His and Hers by Alice Feeney | #20BooksofSummer

Author : Alice Feeney
Title : His and Hers
Pages : 355
Publisher : HQ
Publication date : May 28, 2020

| ABOUT THE BOOK |

If there are two sides to every story, someone is always lying… 

Jack: Three words to describe my wife: Beautiful. Ambitious. Unforgiving.
Anna: I only need one word to describe my husband: Liar.

When a woman is murdered in Blackdown village, newsreader Anna Andrews is reluctant to cover the case. Anna’s ex-husband, DCI Jack Harper, is suspicious of her involvement, until he becomes a suspect in his own murder investigation.

Someone is lying, and some secrets are worth killing to keep.

| MY THOUGHTS |

The book description of His and Hers grabbed my attention from the minute I saw it. Yet, I was also slightly worried. I read and thoroughly enjoyed Alice Feeney’s book, Sometimes I Lie, but her previous one is one of those books where I read about forty pages and put it back on the shelf. So I wasn’t sure what to expect from His and Hers. This could quite frankly have gone either way. And in a way, it did.

The quintessential English village of Blackdown is rocked by the murder of a woman in the woods. Newsreader Anna Andrews would rather be anywhere but in Blackdown, for various reasons that the reader discovers along the way, and is reluctant to cover the case. It doesn’t help that DCI Jack Harper, who is investigating the murder, also happens to be her ex-husband. There are two sides to every story, his and hers. But someone is lying.

Needless to say, the chapters alternate between Anna and Jack. Interspersed throughout, there is an unknown voice as well and it’s up to the reader to figure out who that is. Incidentally, if you love listening to audiobooks, do yourself a favour and give this one a go. Not only does it have the fantastic Richard Armitage, but the chapters from the nameless character are creepily distorted to keep you guessing all the way through. Audiobooks and I have quite a complicated relationship but this one really had me and the only reason I stopped listening is because I’m too impatient for the narrators to finish a sentence when in the same amount of time, I’ve already reached the end of the page. 😂

Anyway, I digress.

His and Hers is delightfully twisty from beginning to end. Maybe just a little bit too twisty. I had an idea in my head of how things would end up, confidently feeling the clues were all there to cement my theory. But I was wrong. And while in hindsight it all works, perfectly even, I was still left to feel somewhat disappointed. Up until that point though, this was an incredibly addictive story, full of secrets and lies, and trying to figure out how reliable the characters were. There was a heck of a lot of second guessing going on in my head and if it hadn’t been for that conviction I had that my theory was bullet-proof, I could quite easily have been swayed back and forth, unable to decide who to believe or trust.

All in all, I did thoroughly enjoy this one. For the longest time, it felt as if Alice Feeney returned to the brilliance of her debut novel. And then, this thing I obviously can’t talk about happened. I’ve been going over and over it in my head, completely overanalysing it as I am known to do and really, it just bothers me. His and Hers ended up being a tense and addictive psychological thriller with unreliable characters but with just that one unconvincing step too far to really satisfy my little bookworm heart.

His and Hers is available to buy!

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20 Books of Summer : 6/20