I’ll preface this review by saying that I don’t tend to listen to podcasts. I don’t tend to listen to audiobooks, either, to be completely honest; mostly because I can read books faster than listen to them, and audiobooks always make me think of being at school and being forced to read at the speed of everyone in the class, which was always ridiculously slow.

I can’t say I’m planning on listening to audiobooks anytime soon, but I’m definitely a convert to podcasts; or the fictional ones, anyway. I binge…listened?…to the whole of Passenger List season two in one day, and while it wasn’t what a comment I read said it was (a woman having creepy messages left on her answerphone), it was pretty engaging and drew me in really well anyway.

I just listened to season two, as I hadn’t realised season one was on the same page (just further down), but I don’t think you need to have listened to season one to understand what’s going on. I was able to follow the plot pretty well, as the first season had been about the disappearance of a plane, flight 702…while the second season involved debris from the wreckage being found, and almost everyone believing the passengers, pilot and crew on board to be dead. I say almost everyone, because Kaitlin Le…the sister of one of the passengers on board that ill-fated flight…receives a phone call that appears to be from her presumed-dead brother, Conor. And immediately after that phone call, she disappears without a trace.

After the initial episode, the focus switched to Rory, a lawyer representing the families of those supposedly killed in the crash of flight 702. What seems like a fairly straightforward wrongful death claim takes a vastly different turn when Rory discovers a group of family members who claim to have seen videos and received calls from the so-called deceased passengers of Flight 702.

As I was listening to this series, I had a huge amount of questions and theories. There were a couple of nice interactive touches through the website, although I would have liked to see a bit more detail. For instance, there was a computer game that was developed by one of the characters that linked in really nicely with one of the episodes. However, the password that needed to be entered wasn’t mentioned in the episode itself, or in the transcript…or, at least, not that I could find. And I found it very hard to reach the point in the game that was so integral to the episode. So it was a really good idea, but the game didn’t really go anywhere.

Kaitlin was definitely my favourite character in this series, although I did really like most of the other characters. I especially liked the parental relationship that seemed to form between Rory and her, and Jim and her. That was a really nice touch, especially as it seemed Kaitlin didn’t have the best relationship with her actual parents.

I can’t really comment on the visuals of this series, as it was a podcast. However, for the most part, the sounds worked really well to indicate what was going on. However, I couldn’t always tell the difference in tones with some of the minor characters, so I wasn’t always aware of who was talking. Still, the sounds did a really good job of immersing me into the story…and really helped me to listen through to the end.

I was a bit disappointed that there were some plotlines that didn’t really seem to go anywhere, like the people who were initially following Kaitlin. I couldn’t tell who they were there and they didn’t seem to really crop up again. Also, there were some parts where it was harder to suspend my disbelief, such as the passengers calling their family members. Without going into too much detail, what was being said in those phone calls really didn’t match how the series ended. However, those were only minor problems and didn’t really detract from my enjoyment of the series as a whole.

I will say that I hope there’s eventually a season three of this series, as it ends on something of a cliffhanger. But it also seems to have been greenlighted for a TV series, so…I really hope that does go ahead, as it would be great to see this series further expanded.

I definitely recommend listening to this if you enjoy podcasts/audiobooks. And even if you don’t, like me, I think you’ll still get a lot of enjoyment out of this. It’s honestly a really great thriller podcast, with characters I truly cared about and a moment right at the end where I literally shouted, “YES!” Fortunately, this was not in public, so no one else gave me any odd looks.