What first caught my attention was the cover. I Hope You're Listening was an enjoyable book with a good mystery inside and likable characters. Small towns with mysteries are always a promising premise. Incorporating podcasts in added an extra layer.

I Hope You're Listening
by Tom Ryan
Nancy Drew you have some competition. Okay this is not just your regular mystery story, it's a story of redemption, acceptance, and realization. Young Dee has faced a problem all her life. Her best friend was kidnapped right before her eyes. She was left tied up, and alone while the kidnappers left with Sibbe. Now at 17 she has reached out using the internet to solve other missing cases. Having learned at that early age she is not doing this for notoriety or even notice. She wants to help, she wants to bring people home,nothing more. This LGBTQ book shows that humanity is not the labels we place on each other, but how we stand up for one another when the chips are down. I have a great idea, and a concept that needs to be talked about. What can we do to help others?

Podcasts mysteries are trendy now and this is a pretty good take. I liked the premise of an unsolved crime being linked with a current one, and the idea of a teenage girl being behind a successful podcast. The first half takes a while to get going but the second half is twisty and action-packed. The resolutions to both crimes are pretty satisfying to me.

What I struggled with is the main character, Dee, not being very sympathetic and fully convincing. Though I understand she is avoiding remembering what happened to her because of her trauma, it doesn't excuse the way she treated her best friend, Burke. And while I was happy to see queer representation in teenage relationships, I thought it was strange that she would trust a random person over her own best friend when it came to investigating the case. Especially when she knew it was his family at stake. I also wish the podcast is actually linked to the cases, instead of having a separate storyline about it. Overall, an enjoyable mystery but not as amazing as I had hoped.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Albert Whitman & Company for providing me with a free e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I am a huge fan of the book“Sadie” and after reading the summary of this book I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to read it. Of course, I knew my expectations were almost impossible to fulfil. Nonetheless, I found I Hope You're Listening to be a fantastic YA thriller. It is a fast paced, tense mystery novel that follows seventeen year old Delia or Dee. Ten years ago Dee witnessed the abduction of her best friend, Sibby. Unfortunately, Sibby was never found.

In response to her best friend’s abduction, Dee now does a podcast that helps find missing people. She is known as The Seeker on the podcast in order to remain anonymous. However, another little girl goes missing in the town and it seems the case is linked to Sibby’s disappearance. Risking her anonymity and so much more Dee decides to get answers by investigating the case.

Wow! What a wonderfully, suspenseful mystery! This is a great read for mystery and true crime lovers (and those of us addicted to podcasts). There is so much more to unpack in this novel than just the missing girl. It takes you on a bit of an emotional rollercoaster ride. I also loved that there is also some great representation in the book between minorities (particularly the mention that their cases of missing people go under reported and under searched), and LGBTQ rep. Overall, I think this book has a little bit of everything that one could look for in a well written story. So I definitely recommend checking this one out!

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC copy of 'I Hope You're Listening'!!
Wow wow wow!!! This book was amazing! Normally, YA thrillers are either too cheesy, don't have a strong plot, or strong characters. This book had it all, interesting characters, and a great plot. The last half of this book was so great I couldn't put it down. I read it all in one sitting. This is my first time reading a book from Tom Ryan and I will definitely be checking out his other work.

Seven year old Dee is playing hide and seek with her friend in the woods when Sibby is taken. Ten years later we find Dee still struggling with what happened that day, blaming herself and trying to help other missing people through her anonymous podcast 'Radio Silent'. Another abduction rocks the small town and Dee finds herself at the centre of a media storm once again. Can she work past her issues to help solve the case and possibly discover what happened to Sibby all those years ago?

This really was a book of two halves...the first half was quite slow and angsty (understandably so considering what Dee had gone through) and then the second half suddenly becomes action packed and full of drama, I was on the edge of my seat! I loved the different mysteries that were being uncovered at the same time and thought the use of the podcast transcripts worked really well. My only issue is that a couple of those mysteries were solved seemingly out of no where but other than that I thought it was great... I especially liked her Dad, he added a nice touch of humour to the story. I would really recommend this if you like a good mystery, it certainly kept me guessing!

Thank you Netgalley and Albert Whitman & Company for providing me with a digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

Something happens to her best friend that traumatizes Dee. Now Dee has to go on with life and we rejoin her ten years later. The story tells how Dee is still coping with what happened and how she is actively trying to make a difference in other people’s lives. Then something happens that brings the past into the present and Dee has to make some difficult decisions.

This is a great book for high school students to read. It can open up discussions about peer relationships, traumatic situations, kidnappings, podcasts, making differences, personal safety, and media involvement. I could see students acting out different scenes or maybe creating their own podcasts.

I enjoyed the book so much that I couldn’t put it down! The story was captivating and exciting. I wanted to find out what would happen and how Dee resolves her issues. I would highly recommend this for a high school library.

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.

I so wanted to love this book but for me it fell a little flat. The storyline was interesting and had so much potential but I just didn't connect with the story like I wanted to. The book seemed a little juvenile to me, making me think it would be a good recommendation for a younger reader, such as someone in the early years of high school or a mature 8th grader.

I gave this book 4 stars out of 5, although for the most part while I was reading it I thought of it as a 2 or 3 stars. I love books that use podcasts as an extra added depth to the story the author is trying to tell and this book did a pretty good job, not the best I've read but it added to the substance to the novel. I liked Dee our main character who uses a pseudonym for her podcast, she just wants to help bring awareness and hope fully new clues to missing persons cases. Especially after we find out that her reason behind this is because her best friend was kidnapped when they were children. Dee is also a lesbian and I felt like it was done very naturally especially as an lgbtqa+ person myself. I also loved the twists and turns of the mysteries in this book, and yes there are multiple mysteries. A couple of things that felt awkward to me were Burke's character and the instalove with Sarah. Burke was a great side character but I felt like the author didn't really know how to make Burke fit into the story more effortlessly, he was kind of bench when his character had the potential to really add more to the story. Sarah was awesome and I loved how Dee and her developed except they went to instalove pretty quickly which just turned out to make awkward reading because Sarah ended up pretty important character but she didn't have much personality except to get Dee talking in the book. Besides these few complaints the story was well written and the twists thought out nicely.

This was a roller coaster from beginning to end and I was captivated! A young woman has her sister kidnapped in front of her eyes and on the ten year anniversary weird things start to happen. She starts a podcast to honor those that are lost and try to find them. But clues start leading back to her sister maybe being alive??? And then a neighbor goes missing - who used to live in her old house? Coincidence? This book had me guessing until the LAST PAGE. I honestly didn’t know who to believe. Well written. Highly recommend. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

a “sadie” wannabe that doesn’t quite pull off the podcast and missing-girl-search narrative.

i’m a sucker for podcasts within books, especially in audiobook form with decent production and different narrators for interviewees. i can see "i hope your listening" being a fun audiobook.

as a story, however, it fell short for me. notably, i couldn't get over the title of the podcast – "radio silent." while "radio silent" is a common phrase, the handful of similarities between "i hope you're listening" and "radio silence" by alice oseman were too significant for me to completely ignore:
- a secret podcast created by a teen
- key phrases "radio silent/radio silence" and "i hope you're listening/i hope somebody is listening"
- teen neighbor/friend loves the podcast
- podcast host and neighbor become friends
- neighbor eventually finds out their friend is the host of their favorite podcast
- quest to find missing friend/family member

the podcast itself was rather unbelievable as a podcast. each episode was too short and did not have enough content to warrant being as popular as it was stated to be. the same goes for the plot of the book itself; the general structure and ideas are there, but the execution is lacking. the central mystery is predictable, though whether that is a problem or not depends on the reader. more important to me is the storytelling. there are several plot points that are glossed over, as if the author didn't quite know how to resolve them and so skimmed over them in the hopes that readers wouldn't notice that things don't quite add up.

overall, i had a fun time with "i hope you're listening," but i felt let down by the end. the story just didn't quite add up.

thank you to netgalley and albert whitman & company for an e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

I just want to start this off by saying that I am not a mystery reader. As a genre, I normally avoid it. I think I normally find the stories unrealistic, and the characters irrational. While both of those elements were present in this book, I really loved the way it explored the mysteries and the surrounding cases.

I Hope You’re Listening is the tale of Dee, the girl who was left behind. Ten years earlier, her best friend Sibby was abducted while they played together, and she was never found. Trying to deal with her guilt of not being able to save her, Dee runs a true crime podcast focused on missing persons cases. After another little girl disappears from Sibby’s former house, Dee is forced to relive and rediscover the events of ten years before.

I know some other reviewers have complained about the podcast elements, but I really loved them. I found Vanessa and Nia’s cases super interesting, and I loved watching them develop. I felt like the podcast really added an element that I’d never seen before, that made this different than other mysteries. The podcast also allowed us to get to know Dee a bit better, which I loved.

I was a bit disappointed by the ending of this, but it was minor disappointment. The mystery involving Sibby was done excellently, I was even getting creeped out by the end. I was invested and curious as to what had happened to her the entire time, which is essential in a mystery. It wrapped up in the best way possible, making the writing of Layla’s case seem even worse. I felt like her case wrapped up way too quickly, and without much foreshadowing. It felt like it came out of nowhere, and just felt slightly anticlimactic.

I didn’t care too much about Sarah and Dee’s romance. It was a small part of the story thankfully, but I almost feel like it needed a bit more page time to really develop. Instead of feeling like Sarah was an essential part of the story, an independent character, she felt like she was only there to be the love interest. They got together too fast for my tastes, and I just never connected to either of them.

Despite complaining about both the romance, and the resolution of one of the mysteries, I really enjoyed this book! It felt unique, and I was super invested in the story. I’d definitely recommend to fans of mystery!

Thanks to Tom Ryan and Netgalley for providing a free copy in exchange for an honest review!

Dee has been haunted for years by the disappearance of her best friend, Sibby, which happened right in front of her. The survivor's guilt drives her to create a podcast that helps investigate missing persons cases, sometimes ending with the person being found, sometimes not. When another girl in her town goes missing, and the case is linked to Sibby's disappearance, Dee is drawn to help, but she'll get pulled in deeper than she bargained for.
This fresh piece from Ryan will have readers compulsively drawn in from the beginning. The everyday diversity is refreshing, and the plot is twisty and wonderful. For fans of "Sadie", and "I Killed Zoe Spanos".

This was so much fun. I wasn't really sure what to expect from this story since YA mystery can be so hit and miss but this kept me guessing till the end and had many unexpected turns. I loved the characters and podcasts always make for such a cool atmosphere in stories. Would highly recommend.

I really wanted to love this one. From what I read about it beforehand it sounded like I Hope You’re Listening would be a novel in the same vein - a thriller/mystery story interspersed with podcast transcriptions weaving together into a cohesive, multi-layered story.

When she was seven, Dee Skinner and her best friend, Sibby, got captured while they were playing out in the woods. Sibby was taken. Dee was left behind. At 17, she carries the survivor’s guilt with her constantly. As a way of manifesting that energy into something useful, she’s started a podcast through which she anonymously highlights missing person cases and, sometimes, with the help of her listeners, helps solve them. She looks into all sorts of cases, but not Sibby’s. Until another young girl gets taken from the house Dee used to live in, and suddenly Dee can’t ignore her past anymore.

There was a lot of potential in this story and this novel, especially in terms of the thriller/mystery aspects. As the story picked up pace in the last third of the book, I did feel myself inching closer to the edge of my seat, curious and anxious for Dee. She’s a good protagonist, coping with complicated feelings about her trauma, with a conviction and perseverance I’m in awe of. And yet, I also felt this novel falls into a lot of “YA traps”, not only in terms of the writing, which is especially juvenile at the start, but in the characterisation especially, and the narrative doesn’t really do the work of earning that. There’s the ex-friend turned mean girl (who actually turns out to not be mean at all in the end, but the shift from the start of the book to a sudden understanding between the girls is startling), the supportive best friend (who turns out to Actually Also Be Going Through His Own Things), the protective parents (who we basically don’t hear from), etc. A lot of it remains very flat, only alluding to a depth we’re never actually shown.

And this is a problem I had with more parts of the novel, also in terms of storytelling. There are a number of allusions to police screwing up Sibby’s case when she went missing, but never any more info than that. The side plot that Dee explores through her podcast felt like a very separate thing from the rest of the novel, and didn’t really integrate well. When you do choose to use this dual narrative, I think both narratives need to enhance each other, and I don’t think this did. It felt more like I was being told the same thing twice but in a slightly different form. I don’t want to compare this book to Sadie too much, because obviously they’re separate, but I think that’s a book that did this very well. Also - Dee’s podcast. It was really unclear to me why it got so popular so suddenly, and it didn’t become clear to me from what we were reading. As an avid podcast listener myself, it lacked a degree of realism and research that really took me out of the story.

Same goes with Dee’s relationship with Sarah. I loved that there was at no point an “explanation” for Dee being queer. It sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud, but in so many books you’ll find a “I’d never really been interested in boys”-esque explanation that is completely unnecessary and often very cringy. Dee simply likes Sarah, and her friend can tease her, and her parents can be happy for her, without it ever being a big deal or a point of discussion. Breath of fresh air! And still… I really wish we could’ve seen a bit more of their relationship develop.

I think that’s maybe my main problem with this book in the end - it’s trying to be too many things, all of which would’ve been so interesting and cool on their own, or a couple combined, but all of them together it’s too much, and nothing really gets enough space to breathe. Resolutions are too easy, supposedly logical even though they’re just really not. Character arcs are non-existent. Themes are rushed. Really bummed that this one wasn’t what I was hoping it could be.

I adore books where there is a teenage detective and they solve crimes on a podcast. I am addicted to true crime podcasts, so I love when a book takes on that form!

Dee is pretty likeable. She's a loner, after her best friend gets kidnapped when they were kids. So as she is older, she decides she wants to do something to help other people who have loved ones missing. She starts a podcast anonymously. No one knows except her best friend who helped with the technical side of things. 10 years after her friend went missing, another girl did. She decides to take this on her podcast. Then sh*t gets real.

I loved the mystery. I didn't see the end coming. The action had me on the edge of my seat. This book gave me a lot of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder vibes, but was different enough I didn't feel like I was reading the same book.

If you like YA thrillers definitely give this one a try!

I was very excited when I received this arc and even though it took me forever to actually get around to it this book lived up to all of the expectations. My first Tom Ryan book was Keep This to Yourself and this was every bit as good. There's just something about mysteries surrounding childhood friends and the surviving friend doing their best to figure out what happened that Tom just excels at. I'm also not sure what it says about me to love that very niche mystery says about me?

I loved everything about this, the way the tension slowly ratchets up, the way I felt I was solving the case right alongside Dee only for the twist to surprise me in the best way possible with all the clues right there and just not assembled in any kind of way I would have put them together. The side characters were also just great; Burke and Dee's father were clear standouts for me. Dee's father in particular, that man is gonna stick with me for a while. The friends lovers with Sarah and Dee was also v cute, love that for them. Dee as a protagonist I found to be highly relatable and I was rooting for her at every turn as she tried to process past trauma and navigate the current situation she found herself in.

Also I'm not a person that usually says that a book has certain vibes, but the autumnal/wintery vibes were here for me. If you're looking for those, here they are. 10/10 would highly recommend this one. I could not and did not want to put this book down almost from the moment that I read the first chapter.

WARNING: Be prepared to hold this book tight after reading.*

I Hope You’re Listening by Tom Ryan is an exceptional novel about loss, grief, and life after tragedy all wrapped up in a perfect mystery. IHYL centers around Dee Skinner, an introverted girl who anonymously runs a true-crime podcast that features active missing person cases. She also happens to be the girl who witnessed the abduction of her best friend, Sibby, when they were seven.

Ten years later, Dee is still haunted by the events that transpired and riddled with guilt that she was the girl left behind. When a girl goes missing in her town almost ten years exactly since Sibby’s abduction, Dee struggles with whether to get involved and as she finds herself getting caught in the middle, her podcast anonymity is threatened. Dee has to confront who she was with who she wants to be, and what that means for those around her, her listeners, and most importantly herself.

I am a huge true crime lover so the premise of IHYL was very intriguing; however, being someone who is obsessed with murder mysteries, I was worried whether it would keep me interested, but it 100% did! Ryan’s writing style is so enjoyable, easy to read, and allows you to fall into the book and see the story play out through Dee’s eyes. This 1st person POV book jumps between the present day and the day of Sibby's abduction (ten years earlier). Some chapters give a transcript of Dee’s podcast (which I especially enjoyed). It is such a beautifully written and laid out story. My favorite part of a mystery is trying to solve it along with the main character and as Dee dives into the mysteries around her it was so much fun to join along. This book had me pacing the room, yelling at Dee, and staring at my wall in astonishment. The mystery in IHYL is so real and consuming and what I love most is that it is so much more than just a mystery novel.

Yes, we get to solve a couple of mysterious happenings, but Ryan gives us so much more. IHYL shows the reality of those left behind in a missing person's case, the effect of those who weren’t taken, which is a side we don’t see very often and not like this. It is raw chaotic self-consuming grief. We get to see what this kind of grief does to those around us and how easy it is to believe that we are the only ones who feel a certain way after tragedy and how guilt can take so much from us. It also powerfully shows teenage love. Ryan writes a relationship that teenagers need to see.

If you are looking for understanding, love, and mystery at every turn I highly recommend I Hope You’re Listening by Tom Ryan. It will be your new favorite read.

*And prepared to throw it across the room during.


-I received a free copy of this book in return for an honest review.-

I Hope You're Listening is everything I needed in a book and so much more! Seven-year-old Dee Skinner was playing hide and seek in the woods with her best friend Sibby when Sibby was kidnapped. All Dee can remember was being tied up by people in masks and one lone sentence by the abductor. Ten years later Dee, under the pseudonym of The Seeker, runs a popular true crime/missing persons podcast which, thanks to laptop detectives, has helped located missing people all over the country. When another little girl goes missing from the same house Dee used to live in, Dee believes the two are connected and there could still be hope to find Sibby yet.

Author, Tom Ryan, does a good job at addressing childhood trauma and the disparate impacts that trauma can have on young adults. Ryan also does a great job of representing LGBTQ+ characters, not using sexuality as a plot point but still keeping it a part of the story. The mysteries in I Hope You're Listening wrap up very well and don't leave you questioning what happened.

5/5 Stars!

Thank you to Netgalley and Albert Whitman & Company for providing me with an e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review.