Someone is Always Lying

HIS AND HERS
Alice Feeney
Flatiron Books, MacMillan Audio
Narrated by Richard Armitage and Stephanie Racine
July 28, 2020


There are two sides to every story: yours and mine, ours and theirs, His & Hers. Which means someone is always lying.


I borrowed the above description from the publisher because it is the perfect encapsulation of this fantastic read. Anna Andrews has worked her way up the BBC hierarchy and has occupied the noon newsreader desk for two years. The previous newsreader has been on maternity leave for two years, and Anna has put her possible return out of her mind. All that changes when she does return, and Anna is relegated to lowly correspondent again. Anna jumps at a news story, because she needs to get her career on track, and she doesn't want to face the humiliation. A woman has been killed in the small village of Blackdown, but no one at the BBC knows that it is Anna's home village, a place that she fled at 16-years-old. DCI Jack Harper left London a year earlier to work in Blackdown, a place where nothing ever happens. Both Jack and Anna have connections to the victim that run deep and are longstanding.

The whole notion of the unreliable narrator is one that I enjoy but has been somewhat overdone in recent years. Not so in His and Hers, as told in Anna's and Jack's voices, with the killer's voice as well. It is brilliantly plotted and kept me guessing at every turn. I was always wrong when I narrowed down who I thought the killer was. I don't usually care for multiple narrators on audiobooks, but I don't see how it could be done as well without three voices. I am a big fan of Richard Armitage's narrations, and Stephanie Racine equals him.

I mentally subtracted 1/2 star for an incident of animal cruelty that I thought was not necessary, but that is something I can't tolerate. So I added the 1/2 star back, but I believe a sensitive reader should be aware of it. Also, if it's bedtime and you are nearly at the end of the novel, you might as well keep on reading! I couldn't get it out of my head.

Thanks so much to NetGalley and Flatiron Books for a free audiobook copy. The opinions are my own.

RATING-5 Stars