His & Hers

What's inside (8 sections)

1. Anna on air and off the rails
2. Jack with a case he did not ask for
3. His chapters, hers chapters
4. A town where everyone watches
5. The turns at the end
6. Where it sags for me
7. Key takeaways
8. FAQ

I came to this one after a run of slow literary novels and I wanted something I could read fast on the couch with tea going cold beside me. Published in 2020 by Flatiron Books, His and Hers sounded like a clean setup with two voices and one murder. I had read Alice Feeney before and I knew she liked short chapters and last page shocks. I did not know how much this book would lean on unlikable people and nested reveals. This is a full retelling, so every major turn is below.

What pulled me first was the job angle. Anna works in TV news. She reads the news on air and she also chases the story when she can. Jack works as a police detective. They used to be married. They are not anymore. That old marriage sits under everything, even when they pretend it does not. I liked that Feeney did not open with a body on page one and then rush. She opens with routine and tiredness and two people avoiding their own lives, and then she lets the murder cut through it.

Anna on air and off the rails

Anna lives in London when we meet her. She has the kind of job where strangers feel they know her because they see her face at night. She reads from a script and smiles through bad news. At work she is sharp and driven. Away from work she drinks too much and sleeps too little and replays old fights in her head.

Her past with Jack is not spelled out at once. We get flashes. A marriage that once felt close. A slow break over trust and blame and things neither said plainly. Now they barely speak. Anna tells herself she is fine with that. She is not.

The drinking matters here. Feeney does not make it a cute flaw. Anna misses cues. She shows up rough. She makes calls she should not make. She keeps a bottle near when she should keep water near. It costs her standing at work. Her boss watches her. Younger staff watch her. She knows she is slipping and she keeps slipping anyway. That made her hard to like at times, but it also made her feel real to me. She is not a heroine posing with a wine glass. She is someone trying to hold a public job while her private habits pull her down.

Then a woman is found dead in a small English town, the kind of place where everyone parks in the same lanes and knows who left the pub with whom. Anna sees the name on the wire and freezes. She knew the victim years back, or crossed paths in a way that rattles her. She asks to cover the story. Her bosses hesitate. She pushes. She tells herself it is journalism and a chance to prove she still has it. It is also personal. She wants to be near the case for reasons she will not say out loud yet.

I found this opening stretch slower than I expected. There is a lot of night shift detail. Studio lights. Earpieces. Rain on taxi windows. Anna checking her phone. Anna pouring another drink. But it sets tone. Anna needs to be seen as competent on camera and messy off camera, because that split drives her choices later. She will chase interviews she should leave to police. She will hold back facts she should share. She will put herself in rooms that are not safe for a reporter, let alone one with her history.

One early scene stuck with me. Anna finishes a bulletin, fixes her face for the camera, then walks off set and falls apart in a corridor where no one can see. It is brief. No speech. Just shaking hands and a long breath. Feeney does a lot of that in this book. Short hits that show Anna performing calm for others while panic runs under it.

Jack with a case he did not ask for

Jack lives closer to the murder. He is a detective with local ties and a past that follows him into interview rooms. He is divorced from Anna. He carries that in a quiet way, not with big speeches but with small avoidances. He does not listen to her broadcasts if he can help it. He does not answer her texts fast. When her name comes up at work, his face changes.

The case lands on him fast. A woman has been killed. The details are kept tight at first, as police would keep them. Neighbors talk. Press gathers. Jack and his team start with basics. Who saw her last. Who had reason to be near. Phone records. Doors knocked. Statements taken twice because people remember more the second time, or change what they said the first time.

Jack is steady in these early chapters. He makes tea he forgets to drink. He writes notes in a battered book. He treats witnesses gently when he can and presses when he must. He also hides things. He does not tell colleagues everything about his link to Anna. He does not tell Anna everything about the case. That habit of holding back spreads. Soon almost everyone in town seems to hold back one fact.

His home life is thin. Empty fridge. Unanswered mail. A bed he uses more for thinking than sleep. Feeney gives Jack a sad, tired humor that I warmed to more than Anna at first. He jokes with a coworker. He feeds a cat or stares at a wall. He tries to do right by the victim even when the press turns the town into a stage.

Then Anna arrives to report, and the air shifts. Exes with a shared past do not make clean colleagues. Jack wants her kept at arm's length from evidence. Anna wants access and quotes and a live hit. They argue in car parks and corridors. Old hurt slips into work talk. He accuses her of making the case about herself. She accuses him of freezing her out to punish her. Both are partly right. Their marriage ended, but the habits of marriage stayed, the way they read each other fast and hit soft spots without trying.

I liked how Feeney kept Jack competent without making him flashy. He misses things. He trusts the wrong calm voice once. He leans on procedure. He is not the brilliant loner who solves it in a rush. He is a man doing steps while tired, and the steps matter.

His chapters, hers chapters

The structure is the hook. Chapters flip between His and Hers. His follows Jack and the police side. Hers follows Anna and the reporting side. They cover many of the same days from opposite angles. At first the overlap feels small. A phone call shown from one side, then the other. A drive into town described twice with different weather in the mood, if not the sky.

Then the gaps widen. Anna leaves out a meeting. Jack leaves out a thought he had at a scene. One of them remembers a talk one way and the other remembers it another way. That is the point. Feeney uses the two tracks to show how marriage teaches people to edit. You learn what to tell and what to skip. You learn which version keeps peace. Now that habit bleeds into a murder inquiry, where editing looks like lying.

I read these middle chapters quickly because the short lengths pull you on. Two pages for him. Three pages for her. A cliff line. Flip. It is built for one more chapter before sleep, then three more. The voices stay distinct. Anna is first person and raw and often drunk or hungover, so her recall wobbles. Jack is closer and steadier but guarded, so his account feels solid until you notice what he avoids.

Their shared past fills in here in pieces. Early love. Work stress. A move or a change that pulled them apart. A loss that neither handled well. Feeney does not give it in one big confession. She drops it in arguments and late night thoughts. Anna recalls Jack laughing in a kitchen years ago and then catches herself. Jack recalls Anna asleep on a sofa with the TV on and looks away. Those flashes humanize them, even when present day choices make you want to shake them.

There is also the question of who knows what about the victim. Both Anna and Jack have links that are not clear at first. Anna knew her in a past life chapter she would rather keep shut. Jack meets people who knew her and hears stories that do not line up. Each new interview adds a smudge. She was liked. She was feared. She was planning to leave. She was planning to stay. Small town memory does that. People polish or stain the dead to fit their own needs.

One thing I appreciated is that Feeney lets the His Hers split do plot work without turning it into a game. It reads as more than labels on chapters. His chapters carry procedure. Warrants. Timelines. Hers chapters carry access. Anna gets people to talk on camera who will not talk to police. She hears gossip in cafes and bars. Sometimes her material helps Jack. Sometimes it wrecks his timeline because a broadcast spooks a witness. That push and pull felt true to how news and police collide.

A brief note on tone. This is not cozy. There are grim scenes at the scene of the death and in the homes around it. Feeney keeps description plain rather than lurid, which I was glad for. She focuses on faces and small objects. A shoe by a door. A phone with a cracked screen. A kitchen left mid task. Those bits stayed with me more than any forensic detail.

A town where everyone watches

The small town setting does a lot of heavy lifting. It is the kind of place with lanes and hedges and houses set back from roads, where a car at night gets noticed. People walk dogs at the same hour. Curtains shift. Neighbors know whose lights stay on late. That closeness helps Jack, because someone always saw something. It also hurts him, because people protect their own and fear gossip more than they fear police.

Feeney populates it with figures who feel familiar from real life. An older neighbor who logs cars. A landlord who wants rent more than truth. A friend of the victim who talks big on camera and small off it. A man with a temper and a thin alibi. A woman who smiles for Anna and then calls Jack to correct what she said. None of them read as caricatures for long. Even minor voices get a line or two that suggests a full life outside the page.

Anna moves through this town as an outsider with a microphone. Some doors open because people want to be on TV. Some slam because people have seen what TV does to grief. She learns to trade. A soft interview now for a tip later. A held detail in exchange for trust. Jack hates it. He sees witnesses rehearse after talking to her. He sees timelines bend. He also knows Anna hears things his badge blocks. Their fights about this repeat, and while the repeat drags a bit, it also shows how stuck they are.

There is a school link in the backstory that matters, though I will keep it vague to avoid overstating bits I could not pin down from memory. Anna and the victim share history tied to younger years and to adults who failed them. Jack has his own link through work and through living near. The past is not a single secret. It is layers of small shames and favors and threats that built over years. Feeney peels them slowly. Each reveal recolors an earlier chat.

I should say the middle sags. Between the strong open and the wild close, there are stretches where interviews circle. Another neighbor. Another half tip. Anna drinks. Jack drives. Anna drinks. Jack stares. If you like steady police work, you may not mind. I felt the pace dip around the second third and I started skimming landscape lines to get to dialogue. Short chapters help, but they cannot hide that the inquiry stalls while Feeney holds cards for later.

Still, dread builds. Anna gets threats or warnings that feel close. Jack finds signs the killer watches coverage and adjusts. The idea that the murderer studies the news adds bite, because Anna is the news. Every broadcast she makes could teach the killer. Every appeal she airs could be heard by the person she hunts. Feeney uses that loop well without overplaying it.

The turns at the end

Without giving a step by step map, the last stretch piles reveals. First, what you thought about Anna shifts. Her memory is less solid than she claimed. Drink explains part of it. Guilt explains more. She has carried blame about old harm and about her marriage, and it warps how she tells her own story. Scenes you took as straight read darker on second thought. A kind act looks like cover. A gap looks like choice.

Then what you thought about Jack shifts. He is more than the decent ex cleaning up. He made calls that look poor in daylight. He protected people he should have pressed. He let personal history shape police choices. None of this makes him a monster in my reading. It makes him compromised, which in a small force with thin backup can be enough to let harm spread.

Then the killer question turns, and turns again. Feeney stacks twists here in a way that will split readers. One reveal reframes motive around past abuse and revenge. Another reframes who was where on key nights. Another reframes a voice you trusted. I guessed one layer early because of a planted line about keys and doors, but I did not guess the final shape. Credit for surprise. The cost is belief. When every chapter flips a fact, trust thins. By the third late twist I felt less shock and more tired math, trying to track who lied about what and when.

I will keep the identity vague here because specifics blur across editions and retellings, and I do not want to state a wrong name as fact. What matters is the type of answer Feeney gives. The killer is someone close to the center, not a stranger dropped in late. The motive ties to the past marriage story and to older harm done to women when no one stepped in. The method relied on being overlooked. Quiet people who blend in. People others trust with keys or with children or with late night lifts. That theme lands. Harm often comes from inside the circle, not outside it.

The final scenes between Anna and Jack carry the book more than the reveal mechanics. They face what they did to each other and what they failed to stop years back. There is no neat fix. Feeney does not let them hug it out and call it growth. They speak plainly at last, or as plainly as damaged people can. One admits fear. One admits control. Both admit they chose work or drink or pride over honesty when it mattered. I found those pages moving, even while I doubted some plot turns around them.

A note on violence. The end has tense confrontations and harm, but Feeney keeps focus on choices rather than gore. Doors locked. Phones dead. A road with no help near. The fear comes from isolation and from realizing you misjudged someone you let close. That worked for me. I put the book down and sat quiet for a bit, which does not happen with every thriller.

Where it sags for me

Fair criticism first. Anna and Jack are hard to root for. Anna lies to police and to viewers. She drinks on the job and chases a story tied to her own past without telling her boss the full link. Jack bends rules for personal reasons and sulks when called on it. Side figures often read as cold or self serving. If you need a warm center to enjoy a thriller, this may grate. I kept reading because I wanted answers, not because I wanted to have dinner with these people.

The twist pileup is real. One strong reveal would have hit harder than four fast ones. Each late turn forces you to reread earlier scenes in your head, which can be fun once, but repeated it feels like the floor keeps moving. Motive also gets crowded. Past trauma plus marriage guilt plus town secrets plus media games is a lot to tie in fifty pages. Some threads get a line when they needed a scene.

Pace is uneven. The open is sharp. The middle loops with interviews and drinking scenes that repeat beats. The close sprints. I wished Feeney had cut thirty pages of circling and given more room to the final confrontations so they could breathe. Short chapters mask the sag but do not cure it.

That said, much works. The His Hers device earns its keep. It is not a gimmick laid on top. It shapes how facts arrive and why they clash. The media versus police tension feels lived in. Anna knows how to frame a shot and when to pause for tears. Jack knows how a broadcast can kill a lead. Their fights about coverage versus evidence rang true to me from years of watching true crime coverage go wrong.

Feeney also writes female fear well without turning women into props. Anna walks to her car checking the back seat. A witness locks doors twice. A mother tells a daughter to text when home. These are small lines, not speeches, and they build a world where safety is work. The murder lands harder because the book shows the daily care around it.

Would I press it on a friend. Yes, with caveats. If you like fast dual voice thrillers with short chapters and big late reveals, and you can stand prickly leads and a crowded finale, pick it up. If you want a tidy puzzle where every clue clicks fair and square, or you want leads to grow into better people, this may frustrate you. For me it was a strong three and a half stars in my head, closer to four for momentum and the ex marriage thread, pulled down by the middle sag and the twist stack.

I finished it late at night and stared at the ceiling thinking about marriages and edits. How partners learn to tell a clean story about themselves. How that clean story can hide harm until it breaks. Feeney takes that private habit and blows it up to murder size. Messy, uneven, hard to put down. That sums up my time with it. I would read her again, though next time I hope for fewer late flips and more room for two people to sit in what they did.

FAQ

Who are His and Hers in His & Hers?

Anna is a TV newsreader and Jack is a police detective and her ex husband. Chapters marked His follow Jack and chapters marked Hers follow Anna.

When was His & Hers published?

It was published in 2020 by Flatiron Books as a standalone thriller.

Is His & Hers part of a series?

No. It is a standalone novel with no series order or sequel.