Title: His and Hers
My GoodReads Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
A BBC TV news presenter, Anna Andrews has come up in life. Hailing from a deprived background, her father deserted the family, leaving her mother to clean homes in the village to earn a living. Her job and the success that is hers means a lot to her.
Having spent long
years as a correspondent, Anna gets the opportunity to present the afternoon
news after Cat Jones, the actual presenter, goes off suddenly on maternity
leave. Two years later, when Anna expects her contract to be renewed, she finds
herself suddenly relegated to the position of news correspondent when Cat
returns.
A day later, she
is called back to work because Cat is unreachable. When she shows up to work at
the request of the Thin Controller, she finds Cat already there.
It is Cat who
suggests that Anna head to the village of Blackdown, her hometown, where there
has been a murder.
Detective Chief
Inspector Jack Harper and his assistant Priya Patel are called to the scene of a
brutal murder. A local woman, Rachel Hopkins, has been killed in the woods. The
principal of the local girl’s school, Helen Wang, is found brutally murdered
the following day, and Zoe Harper, another local woman, who also happened to be
Jack’s sister, is found brutally murdered the day after. Will Jack be able to
solve the case or will the body count rise again?
Both Anna and Jack
have had a close association with the characters in the case and everything
seems to point towards them. Jack stands in danger of becoming a suspect in his
own murder investigation, having been the last to see Rachel for a sexual
fling.
The story comes to
us in three voices, hers (the PoV of Anna Andrews) and his (that of Jack
Harper) in alternate chapters and both accounts hold secrets. That they were
once married becomes known to us soon enough. They have been estranged since
the death of their baby girl, Charlotte, at just three months of age. They have
been divorced since then.
Both accounts go
heavy on the foreshadowing and so my expectations were quite high. Both
characters face thwarted ambitions. Both the leading characters have a lot in
common. Both have had casual sex. Both their jobs carry enormous stress, and
expose them to ugly things that cannot be unseen. Both had guilty secrets they had
to hide, secrets dating back to their pasts.
The PoVs of Anna
and Jack are broken occasionally by the voice of the unidentified murderer,
which was extremely creepy. The artiste has probably used some software to disguise
the voice, but the effect was quite horrible. The voice actually grated on my
ears.
The quotes,
generalisations of truth that apply to all of us, are numerous and I enjoyed
them. Anna’s back story comes out well.
The murderer tells
us, There is a version of me I can only ever be with myself. It’s a point
that hits us only after the identity of this person is revealed.
Both Anna and Jack
get to mouth some good lines. Sample these:
Anna: We rarely deserve the lives we lead. We pay for them, however we can, be it with money, guilt or regret.
I’m pretty good
at being the version of myself people want me to be.
It’s easier to
blame the miles for the distance that exists between some parents and their
children. When you bend the truth too far, it tends to break.
Like ghosts who
don’t know they are dead, we carried on haunting ourselves and each other.
We are a species capable of horrific acts and incapable of learning from the lessons our own history tries to teach.
Memories are shape-shifters, some bend, some twist, some shrivel and die.
Time is something
my mother has forgotten how to tell. It moves differently for her now. Often
backwards, instead of forwards. Dementia stole time from my mother, and my
mother from me. I found this line very poignant. The issue of dementia always
makes painful reading for me. In the book, Anna learns that her mother suffers
from severe dementia.
We all have
secrets. Some we won’t even tell ourselves
Sometimes I think
I am the unreliable narrator of my own life.
The author does a
great job of distinguishing the writing for Anna and Jack. Right in his first
chapter, Jack makes his presence felt by telling us that: Since I left London,
my job has been duller than a nun’s underwear drawer.
Youth fools us into thinking there are infinite paths to choose from in life; maturity tricks us into thinking there is only one.
The characters
were all drawn out well. Although I didn’t like Anna, she came across as too
insensitive at the beginning, she did draw me into getting to know her story. Perhaps
that was because of her drinking and resultant forgetfulness. In her first
chapter, Anna can’t remember having baked the cupcakes that she is taking to work.
I’m a little fed up of characters that have a drinking problem and can’t
remember crucial events of their day.
The only characters
I liked were Jack and, to an extent, Anna’s mother, who did everything she
could for her daughter. I found Priya, Jack’s assistant, very interesting, not
only because she is a character of Indian origin (Bonus points for showcasing
diversity) but also because she is doggedly determined to pursue the case, even
though she gives the impression of being small and helpless.
This thriller kept
me engaged throughout. Each chapter ends on a cliffhanger, keeping us hooked.
The author has successfully played out the themes of broken relationships, guilt
and love, against the backdrop of murder.
The author does a
great job of ratcheting up the pace and tension and creating a real sense of
danger.
The description of
the sex, while not graphic, is nevertheless disturbing. As are the descriptions
of the murders which are brutal.
The only thing I couldn’t
quite get a handle on was the murderer. Of course, why the person killed and killed
again is explained very well, but how they could kill with so much brutality remains
unanswered. I’m not talking just about the rationale, but how they went about it,
which seems unbelievable.
This was my first
experience with an audiobook. In this case, there were serious issues with the
audio. I found that if I let one section (chapters were called sections, for
some reason) end and the next one begin automatically, it would invariably skip
one section in between. The best thing to do was to go through the navigation
bar and manually click on each new section at the end of the previous one. This
marred the experience slightly, during the first few chapters. It was only when
I understood what was happening and figured out the trick, that the listening
experience went on smoothly.
I liked
Stephanie’s voice from the beginning. The pace, the enunciation, the pauses,
they were all done right. Her voice was perfect for Anna’s narration.
Stephanie sounded
so different for the parts spoken by the Thin Controller. It’s a subtle change
that lets on that a different character is speaking but it makes such a great
difference to the listening experience. I was particularly thrilled to hear the
voice of recognition that she came up with when Anna’s mother, asleep in her
home, wakes up and recognises her daughter.
Richard does a
great job of distinguishing between Jack’s voice and Priya’s. Loud, he was Jack;
a little muted, he was Priya, for the asides, the intonation changed once
again. It was amazing how he switched voices at a moment’s notice.
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