I Hope You’re Listening by Tom Ryan [book review]

I Hope You’re Listening Book Summary:

I hope you’re Listen is a young adult novel by Tom Ryan. This book follows Dee Skinner who lives in a small town and everyone seems to know her as the girl who wasn’t taken. Ten years ago while Dee and her friend were playing outside and she wound up witnessing her getting abducted. Even though she told the police all that she could remember it wasn’t enough and her friend Sibby was never seen again. In order to deal with her guilt of not being able to help her friend, she puts all of her focus into a true-crime podcast that’s successful. It gets a lot of listeners each week and she actually helps a lot of missing girls get found.

But what will Dee do when she starts getting these crazy messages that her old friend isn’t dead, but is alive and well. How does this person know? Well, she’s seen her of course.

What I thought about I hope you’re listening:

I actually requested this book off of Netgalley and I’m so glad that I did. For one I really love the cover. I think just about all of us book bloggers have some kind of thing when it comes to covers. I know we shouldn’t really judge a book by its cover but I can never really help it. On top of this, I actually loved the way this book sounds. The blurb really caught my attention and I had to get my hands on it.

The Plot

I love the idea that something tragic happens to the main character and she doesn’t let completely mess her up. Instead, she uses that tragic incident to help out other girls.

So many women and young girls go missing on a day-to-day basis. It’s getting to the point where it’s getting a little out of hand. Police can’t always keep up because they are undermanned or because they run into a dead end. Having a podcast to help these cases is such a good idea even though I think it could really end up leading to trouble. If I didn’t see a few things going wrong I would love the idea of something like this going up. But unfortunately, I can see a mob mentality going up with certain computer detectives.

I have to give props to the author. I absolutely loved all of the characters in this book. They are down-to-earth and very relatable. I can see myself easily becoming friends with Dee and her friends. Most of you probably want characters that also show some representation and that’s the good thing about I hope you’re listening. Two of the main characters are lesbians and start dating each other.

I was able to connect with Dee a little bit and I really liked her best friend. I just hated that her best friend’s uncle got blamed for certain things just because he’s a bit lazy and can never really stand on his own two feet. But I also know that this sort of thing happens a lot in the real world.

If you like books like this then you might want to check out 14 Ways to Die which is another YA thriller.