This book is an AUDIBLE ORIGINAL- Currently included for Free with the Audible Plus Catalogue at the time of this review.
🎧 Reviewed by LD | Rating: 3.6/5 | Steam: 🔥
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read Tell Her Story yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
The Opening
Paige’s life has completely imploded. Lost her job, lost her boyfriend, lost her apartment. Her sister Ash sits her down and suggests she start a true crime podcast. The case? Their beloved teacher Mrs. Jessica Katie, killed in a hit-and-run twenty-some years ago with no one ever held accountable. What follows is one hour and thirty minutes of genuinely wild revelations and one of the most unhinged endings I have read in a while.
The Full Story — Spoilers Included
The Backstory
Jessica Katie was a teacher who went for a walk after dinner one night twenty-some years ago and never came home. She was hit by a car and left to die. The assumption at the time was that her husband Phillip did it, but there was never enough evidence to charge him. The case went cold. Nobody was ever held accountable.
Paige’s podcast is called Cold Case Open, and she goes in wanting to give Jessica justice.
Building the Podcast
Jessica’s son Ben reaches out wanting to help. He also wants to clear his dad’s name in the process. He has podcast production experience, so Paige brings him on. Jessica’s daughter also gets involved. A detective on the cold case agrees to share information with Paige as long as she brings anything she uncovers directly to him first. He gives her access to the case files and a room at the precinct to work through them.
The first major reveal from those files: Jessica was pregnant when she died. The police never ran DNA analysis on the fetus because at the time they had no reason to suspect Phillip was not the father. That assumption, as it turns out, was very wrong.
The Affair
Mrs. Pollock, Jessica’s close friend, is convinced Phillip killed her. She says she knows for a fact Jessica was having an affair and that she had told Phillip about it. Phillip himself, in old police interview footage, is visibly stunned to hear his wife was pregnant and categorically denies knowing about any affair. He says they had not been sleeping together, so pregnancy was simply impossible. So if he did not know about the affair and they were not sleeping together, someone else was the father of that baby. And yet the police never followed up on it. I genuinely cannot.
Paige goes to re-interview Mrs. Pollock in person. When she pushes harder on the specific details the story starts to shift. Mrs. Pollock had been presenting herself as someone Jessica confided everything in, but under pressure she starts walking things back. Did Jessica actually tell her she had told Phillip about the affair, or was she perhaps asking for advice about whether she should? The details blur. The confident witness turns out to be considerably less reliable than she appeared. Paige does not believe Jessica would have confided something that personal to someone she considered a busybody.
Matt
Paige and Ben are sitting together going through old police interview footage when they see something that stops them cold. The footage shows that Jessica made thirteen calls in the final week of her life to the same number. That number belongs to Matt. Ashley’s husband. Paige’s own brother-in-law.
In the interview footage, Matt tells police Jessica had reached out because her son was thinking about applying to the same college Matt attended and she wanted to know if the boy could stay with him for a visit. He felt put on the spot, said yes at first, then got uncomfortable and started dodging her calls. He feels bad about it.
Ben is sitting right there watching this. He says flatly that he never applied to that school and had no interest in it. He wanted to attend his parents’ alma mater.
She goes to Matt directly. She asks him about the calls. He gives her the same story he gave police — Jessica reached out because her son was thinking about applying to the same college Matt attended. Ben was right there and already confirmed that never happened.
She tells him that she knows he lied to the police. She tells him someone saw him at the school talking to Jessica. She asks why he never told Ashley about being contacted by police if it was no big deal. He freezes. Tells her she cannot say a word to Ashley.
She lays out what she has pieced together. He was having an affair with Jessica. He was in love with Ash and wanted it to end. And then Jessica got pregnant. Paige tells him the police saved a DNA sample from the fetus and all she has to do is name a suspect to trigger testing. Matt’s body sags. He says she will ruin his life and he did not even do anything.
Jessica got pregnant deliberately. She admitted to Matt that she had tracked her ovulation and seduced him intentionally because she thought he would be happy about it. He was not. The night Jessica died, he had dropped Ashley off after dinner and then gone to pick Jessica up. She had told Phillip she was going for a walk. Instead she got in the car with Matt.
She talked at him for the entire drive. She had decided they would raise the baby together and be a couple. But he told her plainly that he loved Ash and if she would take him back after everything he had done he wanted to be with Ash. He would step up for the baby but he would not be with Jessica. She started hitting him until he pulled over. She got out, slammed the door, and started walking. He drove away. He says she was alive when he left her.
The Confrontation
Paige figures out the rest at home. Matt’s old car was silver, matching the vehicle description from the accident reconstruction. His uncle owned an auto body shop. He had the means and the opportunity to get the car fixed with no questions asked.
She thinks it is Ben at the door. She swings it open. It is Matt. He is no longer emotional. He wants a promise that she will keep quiet. She tells him nothing he shared actually helps identify who killed Jessica so she will not use it on the podcast. He seems to relax slightly. Then he pulls out a gun.
He tells her no one is coming to help her. He asks how she figured it out. She tells him about the silver car. He lies and says it was an accident, but Paige knows based on the crime scene reconstrution he had accelerated toward her. There was no braking, no swerving. He killed her deliberately.
And then Ash walks up behind and asks whats going on.
The Most Unhinged Part of This Entire Book
Ash sees her husband holding a gun on her sister. Matt explains that Paige is going to ruin their lives and that the only solution is for Ash to take the girls and leave while he takes care of it. He is telling his wife to walk away while he shoots her sister.
Ash stands there and actually thinks about it.
She never decides either way because Ben appears. He has been on the phone with the police the entire time. They heard the confession. Matt is arrested.
The Aftermath
The podcast hits the top ten. Matt’s arrest makes national news. A major streaming service wants to adapt the story into a series. Paige wraps up the season revealing everything, even though it means disclosing the reveal mid-season rather than at the end.
Ash STANDS by Matt. She takes over running the bar. She fires Paige and she tells her sister she never wants to see her again. UHHH! WHAT?!?
Let me be very clear about this. Ash pushed Paige to start this podcast. Ash gave her the case. Ash’s husband cheated on her with their teacher, got the teacher pregnant, and then ran her over with a car. And Ash’s response is to stand by him and cut off her sister. The sister she almost let her husband shoot. Wild does not begin to cover it.
Paige and Ben are becoming something. They start talking about season two.
The Steam Rating Breakdown
🔥 — Zero romance, zero heat. This is a cold case thriller. Content warnings for murder, an affair, gun violence, and one of the most baffling displays of misplaced loyalty you will encounter in fiction this year.
The Ending — Satisfied or Disappointed?
Satisfied with the case resolution. The Ash situation left me genuinely incredulous. She set this whole thing in motion and then chose the man who cheated on her and killed his pregnant mistress over her own sister. I do not have words.
Would I Reread It?
No.
Where to Get This Book
🎧 Audiobook
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Plot Twisted. 🔥
🎧 | Genre: Thriller, Mystery, Crime | Steam: 🔥
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Questions: Who Killed Jessica Cady/Katie? How did Tell her story end?