What Is The Ending Of It Could Have Been Her?

This was a fast read for me because I wanted to know what had happened at Thornwood House. Simple act of returning a lost terrier by the main character, Jane, led to her discovering that the terrier’s microchip had been attached to it by a previous owner, a woman who had lived in London. This led to Jane’s memories of her time in London being brought back to the surface 30 years or so prior. The final parts of the book were good as they slowly revealed that several young women who had been employed as au pairs for the Black family had disappeared under mysterious circumstances. In fact, in some of the rooms at Thornwood, the main character discovered that Black had set up these rooms in order to imprison the women against their will. He had used chains to restrain them. It was all slowly revealed to the police and to the public, and the end of the book described the consequences of Black’s actions for the families of the Black’s, as well as for the main character and her family and friends. The book ended rather than being given a neat and tidy solution and instead described the aftermath of Black’s dreadful actions and the ways in which the secrets that he had kept for so long had corroded the families of the Black’s. The book had made me think about the secrets that families keep and the ways in which they can damage families.

What I appreciated most about the last third of It Could Have Been Her was how slowly tighter and tighter it wound until suddenly it snapped into place and revealed the secrets of Thornwood. Jane’s curiosity and her stepson’s amateur sleuthing led the way to the locked rooms of the house, to the horrors of the outdoor outhouse and to the terrible fates of the several prior au pairs. The physical revelations of what actually had transpired at the house of the Black family, a century or more of hidden secrets, were followed by the far more complex and distressing repercussions of said revelations. As the novel proceeded to lay bare the relationships between all the various family members and to uncover the various lies they’d each told, there were some who’d survive the disclosures and others who wouldn’t. Police found the remains of multiple victims on the property, and it was all so terrible for the Black family. I appreciated that instead of having been contrived solely as some sort of plot twist to end the book with, the disclosure of the house’s secrets had been laid out to present the full measures of abuse and secretive dishonest behavior carried on for decades by the various Black family members. Dark and, at times, even very uncomfortable to read, It Could Have Been Her affected me very deeply.

I read ‘It Could Have Been Her’ so fast – the ending was just so good and wrapped up the plot lines so well. The way the threads all came together in the final chapters was so powerful and at times brutal, but also really satisfying. Jane’s search for the truth of what happened to her sister was an investigation and also a journey of discovery, sometimes helped by her dog, and it took her back to Thornwood, the house she had left decades previously. As she delved deeper into the mystery of her sister’s disappearance and the circumstances of her death, she discovered that Thornwood, the Black family home, was not just a creepy old house with strange furniture and decoration. There were hidden rooms, the outside bathroom was chained up and there were hints of things that had happened in the house in the years before the Black family had lived there. In the end police discovered that there were several victims of crime whose bodies had been hidden around the house and the true extent of the monstrous crimes that had taken place at Thornwood was revealed. The house and its dark past had been so well hidden by the Black family, but in the end the truth was revealed and the family’s façade was stripped away to expose the reality of what had been going on. What really affected me though was the way the book dealt with the aftermath of the revelations for the family and the people who had helped Jane to uncover the truth. It wasn’t just a matter of finding out the identity of the perpetrator and then everything being ok. Rather it was a complex and sometimes difficult read as Jewell revealed the personal tragedy of each of the main characters as the truth about their past and their family was revealed. Some of the revelations were to do with identity and parentage and how that had been hidden from them and others to do with desperate choices made in order to avoid detection or to cover their tracks. It was also very sad as some of the characters that I had grown to like and respect were revealed to be flawed in some way and the ways in which they were revealed to be so was devastating. The whole book was a really powerful read and the ending was very atmospheric and left me with a really somber feeling. I felt that I had been given a glimpse into a house that had been the scene of some really dreadful crimes and that I would never be able to look at a ruined house in the same way again. I felt as though I had been allowed to see something that most people wouldn’t ever want to see and that once I had seen it I couldn’t ‘unsee’ it. The house and its dark past would stay with me forever and I would never be able to look at a house that had been damaged by disaster in quite the same way again. The account of what had happened was bleak, but it was also just and it was also hopeful in some ways as well. It was a complex and powerful read, but also a very moving one as well.