His & Hers
by Alice Feeney
Blurb:
There are two sides to every story: yours and mine, ours and theirs, His & Hers. Which means someone is always lying.When a woman is murdered in Blackdown, a quintessentially British village, newsreader Anna Andrews is reluctant to cover the case. Detective Jack Harper is suspicious of her involvement, until he becomes a suspect in his own murder investigation. Someone isn’t telling the truth, and some secrets are worth killing to keep.
My Reaction:
This novel kept me guessing right until the end! I developed a theory, changed it, then changed it again. The final reveal took me back to one of my earliest suspicions, but hey, the author did a good job of luring me away from it! You just can't be sure what's really going on, because there are too many equally good possible solutions.
On the downside, there are some coincidences that are honestly too big to swallow, and most of these characters are fairly repugnant in one way or another—but I can't deny that I enjoyed reading most of the book. (It always feels weird to say you "enjoyed" a book of this sort! It's pretty dark in spots, not to mention enraging.)
I'll be keeping this author in mind for future reads.
Random Thoughts:
- There's an odd mix of UK and US English here... My guess is that whoever was responsible for editing the book for the American edition missed a few things. We have American "candy bars", "chips" that are clearly the American version (as opposed to "crisps"), yet there are "biscuits" that really ought to be "cookies" in US English. There are other examples of this strange blending of terms, but those are the only ones I bothered noting.
- Based on this and Daisy Darker, this author has a weakness for deep / meaningful / clever comments. Here's one that didn't quite land for me: "Lives are like light bulbs; they’re not as hard to change as people think." Only... Do people think changing light bulbs is difficult? Maybe the ones that you can't reach without a ladder...
These last two are a bit spoilery (I guess), so here's your spoiler warning, if you're worried about it...
- "Jack accused me of a few bad things when we were married, and a few more when we weren’t, but never murder. It makes me wonder whether he always had a negative view of me, even when we were together." Sorry, but that just made me burst out laughing! He'd never accused her of murder? Well, I should hope not!
- I'm not buying that the teenage craft-queen character would have known how to prepare fur. I mean, you have to do something to the skin, right? Tan them? You don't just skin an animal, dry out the pelt, and use it as a fur, do you? (Well, maybe it works for the short-term. I could be wrong here.) That whole part of the story felt really odd to me. I can't picture that character being all excited about skinning dead pets...
