It Could Have Been Her by Lisa Jewell

It Could Have Been Her is the latest novel by Lisa Jewell, published just a few days ago, in July 2026. Lisa Jewell is one of my absolute favourite authors and I will always buy her books immediately and devour them quickly. In fact, I was so excited about this one, it appears I bought it twice! My copy arrived from Waterstones, then two days later, another one arrived from Amazon. I almost never buy books from Amazon, but I must have been excited about a preorder special offer.

Lisa Jewell writes the very best psychological thrillers and she has nailed it yet again with It Could Have Been Her. The story is all about Jane Trevally, who played a minor role in the previous book – Don’t Let Him In. There are a couple of brief references to the incidents of Don’t Let Him, but it’s not a sequel and there are no spoilers.

Twenty-five years ago, Jane was newly divorced and feeling a bit lost, when she agreed with a handsome man to go back to his house for a drink. But a noise from upstairs startles her, she fears she’s made a mistake and runs.

Some years later, a man gets talking to a woman in a pub. He senses she is broken like him, but finds her interesting and wants to know more about her. It’s a decision he will come to regret…

In the present day, Jane is now 55. She finds a small white dog in her garden. The little dog had been keeping a young girl company at an Airbnb, but now the girl is nowhere to be found. Jane tracks down the dog’s home – the very place where that terrifying incident happened. And she still senses something bad has happened in that house.

Jane is feeling quite lost herself. Now divorced twice, she lives in a large house she can’t afford to maintain with her four dogs. She’d like a bit of adventure in her life. So she turns private investigator, determined to find out more about the dog, the girl and the house…

There are lots of twists and turns and it gets even darker than I expected.

It Could Have Been Her is another triumph from Lisa Jewell. It features likeable characters (and some really dislikeable characters) and not one, but three, interesting houses – the mysterious house, Jane’s own crumbling house and her ex-husband’s glamorous London flat.

If you like a psychological thriller, you won’t read anything better than a Lisa Jewell book. All of her books come very highly recommended by me.

Remarkably, Lisa Jewell doesn’t do any research for her books, but she did share a pile of books on Instagram which had inspired her novel. As I read the scene where Jane was invited back to the house and offered a drink, I thought ‘That was very Fred West’. One of the books which inspired her was a Fred and Rose West biography – Happy Like Murderers by Gordon Burn, which I of course read many years ago because I was a true crime obsessive in my younger years.