Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an advanced audio copy of this title in exchange for an honest review.

Hidden pictures is about Mallory-- a young woman trying to get her life back on track after having gotten hooked on OxyContin. She lands a job as a nanny for a sweet, precocious little boy through her sponsor and it's basically a dream come true. At least until Teddy starts drawing creepy pictures of his imaginary friend, Anya, who seems to be a ghost haunting Teddy's family. Mallory decides she has to uncover what the heck happened with Anya and why she's attached herself to Teddy.

This was a super twisty-turny mystery that genuinely had me guessing throughout the book. There were tons of good surprises along the way. However, there were some... pretty disappointing twists in there too. I would call them problematic for several different reasons. I don't want to spell it out too much because it would definitely be spoiler-y.

Now on to the other things that bothered me:
So.... this book was obviously written by a white man. Tons of stereotypes about Latinx people, women, and children. Some examples: our MC going running at night constantly and not being nervous about her safety at all. This man has obviously never met a woman. She gets sexually harrassed once and just is like "oh it's probably nothing." Literally no woman is just like ehhh it's totally fine. They may *act* like it's okay for personal/professional reasons, but they don't just brush it off like it's perfectly acceptable.

Probably the worst thing though was when Mallory and her friend Adrian (Latinx man) get arrested by the police and he is belligerent and acting like everything is a misunderstanding and they're treating him too roughly. Again, this man has never met a POC.

I genuinely enjoyed the narration, and the pacing of the book was perfect. There were just enough reveals along the way to keep me engaged and guessing what was going to happen next. In hindsight, there were a bunch of instances of brilliant foreshadowing that should have clued me into some of the reveals. They were absolutely masterfully done.

The narrator did a GREAT job, and I would definitely buy more audiobooks just because they were read by this narrator.
However, super unfortunately, I wouldn't necessarily recommend the audio version over the print version. The print book has a ton of drawings that add a lot to the story. I actually ended up borrowing a print copy of the book from the library so I could look at the drawings as they came up in the story.

If you like an engaging, paranormal mystery, I would definitely recommend. However, it did leave a bit of a sour taste in my mouth due to some of the problematic twists.