I Hope You're Listening

by Tom Ryan

Hardcover, 2020

Status

Available

Call number

FIC RYA

Call number

FIC RYA

Description

Seventeen-year-old Dee secretly hosts a popular true-crime podcast but when a missing child seems linked to the disappearance of her best friend ten years ago, she considers revealing her identity to uncover the truth.

Publication

Albert Whitman & Co (2020), 368 pages

Original publication date

2020-10-06

Original language

English

Language

User reviews

LibraryThing member AKBouterse
Probably 3.25 stars if I want to get particular about it. I liked this but I wasn't super satisfied with the way it ended.

All the way until the end, I thought I was probably going to give this a 3.5-4 stars. I liked the characters, especially Dee. I would have liked to have seen more of her
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relationship with Burke and her family but generally she was interesting. I liked her relationship with Sarah, though it definitely was a bit quick moving. I liked the podcast stuff. My only complaint there was that I would have liked the podcast to be a bit more relevant to the central mystery in this book and not just a side mystery. I really liked the writing. This book was super quick to get through and a very fun read and I think a lot of that is because of the good writing. Basically, there was a lot to love about this book, it just didn't quite do it for me.

Outside of my problems with the mysteries, I just felt like there were a lot of loose ends at the end of this. I wanted to know more about the other journalist that Dee met up with. I wanted to know how the podcast mystery ended up being solved. We never got to learn why Brianna didn't like Dee. I just had a lot of questions at the end.

With the mystery, it did something I really don't like. The solution is something super unexpected to the point that there were no hints of it and you couldn't have predicted it. The answer to the Sibby mystery isn't introduced until way late in the book. I usually don't try to solve mysteries as I'm reading them because I'm bad at it but I like to see how earlier things connected to the answer once it's revealed. In this case, I don't think anything in the early part of the book mattered for figuring out the mystery. The Layla mystery is also solved in a way that left me unsatisfied because it was also very hard if not impossible to predict. I just don't think there were enough clues left for the reader in the earlier parts of this story. The podcast mystery ending is completely unsatisfactory because we don't get to know anything about how it concluded beyond that it did conclude.

I liked this book. I would have given it a much higher rating if the mysteries were more satisfying. I will definitely be keep my eye out for whatever this author publishes next. If this book seems interesting, I would still say go ahead and pick it up and hopefully you'll enjoy the reading experience.
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LibraryThing member managedbybooks
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.

ISBN

0807535087 / 9780807535080
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