I Need You to Read This: A Novel

Written by Jessa Maxwell

Narrated by Carlotta Brentan

This “super creepy” (The Washington Post) and “perfectly plotted whodunit” (Katy Hays, New York Times bestselling author) follows an advice columnist searching for answers about her predecessor’s murder—from the bestselling author of The Golden Spoon.

Years ago, Alex Marks escaped to New York City for a fresh start. Now, aside from trips to her regular diner for coffee, she keeps to herself, gets her perfectly normal copywriting job done, and doesn’t date. Her quiet world is upended when her childhood hero, Francis Keen, is brutally murdered. Francis was the woman behind the famous advice column, Dear Constance, and her words helped Alex through some of her darkest times.

When Alex sees an advertisement searching for her replacement, she impulsively applies, never expecting to get the job. Against all odds, Alex is given the position but soon, she begins to receive strange, potentially threatening letters at the office. Francis’s murderer was never identified, turning everyone around her into a threat. Including her boss, editor-in-chief Howard Dimitri, who has a habit of staying late at the office and drinking too much.

As Alex is drawn into the details surrounding her predecessor’s murder, her own dark secrets begin to rise to the surface and she suddenly finds herself trapped in a dangerous game of cat and mouse that takes her all the way from the power centers of Manhattan to Francis Keen’s summer house, where her body was found and where the killer may just be waiting for her in this “fresh and fascinating” (Megan Collins, author of The Family Plot) page-turner.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Aug 13, 2024
• ISBN: 9781797178820

Jessa Maxwell

Jessa Maxwell is the nationally bestselling author of The Golden Spoon, I Need You to Read This, and Dead of Summer. She is also the author and illustrator of five picture books for children. Her comics and cartoons have been published in The New Yorker and The New York Times, and her writing has been published in Slate, Marie Claire, and many others. She now lives in Jamestown, Rhode Island, with her husband, two cats and three-legged dog. 

[Paige Wallace Eads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really liked the structure of this book and the reveal that she was Bess.