It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell: A Missing Dog, a Creepy House, and One Very Chic Amateur PI
- genredpodcast
- 6 hours ago
- 15 min read
This week, we’re talking about It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell, a psychological thriller involving a missing girl, a crumbling London mansion, a deeply suspicious family, and an amateur investigator who immediately won us over by naming one of her dogs Brian.
Naturally, we have things to say.
This was Elyse’s pick, which is notable because Elyse voluntarily selected a thriller. Growth.
Katy liked the book. Elyse liked parts of the book. Jane Trevally was beloved by all. The twists, however, did not exactly have us falling out of our chairs.
But before we got into Thornwood, the missing women, and the family that should have started therapy several decades earlier, we had a few other things to discuss.
First, we need to discuss I Will Find You
Katy spent Sunday exactly as the television gods intended: starting and finishing an entire Netflix series from the couch.
The show was I Will Find You, based on the Harlan Coben novel, and the cast was stacked.
Sam Worthington. Britt Lower. Milo Ventimiglia, who Katy somehow did not immediately identify as Jess from Gilmore Girls because she has never watched Gilmore Girls.
A devastating confession.
Katy loved the series right up until the final episode, when the ending took a turn she did not particularly enjoy. We cannot tell you exactly what happened because spoilers, but it involved the kind of thriller trope that can either work perfectly or make you question every choice that brought you there.
The series was still deeply watchable, extremely bingeable, and ideal for a Sunday when you are too tired to do anything productive.
Which was exactly where we were after a birthday party the night before.
We were sleepy. We needed a shut-in day. We deserved it.
Also, where is the next Sarah J. Maas title?
Elyse is back with another urgent publishing question.
Where is the title of the next ACOTAR book?
We are now in mid-July. The book is supposedly coming soon. We do not have a title. We do not have a cover. We do not have a synopsis. We do not even know whose book it is.
Publishing usually gives us stages.
Announcement. Title. Cover. Synopsis. Preorder push. Fans creating sixteen theories based on the color of one flower.
Instead, we have silence.
Sarah J. Maas has said that the next books may function as one enormous story split across multiple releases. The current page counts being discussed also suggest that one book may be more setup-heavy while the next delivers the giant payoff.
Which has led us back to the Avengers theory.
We remain convinced there is a possibility that ACOTAR, Throne of Glass, and Crescent City are all heading toward one giant crossover conflict.
Elyse would love that.
Katy is tired of war.
And if the final villain turns out to be space aliens, Katy would like to formally remove herself from the narrative.
This may require its own YouTube video because we have far more to say than one introductory podcast tangent can reasonably contain.
What is It Could Have Been Her about?
When a missing teenager’s dog appears near Jane Trevally's home, Jane does what any stylish woman with too much curiosity and several dogs would do.
She investigates.
The dog’s microchip leads Jane to Thornwood, a deteriorating mansion in Hampstead that she immediately recognizes.
Twenty-five years earlier, Jane was brought to Thornwood by a man she met while drinking at a bar. The situation quickly became threatening, and Jane barely escaped.
Now the house is connected to another missing young woman.
Jane becomes convinced that the girl’s disappearance is tied to Thornwood, the family still living there, and the night Jane has spent decades trying not to think about.
A normal reason to become an amateur PI.
Genre check: psychological thriller, family drama, and one very creepy house
We landed on psychological thriller, though Elyse felt the book leaned more heavily into family drama than she expected.
There is a mystery. There are murders. There is a missing girl. There is a secret room in a giant decaying house.
But the book is also deeply interested in addiction, childhood trauma, emotional abuse, family loyalty, and the ways people repeat the damage done to them.
The biggest tropes and themes include:
Amateur sleuth
Missing woman
Past and present timelines
Multiple POVs
Generational trauma
Addiction
Family secrets
Interconnected characters
Creepy children
Creepy clowns
Creepy houses
People avoiding therapy at all costs
The book gave us shades of Sharp Objects, The Watcher, and a haunted-house story where the house is not technically haunted.
It just contains one of the worst families imaginable.
Welcome to Thornwood
Thornwood may be the best character in the book.
It is a huge, decaying Hampstead house surrounded by overgrown land and decades of terrible decisions.
The house feels gothic without anything supernatural actually happening. It has secret rooms, deteriorating bedrooms, buried bodies, and a family that seems emotionally
incapable of leaving.
Everyone knows the house.
Everyone is unsettled by the house.
And yet the Black family remains inside it, slowly collapsing alongside the walls.
The descriptions of Thornwood were one of the strongest parts of the book. We could picture every grimy bedroom, hidden hallway, and increasingly alarming corner.
It was giving Amityville Horror, only with less paranormal activity and more unresolved family trauma.
Jane Trevally, private investigator in her own mind
Jane Trevally was the clear standout.
She is chic. She is eccentric. She has excellent clothes. She has several dogs. She has married well, divorced well, and somehow still ended up living in a crumbling estate she cannot afford to maintain.
She has never had a particularly traditional career, but she once considered becoming a private investigator and is now very ready to revisit that dream.
Jane also has a genuinely lovely relationship with her stepchildren from both marriages.
She never had biological children, but she remained close to all of them after both divorces.
They know one another. They worry about her. They attend rooftop pizza parties together. One of them wears the expensive clothes Jane left behind after her marriage ended.
Her stepson Dexter becomes her unofficial investigative partner, helping her research the case and work through clues whenever she comes into London.
By the end, they are discussing whether the future detective agency should be called Trevally and Son.
We support this business venture.
We would also watch a Jane Trevally Netflix series immediately.
Our casting choice is Olivia Colman.
This is correct and final.
The Black family is doing terribly
Inside Thornwood, we meet the Black family.
Jessamine Black is Daisy’s mother. She is a severe alcoholic who rarely leaves her bed and has complete emotional control over everyone living around her.
Annie Black is Jessamine’s mother. She appears to be a stuffy old woman trying to maintain some version of normalcy inside a house where normalcy died years ago.
Jasper Black is Jessamine’s brother.
Jasper disappeared years earlier and may or may not have joined the circus because he has been obsessed with clowns since childhood.
He calls himself Patches.
That is not a joke.
Then there is Allen Black, the family patriarch, who is absent in the present-day timeline but appears in chapters set in the past.
From the beginning, Allen feels controlling and suspicious.
It turns out we were not suspicious enough.
Stuart deserves better
Stuart is a drifter who enters a relationship with Jessamine and eventually becomes trapped inside Thornwood.
He is also an alcoholic, but he follows strict rules about his drinking. He knows exactly how much he consumes and tries to keep himself within certain limits.
Jessamine has no such system.
Stuart becomes the only real parental figure in Daisy’s life. He cooks for her, cares for her, and stays partly because he is terrified of what will happen to Daisy if he leaves.
At first, it is easy to become frustrated with him.
He has money. He has children elsewhere. He could technically walk out of the house.
But the book slowly reveals that Stuart is being emotionally abused.
Jessamine threatens to harm herself whenever he leaves. She controls his movements. She isolates him from his family. She makes him responsible for her survival.
At one point, Stuart leaves Thornwood for dinner with his daughter.
Daisy has to distract Jessamine so he can escape.
When he returns, Jessamine has destroyed the house, harmed herself, attacked him, cut off part of his ear, and locked him inside Thornwood’s hidden room.
A calm evening.
The gender reversal forced us to confront how differently we view abuse when the victim is a man.
If Stuart were a woman, we would immediately describe him as trapped. Because he is a man, it is tempting to ask why he does not simply leave.
But Stuart is trapped.
Not by a locked door, but by fear, manipulation, guilt, and his love for Daisy.
It’s giving... Sharp Objects
When we asked what the book was giving, Katy immediately said Sharp Objects.
The family secrets. The unsettling house. The damaged women. The outsider entering a closed family system and slowly realizing that everyone is hiding something.
Elyse also saw shades of The Watcher because Thornwood has such a strong hold over the story.
There is nothing magical about the house.
There is no ghost.
There is no curse.
But everyone behaves as though Thornwood has physically trapped them there.
The house holds the family’s history, their secrets, their crimes, and the identities they have built around surviving inside it.
Did we like it?
Katy did.
Elyse is still deciding how much she liked it.
Katy loved Jane immediately, enjoyed the audiobook, and moved through the story quickly.
She thought the creepy-house atmosphere worked, the many perspectives were manageable, and the family connections came together well.
Elyse felt the book was caught between two different stories.
One version was a slightly zany amateur-sleuth mystery starring Jane Trevally.
The other was a bleak family drama about addiction, abuse, and generational trauma.
Both versions had strong moments, but together they did not always feel like the thriller Elyse expected.
The biggest issue was the lack of one enormous, satisfying twist.
The book reveals its secrets gradually. There are several possible answers, but by the end, we more or less knew what the answers would be.
For some readers, that slow accumulation of truth will work.
For Elyse, a thriller needs at least one moment where she has to stop and reconsider everything.
That moment never fully came.
Spoiler time: Allen Black was much worse than expected
Once we entered the spoiler section, we finally got into what was happening inside Thornwood.
Allen Black had been bringing young women home for years.
He referred to them as au pairs, but many of the women were sex workers he brought into the house under the guise of offering work.
Eventually, he stopped pretending they were there to help with the children.
He drugged women.
He imprisoned them inside a hidden bedroom.
And he killed them.
Allen's chapters initially frame his behavior as though he is doing everyone a favor. The women simply leave when the arrangement stops working. He drives them back into town.
Nothing to see here.
Sure, Allen.
Their bodies are later discovered buried on the property.
There are many bodies.
What did Annie know?
Annie knew far more than she admitted.
She knew about the hidden room.
She knew women had disappeared.
She knew where the bodies were buried, both literally and figuratively.
What remains unclear is whether she actively helped Allen commit the murders or simply helped cover them up afterward.
We wanted more answers here.
Was Annie involved from the beginning?
Did she participate?
Did she know exactly what Allen was doing while it happened?
Or did she learn the truth later and decide protecting the family mattered more than protecting his victims?
The book leaves enough ambiguity for multiple possibilities, but never gives us the deeper reveal we were waiting for.
Who is Daisy’s real mother?
Daisy grows up believing Jessamine is her mother.
While investigating her family, she finds photographs of Allen’s victims and immediately recognizes a connection to one woman, Claire Connolly.
Claire was a local young woman who came to Thornwood after finding the family’s cat.
Allen invited her inside.
He drugged her, imprisoned her, and eventually impregnated her.
Claire gave birth to Daisy.
Jessamine became jealous of Allen's attachment to Claire and killed both of them.
She murdered Claire.
She murdered her father.
Then she took Daisy and raised her as her own child.
Except she did not really raise her.
Jessamine neglected Daisy, resented her, and eventually became one more abusive adult in Daisy’s life.
Jasper really did join the circus
For much of the book, Jasper feels like he could be the real villain.
We meet him as a creepy child obsessed with clowns and fascinated by the young women coming into the house.
That combination does not usually lead anywhere healthy.
But Jasper is ultimately another victim of Thornwood.
He witnessed the aftermath of Jessamine killing Claire and Allen.
He was already struggling, and what he saw pushed him even further away from reality.
Eventually, he leaves and joins the circus under the name Patches.
This is both deeply sad and exactly what we were told would happen.
Daisy’s disappearance
Daisy disappears after confronting Jasper about Claire.
Jasper tells her that Annie knows the full truth.
Daisy returns to Thornwood and confronts her grandmother.
During the argument, Annie falls down the stairs and dies.
Stuart knows what happened but refuses to tell Jane because he wants to protect Daisy.
Jane eventually corners him and gets enough of the story to understand why Daisy ran.
Later, Jessamine confesses to killing Annie.
She appears to be taking responsibility to protect Daisy, but the entire confession is filtered through a woman who is severely addicted, deeply traumatized, and not always connected to reality.
The police decide that she needs psychiatric care and addiction treatment.
Which is the first responsible decision anyone in this family has made.
The real story may be trauma, not murder
The most interesting part of the book may be the parallel between Jane and Jessamine.
Both grew up in crumbling estates.
Both had addicted parents.
Both were neglected.
Both lost people.
Both entered adulthood carrying the damage of their childhoods.
Jane built a life outside of that damage.
She formed close relationships with her stepchildren. She cares for animals. She created a family that loves her. She has not necessarily processed everything in therapy, because apparently no one in this book believes in therapy, but she found ways to move forward.
Jessamine did not.
She became an addict.
She became an abuser.
She repeated the cycle.
That contrast raises the book’s strongest question.
How much of who we become is shaped by what happened to us, and how much is shaped by what we choose to do with it?
The thriller elements did not always work for Elyse, but the exploration of trauma absolutely did.
The twists were not twisting
For a thriller, the final reveals were surprisingly predictable.
By the end, we knew Allen was connected to the missing women.
We knew Jessamine had done something terrible.
We knew Daisy’s parentage was tied to Claire.
We knew Annie had helped hide the truth.
There were different ways the exact details could have landed, but the general shape of the ending was clear.
We kept expecting one final reveal.
Maybe Jessamine had committed more murders.
Maybe Annie was the true killer.
Maybe Allen was not responsible for every body on the property.
Maybe someone’s entire version of events was false.
Instead, the book mostly confirmed what we had already guessed.
The twists were disturbing.
They were not wowing.
Favorite moments
Jane calling her dog Brian
This was the moment Katy decided Jane Trevally was perfect.
A dog named Brian.
No notes.
Jane’s rooftop pizza party
Jane invites all of her stepchildren from both marriages to a rooftop pizza party with champagne.
They all know one another.
They all care about her.
They all worry that her amateur investigation is going to get her killed.
One of them tells Jane that her desire to save Daisy makes sense because Jane has always wanted to save people, including all of them.
Extremely rude of this thriller to make us emotional.
Dexter wearing Jane’s clothes
Whenever Dexter appears, Jane notices that he is wearing one of the expensive pieces she left behind after her divorce.
A Ralph Lauren blouse.
A pashmina.
Something fabulous draped dramatically over his shoulders.
Jane is simply pleased that her clothes went to a good home.
We love them.
Stuart returning from dinner
The scene where Stuart returns from dinner with his daughter completely changes how we understand his relationship with Jessamine.
It is the moment the book makes clear that he is not simply passive or weak.
He is being abused.
Jessamine’s bedroom
The descriptions of Jessamine drinking in bed while Thornwood deteriorates around her were vivid and deeply upsetting.
She barely leaves the room.
She drinks enormous amounts of alcohol.
She is physically falling apart.
And yet she remains the most powerful person in the house because everyone else has learned to organize their lives around her behavior.
Ratings
Katy gave It Could Have Been Her ⭐⭐⭐⭐.
She really enjoyed the audiobook, loved Jane Trevally, and would absolutely read another mystery featuring Jane and Dexter. She still had questions about Annie and the earlier murders, but the atmosphere and characters worked for her.
Elyse gave it ⭐⭐⭐.
She thought the book was well written and found the trauma parallels fascinating, but the many POVs and slower family-drama structure did not fully work for her.
She also wanted a bigger twist.
Elyse is willing to read another Lisa Jewell book before deciding whether Lisa Jewell is simply not for her.
A generous ruling.
Final thoughts
It Could Have Been Her is a psychological thriller that may work best for readers who enjoy character-driven suspense, damaged families, gothic houses, and mysteries that reveal themselves gradually.
The book has murder, kidnapping, hidden rooms, and buried bodies, but the real focus is on the damage families pass down when no one ever confronts what happened.
Jane Trevally is delightful.
Thornwood is horrifying.
Stuart deserved better.
Jessamine needed help years ago.
And the entire Black family should have been legally required to attend group therapy before remaining inside that house.
The twists may not have fully landed for both of us, but there was plenty here to discuss.
And we would still like the Jane Trevally detective series.
Preferably starring Olivia Colman.
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Fast Facts
Book: It Could Have Been Her
Author: Lisa Jewell
Genre: Psychological thriller
Setting: Hampstead, London, Thornwood, and Jane’s crumbling country estate
POV: Multiple POVs across past and present timelines
Audiobook: Full cast
Vibe: Missing dog, chic amateur sleuth, creepy mansion, suspicious family, buried secrets, several alcohol problems, and absolutely no meaningful therapy
Tropes and themes: Amateur sleuth, missing woman, family secrets, past and present timelines, generational trauma, addiction, emotional abuse, hidden identity, creepy house, interconnected characters, buried crimes, and morally complicated family loyalty
Spice level: No spice
There is sexual violence and disturbing sexual content connected to the crimes, but this is not a romantic or spicy book.
Genre’d rating: Katy gave it 4 stars. Elyse gave it 3 stars.
Best for readers who like: Character-driven thrillers, gothic houses, family mysteries, amateur detectives, multiple timelines, Lisa Jewell, Sharp Objects, and stories where the real villain may be generational trauma
Mini FAQs
What is It Could Have Been Her about?
It Could Have Been Her follows Jane Trevally, an eccentric dog lover who finds a missing teenager’s terrier near her country home. The dog leads Jane back to Thornwood, a deteriorating London mansion she narrowly escaped twenty-five years earlier. Jane begins investigating the girl’s disappearance and uncovers a connection between the missing teenager, the Black family, and her own past.
Is It Could Have Been Her spoiler-free?
The first section of our episode is spoiler-free. We introduce the characters, explain the setup, and share our initial reactions. Once the spoiler alarm sounds, we discuss the murders, Daisy’s parentage, Jessamine’s confession, and the full history of Thornwood.
Is It Could Have Been Her scary?
It is disturbing rather than traditionally scary. There are no supernatural elements, but the book includes kidnapping, murder, addiction, emotional abuse, sexual violence, buried bodies, and one extremely unsettling house.
Is It Could Have Been Her a psychological thriller?
Yes, though it also leans heavily into domestic drama and family trauma. Readers expecting a fast, twist-heavy thriller may find it slower and more character-focused than expected.
Does It Could Have Been Her have multiple POVs?
Yes. The story moves between Jane, members of the Black family, Stuart, and other characters across past and present timelines. The structure reveals the history of Thornwood gradually.
Is the It Could Have Been Her audiobook good?
Yes. The audiobook uses a full cast, which helps distinguish the many perspectives. However, listeners who speed up their audiobooks may need to pay close attention because there are several narrators, accents, and timeline shifts.
Who is Jane Trevally?
Jane Trevally is the amateur sleuth at the center of the book. She is eccentric, stylish, wealthy-adjacent, devoted to dogs, and close with the stepchildren from both of her previous marriages. She also previously appeared in Lisa Jewell’s Don’t Let Him In.
Do you need to read Don’t Let Him In first?
No. Jane appeared in Don’t Let Him In, but It Could Have Been Her can be read as a standalone. The previous book provides more context about Jane’s earlier involvement in a mystery, but it is not required.
Is It Could Have Been Her very twisty?
Not especially. The book contains several dark revelations, but they build gradually and are fairly predictable by the final section. Katy still enjoyed the resolution, while Elyse wanted one larger, more surprising twist.
Who is Daisy’s real mother?
Spoiler warning: Daisy’s biological mother is Claire Connolly, one of the women Allen Black imprisoned inside Thornwood. Jessamine killed Claire and Allen, then raised Daisy as her own daughter.
What happened at Thornwood?
Allen Black kidnapped and murdered multiple women inside the house. Annie helped conceal the crimes, though the extent of her direct involvement remains unclear. Jessamine later killed Allen and Claire after becoming jealous of their relationship and took Claire’s baby, Daisy.
Will there be another Jane Trevally book?
The ending leaves room for Jane and Dexter to investigate another case together. Nothing is confirmed within the book, but we would happily read a Trevally and Son mystery series.
What’s next on Genre’d
Next on Genre’d its Katy's pick and we’re reading Thornbird by E. Kennedy.
Yes, E. Kennedy is Elle Kennedy of Off-Campus fame.
Apparently, she is also writing YA thrillers now.
The book involves a serial killer, and Katy has already started it.
Catch that episode next, and in the meantime, remember to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
And as always: no genre shaming unless it’s funny.