Netflix’s His & Hers Changed Alice Feeney’s Bestselling Novel for the Better
10 min readSpoilers below.
Ever since Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl hit bookshelves more than a decade ago, it’s become the gold standard for twisty thrillers—particularly those that really want to pull the rug out from under the reader’s feet. In the years after Gone Girl’s dramatic success story, publishers have embraced all manner of unreliable narrators, which, in turn, have become the lead protagonists of subsequent movie and TV adaptations. Alice Feeney’s bestselling 2020 novel His & Hers fits this model, making it an obvious choice for a new six-part Netflix limited series starring Jon Bernthal and Tessa Thompson as the titular him and her, Jack and Anna.
His & Hers has all the ingredients of a fast-paced crime story: gruesome murders; personal connections between the investigator and the victim; a tense and tragic backstory; salacious affairs; and passionate chemistry. Feeney’s book is a page-turner I couldn’t put down, with chapters alternating between Jack’s (his) and Anna’s (hers) perspectives and the killer serving as a third, unnamed narrator who appears sporadically throughout the novel. I thought I had the twist pegged from early on, and I felt incredibly smug about it…until I was proved very wrong.
The Netflix adaptation of His & Hers retains that shocking twist—the killer is, in fact, Anna’s mother—but writer and executive producer William Oldroyd has made considerable changes to the setting, relationships, and even the suspects themselves. Although Thompson has demonstrated she can pull off a British accent (she was excellent in Nia Decosta’s Hedda, set in 1950s England), she doesn’t need to flex the skill for His & Hers, as the story’s location has shifted from London and the fictional Surrey village of Blackdown to Atlanta and the real Georgia town of Dahlonega. There, TV journalist Anna Andrews returns to her hometown to report on a homicide, for which Detective Jack Harper serves as lead investigator. The pair share an intimate past, as well as a complicated history with the murdered woman, Rachel Hopkins (Jamie Tisdale).
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As His & Hers often repeats via Anna’s voiceover narration, there are at least two sides to every story—and this means someone is usually lying. The book-to-screen adaptation adds further sides to the story, making tweaks (and, in some cases, significant departures) to add layers to the book’s characters and conflicts. Below are the most notable and essential differences between Feeney’s bestseller and the Netflix series.
Anna’s Return-to-Work
In Feeney’s novel, Anna is a BBC newsreader who’s been anchoring the lunchtime slot for two years, covering for her colleague Cat Jones, who’s on extended maternity leave. Anna’s world is upended when Cat returns to work, causing Anna to lose the dream job that was never officially hers. It’s Cat who suggests that Anna cover the news of a body found in Blackdown, though Anna is reluctant to return to her hometown, which is full of painful memories.
In the TV series, it’s Anna herself who pushes for permission to cover the crime in Dahlonega, and she appears to know more about the victim before she even arrives back in town. While Book Anna only took a short amount of time off after the death of her baby, her Netflix counterpart has taken a year-long unofficial hiatus—but is now ready to front the news again. Having been absent for an extended period, Anna can’t walk straight back into her old news-anchor role. Although her boss is reluctant to give her a field reporter gig, Anna talks her way into the job.
Netflix also changes Cat’s name to Lexy Jones (Rebecca Rittenhouse) to hide that Lexy is Anna’s former childhood friend, Catherine Kelly. In both versions of the story, Anna has no idea that the co-worker she loathes is, in fact, Catherine, another girl who was in the woods the awful night of Anna’s 16th birthday.
Both versions of Anna ultimately use the discovery of Rachel’s body (and their knowledge of the local landscape) to give their career a much-needed boost. Like her novel counterpart, Netflix Anna is reluctant to see old faces but eager to get back on air, and the first time Anna sees Jack is at the crime scene. However, in the book, Feeney’s Jack and Anna are divorced, whereas Thompson and Bernthal’s characters are estranged but still married.
Anna’s Alcoholism
Another significant change from the book to the show is how much Anna drinks. Book Anna keeps bottles of booze in her purse and slugs white wine with breakfast. (Never red wine—the staining is too noticeable.) Thanks to her drinking, Anna is frequently uncertain about what happened the night before, which adds to the unreliable-narrator element of the book (and instantly brought to mind another popular literary thriller, The Girl on the Train).
One example of this dynamic in play: In Feeney’s novel, Anna passes out in a rustic room above a local pub (the TV show opts for a more traditional hotel setting) and wakes to find her room tidied. Anna believes she cleaned it in her drunken state. Later in the book, we learn it was, in fact, Anna’s mother, Alice, who did the cleaning, even leaving water on Anna’s bedside table to ensure her daughter stayed hydrated—while also giving her daughter incentive to doubt her own memories. Near the end of the book, Feeney offers a suggestion that Anna thinks she’s the killer—and blames her blackouts for why she can’t remember.
The show does away with this explanation for Anna’s supposed unreliability. While she does down half a bottle of wine early in the season, it’s a big misdirect. Anna’s alcohol intake is never too excessive (nor does it carry over into breakfast). Her clear head ensures there’s no ambiguity at the end of the finale: Alice confesses everything to Anna in a letter describing why she killed her daughter’s frenemies.
Rachel’s Husband’s Role
In the novel, Rachel is married to an old guy for his money; we don’t even meet him firsthand. Detective Priya Patel (who, in the show, is played by Sunita Mani) informs Jack that Rachel’s husband isn’t a suspect because, well, he’s 82 years old and bedridden. The Netflix adaptation ditches this quick dismissal, instead choosing to point a finger directly at Rachel’s cocky, middle-aged, wealthy husband, Clyde (Chris Bauer).
Netflix Clyde connects the dots among the different players and offers Jack someone else to latch onto as a person of interest. Both men are assholes, and they poke and prod at each other in a desperate display of toxic masculinity. A video on Rachel’s phone (that Jack has to find an inventive way to get her body to unlock) proves that Rachel has an incriminating video of Clyde. Jack thinks Helen and Rachel were blackmailing Clyde, but it’s actually Lexy they’re extorting. While Clyde didn’t care too much for his wife, he isn’t, in fact, a killer.
Making Rachel’s spouse a prominent suspect in the TV series makes narrative sense—the husband is, after all, often the first on any suspect list. Casting Bauer in this role also makes the dick-measuring scenes worthwhile. Not only is he a great antagonist opposite Bernthal, but as a fan of The Wire, I was giddy when he appeared in a scene with Pablo Schreiber, who plays Bauer’s on-screen nephew in season 2 of David Simon’s beloved HBO crime series.
The Hook-Ups
The Netflix adaptation of His & Hers is full of characters making bad choices, including Anna sleeping with her cameraman, Richard Jones (Schreiber), after their first broadcast together. Part of her incentive is to stick it to Lexy, Richard’s wife, whom Anna thinks stole her job, but she’s keen to hurt Jack, too.
In the novel, Anna has already slept with Richard prior to the events of the present day, and she doesn’t have sex with him again during the book itself—though Jack is still jealous of their attraction. (As a side note: Book Anna doesn’t know that Richard is married to Cat Jones until the showdown at Cat’s former family home.)
The TV adaptation cranks up the heat between these characters, introducing a new rendezvous between Anna and Richard in the present timeline; it also showcases Anna and Jack sleeping together again. In the book, the pair divorce in the aftermath of baby Charlotte’s death, with Anna staying in London and Jack returning home to Blackdown. They have no contact until the homicide case, and it’s only after the novel’s climax that there’s reconciliation between them.
But this is Netflix we’re talking about, so, of course, the romantic drama is kicked up a notch. Sexual tension bubbles over between the still-married couple in the fourth episode, when Jack and Anna’s anger, resentment, and bitterness turn into apologies and desire. Anna explains why she left, and she tells Jack that the time alone was part of her grieving process. “I didn’t want you to make me better, Jack!” she reasons. Their hugging and sobbing turn into a kiss and then more, underscoring the chemistry between the lead actors. By the time the series ends, they are back together and expecting a child.
One side plot that the TV show rightly cuts out is Jack thinking that his new partner, Priya, has a thing for him. While this dynamic gives readers a window into Jack’s view of himself—he thinks he’s hot shit, basically—it also serves to make Priya seem unnecessarily attentive to her man-child boss. Netflix Priya is focused and diligent, making more headway than Jack and eventually cracking his connection to Rachel. Book Priya also reads as more suspicious. (At one point, she leaves while making dinner for Jack…at the exact same time Zoe is murdered. This was a red herring I fell for, leading me to believe Priya was the killer.) There are no sloppy, drunk kisses between Jack and Priya in the Netflix series, which is a wise choice.
The Big Showdown
Before the fight-to-the-death in the TV show’s finale, Jack’s deadbeat sister, Zoe, worries she might become the killer’s next victim, but a distracted Jack brushes her off, insisting she’ll be fine. (How he rose to the rank of detective is, frankly, beyond me.) Zoe’s daughter, Meg, is at a sleepover, and is spared the trauma of being at home while her mother is murdered. In the book, Meg isn’t so lucky. Instead, she’s given a sedative so she sleeps while her mom bleeds to death.
From here, the book continues to resemble a slasher movie as it moves into its climactic showdown scene. Book Anna only enters Richard’s in-laws’s secluded lake house when she hears him scream. Inside, she finds a barely breathing Richard with a severe head injury and multiple stab wounds (which lead to his eventual death), and she discovers Cat Jones hanging from a noose. But Cat isn’t dead yet; it appears she’s set this trap specifically to kill Anna. Cat frees herself from the rope, and Anna frantically runs away from the house. Outside, she finds her (supposedly) dementia-addled mother stumbling around in the dark.
Meanwhile, Jack has made his way to the lake house with Priya in pursuit. Priya shoots Jack in the shoulder, and in the ongoing melée, Cat stabs Alice. Anna escapes with her mother and then accidentally runs Cat over, deducing that Cat committed the murders as revenge for what happened in the woods during Anna’s 16th birthday party. (In the book, it is Cat who was raped that awful night.)
As it turns out, Book Cat seems to have nine lives—Anna’s car doesn’t kill her. Her lives only, finally, run out when Cat lifts her knife as though to stab Anna…and Priya shoots her dead.
The TV version does away with most of this choreography, wisely streamlining the action by pitting Anna solely against Lexy/Catherine and not including Alice. Nor does Priya shoot Jack—though she is still the one who kills Lexy/Catherine! Finally, Richard doesn’t die in Netflix’s adaptation; instead, he’s arrested for assisting Lexy.
Alice’s Secret
In the TV show, Anna definitively learns the real killer’s identity: It’s her mother, Alice. The novel’s ending is much less conclusive re: what Anna does or doesn’t know about her murderous parent.
In Feeney’s novel, Alice confesses to the reader that she’s indeed behind the bloodshed, and her motive stems from a discovery in her daughter’s old bedroom. There, Alice found a suicide note written by teen Anna, one that reveals the events that went on in the woods all those years ago: Catherine was lured out to the forest by teenage “friends” Rachel, Zoe, and Helen, where she was gang-raped. Anna blamed herself for not intervening, and she fled town to escape her guilt. Thus, Alice blames Rachel, Zoe, and Helen for causing her daughter to disappear, and she decides to murder them—and to try to pin the blame on Cat.
In the end, Book Anna isn’t entirely convinced Catherine is the killer. Instead, she wonders if the killer might be her—that she blacked out and committed the crimes while drunk. Meanwhile, Book Alice considers whether her daughter might have figured out the truth…but Feeney ultimately leaves their fates ambiguous enough for the reader to decide.
In contrast, the TV series makes Alice’s involvement—and Anna’s understanding of that involvement—crystal-clear. In Anna’s bedroom, Alice discovers a tape that depicts the events of her 16th birthday, but it is, in fact, Anna’s own rape that is captured on the camcorder, not Catherine’s. This compels Alice to act with bloody vengeance.
The Netflix show ends with an image of a united mother and daughter, both of whom know the whole truth about each other’s experiences. While the novel’s open-ended conclusion is provocative, the adaptation’s final moments are more satisfying because Alice doesn’t come across as psychopathic; despite the violence she has wrought, her motive is clear and her love for her daughter is keenly understood. Much like the events at the heart of His & Hers, there is clearly more than one way to tell this story.