I just finished I Hope You're Listening by Tom Ryan, I received an arc for this from Netgalley in exchange for this review!
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.
If you enjoyed The Night Swim, Sadie and I Killed Zoe Spanos I think you'll enjoy this one.
