His & Hers

Alice Feeney’s His & Hers is a psychological thriller originally published in 2020. The title His & Hers evokes newlywed gifts but refers to the alternate perspectives of a divorced couple, two of the novel’s three points of view. It explores the existence of multiple perspectives and the difficulty of locating truth within subjective narratives. One of the protagonists, a reporter for the BBC, allows Feeney to draw on her years of experience as a BBC journalist and producer.

This guide refers to the Flatiron Books e-book.

Content Warning: His & Hers contains scenes depicting the sexual grooming of adolescents, sexual assault and rape, physical and emotional abuse, and suicidal ideation, and this guide includes these topics in summary and analysis.

Plot Summary

His & Hers switches between three points of view, which belong to Anna Andrews, Jack Harper, and the anonymous murderer whose identity isn’t revealed until the very last pages.

Anna is working as a BBC presenter, filling in for her colleague, Cat Jones, who’s on maternity leave. When her rival returns, she becomes a reporter again. Anna never wanted to return to Blackdown—the town where she faced childhood trauma and, later, the death of her infant daughter—but has to report on a story about a body discovered in the nearby woods. Meanwhile, Jack, Anna’s ex-husband and a police inspector, has reluctantly returned to live in Blackdown with his sister, Zoe, and niece. He yearns for excitement, but the case over-delivers. He discovers that the murder victim is Rachel, the woman he was with the night before. He conceals both the fact that he spent the previous night with her and the evidence planted to frame him.

Anna gradually relates her memories from high school, telling the story in pieces spread throughout her point-of-view sections. Rachel, Helen, Zoe, and Anna were friends in high school. Rachel, a manipulative bully, groomed Anna for sex and tormented Catherine, another student. Wanting to be kind to Catherine, Anna included her in plans for her 16th birthday party. She gave each of the girls a friendship bracelet, and they posed for a group photograph, both of which reappear in the present storyline. Under the influence of drugs and alcohol, they met up with some men who paid Rachel to have sex with the girls. Anna was molested but wrestled away and fled home. Before she left, she saw the beginning of a gang rape on an unconscious Catherine. Shortly before the beginning of the novel, Anna’s mother found the suicide note Anna wrote at the time detailing the events of her birthday. Sixteen-year-old Anna decided not to kill herself but fled Blackdown and went to boarding school.

Rachel, Helen, and Zoe are killed, and the murderer ties an identical friendship bracelet around their tongues. She also crosses them off in the picture and leaves it to be discovered. Anna and Jack doubt themselves and each other as they investigate for the news and the police. Throughout, Anna works with Richard, her cameraman, with whom she once had an affair. They wind up without a hotel room the second night, and Richard suggests they go to the nearby house of his wife’s late parents. There, Anna discovers that Richard’s wife is Cat Jones, formerly the Catherine Kelly she knew as a teenager. She finds Cat apparently hanged and Richard mortally injured, but Cat frees herself and chases Anna, who flees into the woods and stumbles upon her mother, who appears disoriented. As Anna discovered when she visited her mother the day before, Mrs. Andrews seems to have dementia but is entirely convincing when she rambles about having killed Anna’s father years ago. Meanwhile, Priya (Jack’s deputy) and Jack race to find Anna, whom they suspect is in danger, but Priya grows suspicious of Jack and shoots him.

Cat catches up to Anna and her mother and stabs Mrs. Andrews, screaming at Anna for ruining her life. The Andrews women find an abandoned car and flee, but they accidentally hit Cat with the car. Priya arrives; she shoots and kills Cat when the injured woman tries to stab Anna. Anna concludes that Cat, seeking revenge on the other four women, was responsible for the murders, but the next day in the hospital, she checks on the knife hidden in her purse.

Six months later, Anna and Jack have reunited and live with Olivia, Jack’s orphaned niece. Anna also gets Cat’s BBC presenter job back. She realizes at least part of the true story behind the deaths but represses the memories. The final section is from the murderer’s point of view, and she reveals herself. It is Mrs. Andrews, who was faking dementia. After she found Anna’s suicide note from long ago, she decided to kill the others for taking Anna away from her. Angry at Jack for the divorce and for sleeping with Rachel, Mrs. Andrews initially intended to frame him, but she changed her mind when she saw that the two of them still cared about each other. She decided to frame Cat instead. After killing the other three women, she kidnapped Cat’s daughters but promised to release them if Cat died by suicide. She killed Richard when he appeared at the house. Cat, however, was an expert in tying knots and faked her death before coming after them in the woods. Mrs. Andrews, noting that Priya seems suspicious of her, has already made a friendship bracelet, suggesting an intent to kill her.