His and Hers - Alice Feeney - BLOG TOUR

Oh, Ms. Feeney! You absolute rascal! How could you? I NEVER saw that coming! Not in a million years. What a masterstroke. And I'm still open mouthed at what I like to call 'author audacity'. It's brilliant. 

It's one of those endings that forces you to accept that you have misinterpreted much of what you've read. And is that because you approach a book of this genre with preconceptions? You read the prologue and subconsciously an image of the potential perp infiltrates its way into your head and you experience the whole story with a reluctance, again subconscious, to relinquish that image. By page 126 I thought I knew who dunnit and I felt pretty smug. Clapping myself on the back for my astute, razor sharp perception only to feel pretty stupid a few pages further on because it couldn't possibly have been that person. It was this person. Only it wasn't. It was another person. And so on. Smug became a mere memory.

The story then? What is the story? There are two sides to it. 'Yours and Mine', 'Ours and Theirs', 'His and Hers'.

Anna, TV news presenter standing in for a colleague on maternity leave. Her ex husband, Jack.......

"If there are two sides to every story, someone is always lying…

Jack: Three words to describe my wife: Beautiful. Ambitious. Unforgiving.
Anna: I only need one word to describe my husband: Liar.

When a woman is murdered in Blackdown village, newsreader Anna Andrews is reluctant to cover the case. Anna’s ex-husband, DCI Jack Harper, is suspicious of her involvement, until he becomes a suspect in his own murder investigation.

Someone is lying, and some secrets are worth killing to keep."

I'm saying little more about the plot because it would be a crime to give anything away. But I will say this, you will suspect everyone at some point in this narrative. You won't be able to turn the pages quick enough as this tale hurtles on towards its tense climax where your heart might just decide to eject itself into your mouth.

As with all good psychological thrillers it's hard to fully engage with any of the characters. You have to remain objective, unbiased. You can't be allowed to develop any kind of affection for anyone. So there is little to like about any of them  - except, perhaps......... Anna's mum? They're all flawed in some way through their personal life challenges or their professional career paths. 

It's a well plotted story, one that will have you marvelling at the mind of the writer who can come up with such a complex, twisty set of circumstances. I think I might just need to get hold of Ms. Feeney's previous two books.......

My thanks to HQStories and Harper Collins for this book and an opportunity to participate in the blog tour. Do check out what the other brilliant bloggers have to say.