I Hope You’re Listening picks up ten years after the disappearance of Dee Skinner’s childhood friend, when another local girl goes missing and connections to the cold case arise. Tom Ryan’s YA novel I Hope You’re Listening synthesizes true crime podcasts’ dual nature as both voyeurs of suffering and purveyors of catharsis.įollowing 2019’s award-winning Keep This to Yourself, Ryan’s newest book again summons the thrill of a queer protagonist navigating a tightly woven mystery at the crossroads of friendship and trauma. Whether its popularity is due to its legitimization of female fears-no, you aren’t absurd for crossing the street at night-or because listening feels like a protective spell (“If I know this, it won’t happen to me.”), or simply for its indulgent sensationalization, there are enough true crime podcasts that top 50 rankings feature regularly. Immersion into the genre’s reigning medium of podcasts nevertheless offers a perhaps unexpected balm to the horrors of womanhood. But how much is she willing to reveal about herself in order to uncover the truth? Dee’s about to find out what’s really at stake in unraveling the mystery of the little girls who vanished.True crime’s ethical quandaries burgeon every week with a new documentary, another update to a cold case, another lurid television adaptation “based on actual events.” Critical concerns broadly boil down to true crime’s short road to exploitation. When another little girl 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. Nobody knows Dee’s the Seeker, and she plans to keep it that way. 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. And though she told the police everything she remembered, it wasn’t enough.

Ten years ago, she witnessed the abduction of her best friend, Sibby. In her small town, seventeen year-old Delia “Dee” Skinner is known as the girl who wasn’t taken.

I Hope You're Listening by Tom Ryan