I Hope You're Listening by Tom Ryan

"In her small town, seventeen-year-old Delia “Dee” Skinner is known as the girl who wasn’t taken. Ten years ago she witnessed the abduction of her best friend, Sibby. And though she told the police everything she remembered, it wasn’t enough. Sibby was never seen again.

At night, Dee deals with her guilt by becoming someone else: the Seeker, the voice behind the popular true crime podcast Radio Silent, which features missing persons cases and works with online sleuths to solve them. Nobody knows Dee’s the Seeker, and she plans to keep it that way.

When another little girl in town goes missing, and the case is linked to Sibby’s disappearance, Dee has a chance to get answers with the help of her virtual detectives and the intriguing new girl at school. But how much of her own story is she willing to reveal in order to uncover the truth?"

I really enjoyed the first half of this book. It had an intriguing storyline with the two parallel stories of missing girls, and the MC’s connection to them. I thought the blending of the stories of the original abduction 10 years ago with current events felt very real to how someone with PTSD might experience things. And I loved the relationship between Dee and Sarah, I thought they were super cute together.

I loved the true-crime podcast element of the story. And I thought it was a great touch to show that “armchair detectives” or in this book, they’re called “laptop detectives” can actually do a lot of good in this world. Anytime, aside from true crime podcasts, when the idea of at-home detectives gets brought up it’s as a joke. And I loved that this book treats them with care and seriousness. And shows how sometimes a motivated group of individuals can do a lot of good.

What fell apart for me was the ending. I don’t want to spoil it, but it felt a little rushed when so much care was given to setting up the story at the beginning. I felt like a lot of the main mystery was just explained in a second-hand way that was kind of disappointing after everything else had been shown to us so well. But I really liked how Dee’s story wrapped up and I feel hopeful about her future.

I read this book as a free digital eARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I Hope You're Listening is expected to be released on October 6th, 2020.

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Genre: ya, contemporary, mystery, lgbtqia+

Representation: lesbian/queer

Content Warnings: kidnapping of children and adults, PTSD, guns, violence