About the Book:
There are two sides to every story: yours and mine, ours and theirs, His & Hers. Which means someone is always lying.
Anna Andrews finally has what she wants. Almost. She’s worked hard to become the main TV presenter of the BBC’s lunchtime news, putting work before friends, family, and her now ex-husband. So, when someone threatens to take her dream job away, she’ll do almost anything to keep it.
When asked to cover a murder in Blackdown—the sleepy countryside village where she grew up—Anna is reluctant to go. But when the victim turns out to be one of her childhood friends, she can’t leave. It soon becomes clear that Anna isn’t just covering the story, she’s at the heart of it.
DCI Jack Harper left London for a reason, but never thought he’d end up working in a place like Blackdown. When the body of a young woman is discovered, Jack decides not to tell anyone that he knew the victim, until he begins to realise he is a suspect in his own murder investigation.
One of them knows more than they are letting on. Someone isn’t telling the truth. Alternating between Anna’s and Jack’s points of view, His & Hers is a fast-paced, complex, and dark puzzle that will keep listeners guessing until the very end.
My Review:
Excellent thriller, highly recommend the audio book with the wonderful Richard Armitage! My favorite Alice Feeney book to date.
“Sometimes the right thing to do is wrong, but that’s just life.”
This clever and twisty thriller is told from both “his” perspective, which is Jack Harper, a detective in the town of Blackdown where a murder has just occurred, as well as “hers”, his former wife Anna Andrews. Anna is BBC news reader who is slowly revealed to have many complicated ties to the victim. She has just been demoted back to reporter and is sent to cover the story. Not only does her elderly mother still live in Blackdown, but Jack also happens to be her former husband.
Anna’s mother seems to be exhibiting signs of dementia but it has been Jack who has been caring for her in Anna’s absence. Jack and Anna have a tortured and complicated history, and when more of Anna’s old acquaintances turn up dead, she must face her past demons. Will she be next? Is Jack somehow complicit in the murders? There seem to be lots of potential suspects.
The author cleverly switches the characters’ versions of the truth, and surprised me until the very end. Both Anna and Jack have their secrets and I constantly changed my opinion of who the culprit might be. I was very wrong! Anna does not trust Jack, yet he has been caring for her mother. Jack thinks Anna abandoned her mother for her glamorous BBC job, but she has her own reasons for not rerunning home. All of this plus lots of twists and turns made it so I did not know who to believe! Everyone seemed to have a dark side, even when they were trying to do the right thing in the present.
There are many very colorful characters in this book and I think the audio book with the multiple narrators is a fabulous way to listen to this fast-paced thriller. The ending was a complete and total surprise! This book has lots of very dark themes, so be warned if you do not like dark psychological thrillers. All in all, this was Alice Feeney’s best book so far and perfect for fans of twisted suspense stories.
“Stars cannot shine without darkness.”