It Could Have Been Her
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Jun 23, 2026
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
#1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Jewell brings her “thrilling, chilling” (Chris Whitaker) suspense to this shocking new thriller about a lost dog, a missing woman, and a house of long buried secrets.
Jane Trevally is walking her dogs on her country estate one May afternoon when a small white dog appears. The teenaged girl that had been staying nearby with the dog is nowhere to be found, and Jane decides to return it to his registered owner hours away in London, in the deepest backwaters of Hampstead. But when Jane arrives, she is immediately unsettled—because she has a dark history with this house.
The man who answers the door tells her the dog, Hugo, must have been stolen from the Heath, but Jane very much doubts that is true. Through the window, she catches a glimpse of a haunted-looking woman, not the missing girl she’d hoped to find.
Facing a crossroads similar to the one that first led her to this home twenty-five years ago, Jane knows that the house holds the key—to the missing teenager, to the lost dog, and to dark secrets they’d all rather leave buried.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jane Trevally, a supporting character in Jewell's 2025 thriller, Don't Let Him In, takes center stage in this chilling gothic suspense tale. At the outset, Jane is twice divorced and living in a ramshackle house in Dorset she can't quite summon the courage to leave. Her life changes after she finds a lost dog that neighbors tell her was last seen with a now missing young woman named Rose White. Jane decides to return the dog to the London home registered on its ID chip. When she arrives, the house—situated in the Vale of Health near Hampstead—reminds her of a haunting incident from her past. Then Stuart Tucker, the man who answers the door, claims not to know Rose, and Jane grows increasingly suspicious. She digs into Rose's background with the help of her youngest stepson, Dexter, and together, they unravel the dark history of the family who occupies the Vale of Health house, dredging up Jane's own buried traumas in the process. With a shrewd command of the narrative, Jewell turns a chance encounter into a disturbing treatise on the past's ability to assert itself in ways both unwelcome and unlikely. The author's fans will relish this pitch-black spine-tingler.
