{"id":6652,"date":"2026-06-24T04:56:48","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T04:56:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=6652"},"modified":"2026-06-24T04:56:48","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T04:56:48","slug":"it-could-have-been-her-by-lisa-jewell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=6652","title":{"rendered":"It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a particular kind of dread that Lisa Jewell does better than almost anyone, the dread that hides inside ordinary domestic life. A school run. A pub lunch. A stray dog trotting out of the bluebells. It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell<\/em> opens on exactly that sort of quiet, sunlit afternoon, and within a few pages you already feel the cold draft sliding under the door.<\/p>\n

Jane Trevally, fifty-five, twice divorced, and rattling around a crumbling Dorset estate she can barely afford to keep standing, finds a friendly little terrier in her woods with no owner in sight. The teenager who had been staying nearby with the dog has gone missing. Returning the animal to its registered home in London should be a small kindness, the end of a strange afternoon. Instead, it cracks open something Jane buried twenty-five years ago.<\/p>\n

I went in expecting a slick missing-person puzzle. What I got was darker, sadder, and much harder to shake.<\/p>\n

The setup, kept spoiler-free<\/h3>\n

The address on the dog\u2019s chip leads Jane to Thornwood, a shabby house tucked into the Vale of Health, a real and genuinely strange pocket of old Hampstead hemmed in on every side by the Heath. Jane knows this house. She was here once, long ago, on a night she has spent decades turning into a dinner-party anecdote so she never has to feel how frightened she truly was.<\/p>\n

The man who answers the door is a stranger to her. He is twitchy, evasive, and insists he has never heard of the missing girl. Through a window, Jane catches sight of a thin, haunted-looking woman watching from inside. That single glimpse is enough. Jane decides to find out what really happened, both to the girl and, at long last, to herself.<\/p>\n

That is as much plot as anyone should hand you. Half the pleasure of It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell<\/em> is the slow, controlled release of information, and a review that gives away the wiring would be doing you a real disservice.<\/p>\n

Jane Trevally: the reason this book works<\/h3>\n

Readers of Don\u2019t Let Him In<\/em> will recognise Jane as a supporting player from that 2025 novel, and her promotion to lead is the smartest decision in the book. She is wonderful company: blunt, funny, a little reckless, deeply lonely, and quietly brave. An older woman who has spent years waiting for men to rescue her, now teaching herself to be an amateur investigator because she has finally run out of patience with being a bystander in her own life.<\/p>\n

A few things make her sing on the page:<\/p>\n

A real interior life.<\/strong> Jane\u2019s childhood, raised by addicted parents, shapes every choice she makes, and Jewell threads that old pain through the case without ever turning it into a lecture.
\nThe double act with Dexter.<\/strong> Her bond with her gentle, dog-loving stepson gives the grim material warmth and a pulse of real affection.
\nA heroine who feels her age.<\/strong> Mortality, regret, and the odd freedom of midlife sit right at the heart of the story, which is rarer in this genre than it should be.<\/p>\n

Jane is the kind of character you actually miss when the last page turns.<\/p>\n

Structure and pace: the classic Jewell machine<\/h3>\n

The novel runs on several timelines and points of view that circle each other for most of the book before snapping together. There is Jane in the present. There is a watchful man named Stuart, studying a fragile woman in a Hampstead pub a decade earlier. And there are older, colder voices reaching back further still.<\/p>\n

The chapters are short and the hooks are sharp, so the pages keep turning almost against your will. I started a \u201cquick chapter\u201d before bed and surfaced a long while later than I had planned, which is about the highest compliment you can pay a thriller built like this one.<\/p>\n

Atmosphere and theme: trauma as the real subject<\/h3>\n

Beneath the missing-girl machinery, the book is about something heavier. It looks hard at how early horror reshapes a whole life, how children adapt to the unthinkable and carry it into adulthood<\/a>, and how the past keeps its grip on people long after they believe they have walked free of it. The title becomes a quiet refrain about luck, proximity, and the thin line between the women who get away and the women who do not.<\/p>\n

This is also where a fair warning belongs. It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell<\/em> deals with child neglect, abusive parents, abduction, and sexual violence. None of it is gratuitous, and the worst of it is implied rather than shown, but readers who find those subjects painful should go in knowing the water gets very deep.<\/p>\n

Where it stumbles<\/h3>\n

A four-star book is a very good book with a few honest flaws, and this one has them.<\/p>\n

The early timeline juggling. For the first third, keeping every thread and name straight takes genuine effort, and readers who prefer a single clean line of suspense may feel a little adrift before the pattern clicks.
\nMomentum dips. Some of Jane\u2019s personal and domestic chapters, lovely as they are, slow the central mystery at the very moments you want it to speed up.
\nA couple of guessable turns. Seasoned thriller readers will see one or two reveals coming, even as plenty of others land hard.
\nA resolution that ties off a beat too neatly in places, given how messy and human the rest of the book dares to be.<\/p>\n

None of these sink the experience. They are the gap between an excellent read and a perfect one.<\/p>\n

How it sits among Lisa Jewell\u2019s other books<\/h3>\n

Jewell has built a long, varied career, from her 1999 debut Ralph\u2019s Party<\/em> through her early domestic dramas and into the run of dark thrillers that made her a household name. If you have read Then She Was Gone<\/em>, The Family Upstairs<\/em> and The Family Remains<\/em>, None of This Is True<\/em><\/a>, Invisible Girl<\/em>, or Watching You<\/em>, you already know the territory: damaged families, slow-burn dread, ordinary streets with terrible things behind the curtains. As a direct follow-on to Don\u2019t Let Him In<\/em><\/a>, It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell<\/em> rewards fans of that book in particular, though it reads perfectly well on its own.<\/p>\n

If you loved it, read these next<\/h3>\n

For readers who finish and want the same chill, I would point toward:<\/p>\n

The Family Upstairs<\/em> by Lisa Jewell, for the haunted-house-with-a-past feeling
\nBehind Closed Doors<\/em> by B. A. Paris
\nThe Wife Between Us<\/em> by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
\nHis & Hers<\/em> by Alice Feeney
\nThe Couple Next Door<\/em><\/a> by Shari Lapena
\nThe Next Mrs. Parrish<\/em><\/a> by Liv Constantine<\/p>\n

The verdict<\/h3>\n

It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell<\/em> is a dark, absorbing, and surprisingly moving thriller carried by one of the most likeable leads Jewell has written in years. It asks a little patience of you up front and shows its hand slightly early once or twice, but the payoff is rich and the emotion is earned. Come for the missing girl and the lost dog. Stay for the woman learning, at fifty-five, that it is never quite too late to begin again.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a particular kind of dread that Lisa Jewell does better than almost anyone, the dread that hides inside ordinary domestic life. A school run. A pub lunch. A stray dog trotting out of the bluebells. It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell opens on exactly that sort of quiet, sunlit afternoon, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6652"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6652\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}