This Story Might Save Your Life

A debut thriller with real personality and a duo I’d listen to every week.

I was already cheering for “This Story Might Save Your Life” before I started reading. After thinking my NetGalley request had been lost to the void, the approval finally landed on publication day, and I jumped on it immediately. Totally worth the wait.

Benny and Joy, best friends and podcasters, reminded me how much I adore thrillers with a podcast twist. Their show isn’t serious or investigative, and that’s the charm. They pick silly topics and turn them into laugh-out-loud moments with raw, chaotic banter that pulls you right into their world. I could have happily listened to more podcast moments.

Tension rises as Joy’s marriage begins to crumble, and show more then she vanishes. The smooth transition from lighthearted humor to slow-building dread is masterfully done. At the heart, their friendship remains the emotional core, and Benny’s struggle to understand Joy’s unraveling adds a deeply human beat beneath the suspense. Anyone would be lucky to have a best friend like Benny.

The audiobook was outstanding. The narrators breathed life into Benny and Joy so vividly that I could see them clearly in my mind.

This debut radiates confidence from the first page. The characters spark with chemistry, and the premise strikes a perfect balance between fun and genuine danger. “This Story Might Save Your Life” has already claimed a top spot on my 2026 favorites list. show less

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

A debut thriller with real personality and a duo I’d listen to every week.

I was already cheering for “This Story Might Save Your Life” before I started reading. After thinking my NetGalley request had been lost to the void, the approval finally landed on publication day, and I jumped on it immediately. Totally worth the wait.

Benny and Joy, best friends and podcasters, reminded me how much I adore thrillers with a podcast twist. Their show isn’t serious or investigative, and that’s the charm. They pick silly topics and turn them into laugh-out-loud moments with raw, chaotic banter that pulls you right into their world. I could have happily listened to more podcast moments.

Tension rises as Joy’s marriage begins show more to crumble, and then she vanishes. The smooth transition from lighthearted humor to slow-building dread is masterfully done. At the heart, their friendship remains the emotional core, and Benny’s struggle to understand Joy’s unraveling adds a deeply human beat beneath the suspense. Anyone would be lucky to have a best friend like Benny.

The audiobook was outstanding. The narrators breathed life into Benny and Joy so vividly that I could see them clearly in my mind.

This debut radiates confidence from the first page. The characters spark with chemistry, and the premise strikes a perfect balance between fun and genuine danger. “This Story Might Save Your Life” has already claimed a top spot on my 2026 favorites list. show less

Benny Abbott and Joy Moore are best friends and co-hosts of a wildly popular comedy survival podcast also called This Story Might Save Your Life — 35 million downloads a month, a massive distribution deal in the works, and a devoted fanbase obsessed with their crackling chemistry. The premise is simple and irresistible: one of them proposes an impossible dire situation, and the other has to figure a way out of it. What keeps listeners coming back, though, is the obvious, undeniable connection between the two hosts — and the question every single fan asks: were they ever, or will they ever be, more than friends? Joy has been dealing with severe narcolepsy her whole life, a condition that shapes everything about how she moves through show more the world and how dependent she is on those around her. Her husband Xander is her producer — and increasingly controlling, with a longstanding weird possessiveness about Benny. There have been other problems too: blowback about a toxic ad partner, and a stalker posting candid photos of Joy across social media. Then one morning Benny arrives to tape an episode and Joy is simply gone. No Joy. No Xander. A shattered window and leaves blowing through the house. The novel unfolds in dual timelines — Benny's frantic present-day search, and Joy's own voice in chapters pulled from the memoir the two have been co-writing, tracing how their friendship began and what really happened in the years leading up to her disappearance. Instant NYT bestseller. Debut novel.

[May contain spoilers]
Xander is the villain — his controlling behavior has escalated into full coercive control, and Joy's disappearance is directly connected to him. The stalking of Joy and the "incident" that kept her housebound for six weeks are part of the same pattern of abuse and isolation. The audiobook contains additional multimedia elements — podcast snippets, tip-line calls, dispatch recordings — not present in the print version, making it a notably different and reportedly superior experience. The villain is telegraphed early enough that seasoned thriller readers tend to clock it quickly, which deflates some tension in the back half. The ending rushes slightly. But the emotional payoff of the Benny and Joy relationship — the will-they-won't-they that finally gets its answer — lands beautifully.
What I think: This is genre-bending in a really fun way — thriller, mystery, and slow-burn romance all at once, with a podcast format that adds texture rather than gimmick. The found-family friendship at its core is the real heart of it. Joy's narcolepsy is handled with real specificity and care. The villain being obvious is a genuine complaint, but if the Benny and Joy dynamic grips you, it won't matter much. Highly readable, emotionally satisfying, with the kind of central relationship you root for hard. show less

Some books tell a story—this one pulls you into one. The unique format isn’t just there to be different; it actively shapes the experience, making you feel like you’re piecing things together as you go. That constant sense of discovery kept me completely hooked, and the pacing strikes a perfect balance—tight enough to keep the tension high, but never rushed. Every chapter feels like it’s building toward something, and more often than not, it delivers in ways you don’t quite see coming.

What really makes it land, though, are the characters and the twists. The characters feel messy and real, the kind you recognize in yourself or people around you, even when their choices are frustrating. And the twists aren’t just shocking show more for the sake of it—they feel earned, the kind that make you want to go back and see how all the clues were there. Just when you think you’ve figured things out, the story shifts again in a way that’s both surprising and completely fitting. show less

Benny and Joy are best friends who run a podcast. Life gets complicated when Joy marries Xander and he doesn't click with Benny. Her narcolepsy adds another layer of complication. This one is definitely a must listen as an audiobook. I think, for me, it is skippable if you can't do audio. It felt predictable and I had trouble staying interested. Lots of big issues and twists and I was left feeling entertained.

*SPOILERS*

If you’ve ever wondered what Gone Girl would look like if everyone got dumber with each chapter, this is it.

First, I would’ve hated this more (likely DNF territory) if I didn’t listen to the audiobook. It really is well done. Both Julia Whelan and Sean Patrick Hopkins were excellent. And the way it’s edited together with the podcast clips made those bits immersive. And that’s where my praise ends.

This started out intriguing. The present day interspersed with diary-esque entries isn’t all that original but the story seemed decent enough. But as time went on the characters’ collective IQ plummeted. The amount of people who knew what was going on the entire time, all while Benny is left to literally bear the brunt show more of the fallout is unfathomable. Not to mention how unnecessary the entire plot became once you learned Xander died in the house. They had literal video footage of all his abuse so it would’ve been easy to claim self-defense.

All that to say, it never would’ve gotten to that point if every one of our characters admitted who Xander was since they all literally witnessed his gaslighting on thousands of occasions.

I also wish I knew how much pregnancy played a major role in the plot. Too much IMO.

I hated this. But if you must read it, read the audiobook. show less

This story is about a group of people who make podcasts under the title of “This Story Might Save Your Life”. The podcasts involve two people, Joy and Benny, who pose one another extreme situations and ask, “How would you survive?” They give ridiculous survival suggestions with the intention of being humorous. and then reveal the safest way to react if one is caught in such a situation. The podcast catch phrase is, “Anything that does not kill you makes you…a survivor”.

The podcasts have been very successful and the team is about to sign a big distribution deal with a major company.

Reading the first chapter I thought this was going to be a boring story. I think that was because I felt the premise of a podcast being so show more successful with such a theme was laughable and that the team felt like a bunch of young people behaving like school kids.

Once I got past Chapter 1 I realised the topic of the podcast and the broadcast behaviour of the people was not critical to the story. This is a story with a lot of intrigue, mystery and strong emotion. I do not want to mention the main theme of the story as that might put people off, but it is well worth reading and, as the title suggests, this story might save your life.

This book is a good mystery story and is quite the thriller. Crum leads the reader on a wonderful mystery tour and carefully reveals pertinent information along the way. I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who likes a mystery novel. It also contains important information to help watch out for danger signs in one’s own life and also in the lives of one’s friends.

Would I read another book by this author?
Yes.

Would I recommend this book, and if so, to whom?
Yes. I would recommend it to anyone. There are life messages in it about things that people often overlook or ignore, things that can cause serious injury and even death to some vulnerable people. It demonstrates that calm exteriors can hide deep pain.

Did this book inspire me to do anything?
It has heightened my awareness of danger signs to watch out for in life to protect the lives of friends and family.

Was the book engrossing?
Once I got past the first chapter I hardly put it down. show less