His & Hers by Alice Feeney

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.

 

Publisher:  Macmillan Audio| Narrators:Richard Armitage, Stephanie Racine | Length: 10 hrs 29 mins |  Genre: Thriller | Source: Purchased | Rating:

 Challenges: Audiobook Challenge

The synopsis on the back opens with: There are two sides to every story: yours and mine, ours and theirs, His & Hers. Which means someone is always lying. Let me tell you right now, everybody is lying. I’m not sure there was an honest action, answer, response in the entire book. It was filled with liars, manipulators, cheaters, and horrible people.

 

We are treated to three POVs throughout the story: Anna’s, Jack’s, and the killer’s (who could be Anna, Jack, or a mystery person) and they are all unreliable. Not only are they hiding things from the public, they are hiding things from each other, and, in a way, themselves. There’s also a lack of trust in the book: Jack and Anna doesn’t trust each other, Jack and his work partner have no trust, and I’m honestly not sure Anna trusts anyone, herself included.

 

While this book is a thriller with a murder—or rather string of murders—at the forefront, this book centers around Jack and Anna—one’s a detective and the other a journalist. They have a messy, complicated history and it goes way back before they were married and divorced. Coming from a small town, everyone in this book is connected in some way that leads back to the two of them.

 

I really struggled with this book. It’s filled with horrible people doing horrible things. Anna and Jack exceled at lying, concealing, and manipulating people; I don’t feel like either had a redeemable quality or even attempted to try to do the right thing. It took me a minute to get into this book because I couldn’t get behind any of the characters—trust me, the secondary characters are iffy as well. Once I realized that this book was going to be chocked full of unlikable characters, I started focusing on the plot itself and became invested in finding answers.

 

The thriller/mystery aspect was okay, I’ve definitely read better plot setups. While this was dark and sordid, bits of it were a little too unbelievable, a little too out there and I had to question why people wouldn’t have caught on to these happenings years before. I also found myself wondering how some of the activity in the book was concealed, especially some of the policing that was covered up. Some of the things would have been tagged in databases yet Jack made them disappear without a trace, which he would have had no ability to control regardless of him being the lead detective.   

 

I knew from the very first time this person entered the story that they were the murderer and I had a feeling why they were doing it and I was right. I would have liked to have seen this be a little more complex in that aspect because I’m sure a lot of readers will be able to spot the who and why from the start. The author did attempt to throw things out there to make the reader lean in one direction or the other but, to me, they didn’t really come off as making the person look guilty but rather proved my theory of who the murdered was and the reasoning behind it.

 

This was not a favorite book of mine—and it was a bit of a rough start—but I was sucked into this one and I think a lot of it had to do with this being an audiobook. The way this book was narrated had me eager to listen and I’m not sure I would have been as eager to pick up the physical book.

 

Richard Armitage was brilliant, as always, he has this edge to his voice and you never really know if he’s the good guy or something sinister, which worked brilliantly for the tone of Jack. This was my first time listening to Stephanie Racine and I thought she was able to bring Anna to life in a way that made her unlikable from the start yet she made her interesting, where you wanted to know more about her story. Then we get to hear the killer, whose voice has been disguised and that’s what really made this book such a good listen.

 

Overall, I decided to give this a 3.5. It’s one of those books that was an okay read that I did find myself interested in but left me with little to recommend it.

 

I didn’t like the characters and the who and why were easy for me to spot yet the book went by surprisingly fast. I didn’t feel like this was a ten-and-a-half hour listen.

 

If you’re on the fence about this one, I think listening to it would be a better experience than actually reading this one.