Amanda Hardy arrives at a new school wanting exactly what any new student wants, which is to be unremarkable for a while. The synopsis hands you the complication in three sentences: at her old school she was called Andrew, and secrets have a way of getting out. That is the entire setup, and Meredith Russo's novel spends its length on what happens after. The audiobook runs six hours and fifty-nine minutes with Samia Mounts credited as the reader, published by W. F. Howes Ltd in August 2016. What the listing withholds is any sense of how that running time turns into a listening experience, because almost nothing attached to this record was written by someone wearing headphones.
What Meredith Russo Delivers
Russo built the book so that you learn Amanda's history at roughly the rate her classmates might, which is the structural choice everything else leans on. One response describes the result as flashbacks moving between past and present, heartbreaking and sweet by turns. Another calls the book a window, useful precisely because a cisgender reader can follow Amanda through a school year without having lived any of it. Both of those are judgments about a novel, and good ones. Neither tells you whether an alternation between two timelines stays legible when it reaches you by ear, which is the question a person considering this format actually has, and the column beside the credit has no answer to it.
Reviews on this record arrive from four countries: the United States, Australia, Mexico and Italy, a wider spread than most young adult titles collect. The star badge is where the page stops making sense. It reads 4.5, and the counter next to it says two votes, so those two grades total nine points out of a possible ten, one star short of unanimity. Five written responses sit underneath it, every visible grade at four or five. A record cannot hold two votes and five graded responses at once, so one of those figures is wrong, and no field here indicates which. Treat the average as a rough gesture rather than a measurement of anything.
What Meredith Russo Gets Right
Samia Mounts holds the only credit in the narrator field, and that one name covers everyone the book contains: Amanda, Grant, the friends who take her in, and the classmates who do not. A novel whose central pressure is what a voice gives away about a person puts unusual weight on a single reader, and this record shows no second performer, no cast, and no production note explaining the approach. That absence is not a comment on the work Mounts did, which no one here has described. It is a description of how little you are told before committing six hours and fifty-nine minutes to a purchase.
Grant gets one line in the synopsis and a great deal of attention in the responses, which is the clearest signal of where the book's pull actually sits. The romance is the engine, and the dread underneath it comes from you knowing what Amanda's classmates do not. One reader describes turning every page braced for the damage to start over. Another, filed from Mexico, puts it as plainly as anyone could: trans people go through this and deserve love anyway, being human in the end. Whatever that is worth as criticism, it tells you what the book delivers emotionally, which is more than a star average manages.
Where Meredith Russo Loses Some Ground
What the column reviews, without exception, is a novel rather than a recording. One buyer says the sale that finally prompted the purchase was an ebook sale. Others describe turning pages, taking their time, not wanting the story to finish. None of that is dishonest, and for a book carried by its emotional arc it is genuinely useful information. It also means the questions specific to this format go unanswered: whether the shifts between timelines are signposted clearly enough to follow by ear, whether crowded school scenes stay distinguishable, whether the pacing suits a long sitting. You will be finding all of that out on your own money.
Trigger warnings are promised on this page and then not delivered. The longest response opens by saying the book may be difficult for some readers and that a list of warnings appears at the end of the review, but the visible text stops mid-sentence well before it gets there. The same thing happens to the response that begins describing Russo's author's note: it breaks off inside the word that would have identified what the note actually says. Two of the five substantial comments here are cut short before their most useful sentences. The listing itself carries no content advisory, so warnings that were written are not warnings you can read.
Weigh all of that against the column's most recent entry, which arrived from Australia in August 2025 and runs to two words: great book. It is the newest signal anywhere on this record and it carries nothing whatsoever. The substantial responses are dated 2017 and 2019, from a period when the novel was new and the conversation around it looked different from the one happening now. If you are using this column as a decision aid, understand what you are actually reading: reactions to a 2016 book gathered between 2017 and 2022, with a two-word postscript stuck on top.
Who Should Pick Up If I Was Your Girl
Teenagers who want to find themselves inside a first-love story, and adults who want a way into an experience they have not had, are both served here, and the responses show both groups reaching the same book from opposite directions. The reader who called it a window and the reader who called it recognition are describing one novel. Anyone who reads young adult fiction for the romance rather than the issue will also get what they came for, since Russo does not treat those as separable things. Seven hours splits comfortably across two or three sittings.
Pass on this if you need a listing to tell you what the audio sounds like before you spend money, because this one will not: the credit is a name and a running time, and the column beside it is discussing paper. Pass as well if bullying rendered in close detail is something you would rather not have in your ears for an afternoon, since no advisory here will warn you when it lands. Go in expecting a novel that earns the affection people have for it and a record that tells you almost nothing about how it was made.
In Brief
- Performance: Samia Mounts reads every character alone, from Amanda and Grant to a school full of classmates, across six hours and fifty-nine minutes.
- What it covers: Coming out, small-town bullying, first love, the weight of a secret kept.
- Feel: Warm on the surface, braced for damage underneath.
- Our call: The novel has earned its readers; the record around it tells you nothing about the reading.
Before You Listen
How long is the If I Was Your Girl audiobook and who reads it?
Six hours and fifty-nine minutes, with Samia Mounts credited as the reader and nobody else. W. F. Howes Ltd published it in August 2016. No cast list and no production note appear anywhere on the record, so that single credit is the only format information offered to you before purchase.
Do the reviews on this listing describe the audiobook or the printed novel?
The printed novel, in every case. One buyer mentions picking it up during an ebook sale, and others describe turning pages and taking their time with it. The newest entry, filed from Australia in August 2025, runs to two words. Not one comment addresses pacing, voicing, or anything else particular to a recording.
Why does the page show 4.5 stars from two votes when five written responses are visible?
Because two numbers on the same page disagree. A 4.5 badge resting on two votes means those grades total nine points of a possible ten, one short of a clean sweep. Yet five graded responses sit below it. The counter and the column cannot both be accurate, and nothing indicates which to trust.
Does the audiobook carry any content warning for the bullying?
Nothing on the listing does. One response says it lists trigger warnings at the end, but the visible text is cut off before reaching them, and a second reader calls the bullying brutal without elaborating. So the warnings exist somewhere in an original review and are unreadable here. The record itself flags nothing.
