

Strange things are happening behind the bright pink facade of Bayside’s premier laundromat, Joyful Suds; home to Joy Moody and her twin daughters.

For much of their lives, Joy has been lying to Cassie and Andie. What started as a colorful tale to explain how the twins came to live with her grew over the years and was always something she meant to set straight. Joy really did think she had more time. Worse still, Joy is struggling to define the truth from the lies.

The girls have long believed they are vital to the future and must stay hidden to stay safe. Joy has told them that their impending 21st birthday is significant; they will step into their roles as daughters of the future revolution and life as they know it will change. Joy was right – everything will change, just not in the way the expected. On Andie and Cassie’s birthday, Joy Moody is found dead and her girls face a world they are not prepared for without their mother. Joy Moody is out of time… in more ways than one.

Since I loved the author’s debut novel, I was hoping for more of the same. Quirky characters dealing with heavy issues but somehow the book manages to feel light anyway, kind of like Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman. And while we kind of get a little of that in this book, it isn’t anything like what I was expecting. Let me explain.

First of all, I mainly listened to this on audiobook as narrated by Annie Maynard. I also had ebook access, but this was one that I just had to keep reading. At times, Australian accents can be a little hard to process with my American ears, and I’ve set aside at least two audiobooks in favor of the ebooks because I struggled with how thick the accents were. Maynard has a clearly identifiable Australian accent but it was a breeze to follow her lovely and musical accent. I did get a little kick out of the words that are pronounced so differently between Australian and American English, but Maynard had me sucked into the story immediately.

We first meet Joy Moody on what turns out to be the last afternoon of her life, when she’s with her twin daughters on the exact moment of their 21st birthday. She’s raised Cassiopeia (Cassie) and Andromeda (Andie) as secluded and protected as possible. They were home-schooled, and work with Joy in her laundromat below their apartment in a Melbourne suburb. The first scene opens with the twins being ready to time travel to 2050 to save the world and finally meet their parents. Obviously, this doesn’t occur, and it becomes clear that maybe Joy hasn’t been honest with Cassie and Andie about more than just the time travel.

The story takes place in four parts: Life in a Laundromat, Death in a Laundromat, Dear Customer, and Under New Management. While each section were all related and in a consecutive fashion (with some flashbacks), there were disjoints between some of the different parts. Cassie and Andie are approaching their 21st birthdays in Part 1, and we see what their life with Joy as their mother is like.

It is without question that Joy loves these girls and is willing to do anything she can to ensure their safety. As for how far she’ll go made me feel as though it was too far. I can understand homeschooling, especially by someone with advanced schooling. But she doesn’t allow them access to the outside world, exactly—they don’t have a television, don’t have cell phones, don’t have a computer, not even a tablet. They can’t talk to strangers (aka make friends) because it could give away their location and put them in danger. So whatever Joy says is what these girls have grown up believing, and they have no idea how unnatural this is for two girls of their age. Joy still controls as much of their lives as she can in the hopes of keeping them safe. 

But for the reader, things become clear that not all is well in Joy Moody’s world. Her lies are finally starting to unravel. She was confident that she would have more time to deal with the fallout of her lies, but that isn’t how things work out at all. The first lie unravels a whole web of lies that Joy has woven around the girls for their entire lives. And in the first part, we get to viscerally feel that love and wonder that Joy has for her daughters, despite the poor decisions that she has made more than once.

Alongside the story of the twins time travel is Joy’s favorite sci-fi series, and it’s clear that Joy heavily borrowed from the books to edit the real background of the girls. Who is their father? Where is he? She completely avoids these questions by telling them that she was tasked with keeping them safe and sending them to 2050 on their 21st birthday to save thew world and be able to meet their real parents. 

Part 2 focuses on Joy’s death, and the shock of having it investigated as a possible murder. This is where the neighbors play a little more of an active role in the story—these three characters, Monty, Linh, and Ellen played pretty significant parts in the story of the Moodys, but there’s only really a lukewarm delve into their characters and I wish I could have seen a more complete picture of these side characters.

The first two parts were more slow-paced, but the switch is flipped in the second half and things move much faster. Andie was always the sister to question more, and she had already started to questions parts of what Joy has told them about their life and history. She has become more friendly with the tattoo artist living next door, Linh, and spending more time with her, eventually ordering a DNA test. Cassie, on the other hand, believes more strongly in the tales Joy has told them. So when the detective investigating Joy’s death has multiple conversations with the twins, it really forces Andie to confront the fact that she was right about Joy not being honest, and Cassie is rocked by the realization that everything she was told was a lie. But this section felt a little more hopeful for them, in that they were starting to accept a new reality that had nothing to do with what they had been told. 

In the last part, these two young women learn about what happened to their mother, Britney. They always knew that Joy wasn’t their biological mother, but knew nothing about who that was. I was heartbroken for these girls when they learn some facts that had been kept from them—who their real parents and where they are, they aren’t heroes of a revolution, but they do have some strongly supportive friends and each other, but also learn how strong they can be on their own. 

Overall, this wasn’t my favorite work from Mayne, but it wasn’t bad. I did want to learn what had happened in the past and where the twins did come from, but the answer wound up feeling a bit over the top to me, and was a bit jarring to learn. The plot threads were all tied up beautifully, which made me happy to see, but I struggled with how unrealistic Joy’s actions felt to me, even after learning about the past version of Joy. I adored the characters of the twins, and appreciated how differently she made them personality-wise because it made it feel a lot more believable (ask anyone who knows twins). Some people were never able to tell them apart, and others knew right away. This one dealt with heavier topics than the previous one, including divorce, infidelity, grief, terminal illness and the choice of who to tell about it, the aftermath of a murder, and addiction, but it didn’t manage to carry over the light tone and easy to empathize with MC. I found myself liking Joy less and less as the book went on, but enjoyed seeing the twins blossom once they were free from Joy’s controlling ways. To sum up, don’t go into this expecting another Lenny Marks, but enjoy it for what it is and you should be okay. I’m not mad about the time I took to read this one, and still plan on reading what Mayne comes out with next before making up my mind. Sophomore books are hard, from what I hear from authors.

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