A review by plagiarizzim
The Listeners by Jordan Tannahill

mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

so this entire book she has a weird relationship with a 17 year old student of hers, let’s this hum completely send her spiralling and rips her family apart, joins a group of people who can hear it too, they think that it’s some deeper spiritual awakening and sit in circles almost orgasming convinced the government is behind all of it, they then get accused of being a cult (which is never really cleared up - at the end it’s kind of insinuated that all along howard was brain washing them; but for what purpose?) and holding a 17 year old hostage, someone tries to leave the house the swat team breaks and kills the 17 year old (but he wasn’t even a physical threat so why did they shoot him?), the leader of the ‘cult’ gets arrested, no one else is charged, everyone  in the group becomes estranged, the idea of the hum being something more than just a noise from some power plant or electrical thing is just completely dropped and then claire’s life is suddenly back to normal and her husband is moving back in. what?

it’s like the author wanted to make it some sort of ‘revelation’ but didn’t know how so it was just dropped entirely???

not to mention the poor writing and trying to fit in with younger audiences; “toxic masculinity”, “OK boomer”, “reddit”, talking about lizzo and megan thee stallion being in the playlists, and just other things that felt so out of place and just shoved in to reach a certain demographic. 

also the part about buying her daughter a vibrator for her 14th birthday? seriously unnecessary and actually made me feel weird. there was no relevance, it was just plain weird. 
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