Review: After Nightfall by A.J. Banner (audio)

Title: After Nightfall

Author: A.J. Banner

Narrator: Teri Schnaubelt

Published: August 2018, Brilliance Audio

Length: 7 hours 39 minutes

Source: Publisher

Summary: 

Beware of friends with secrets…Imagine
your closest friend utterly betraying you. Years later, when she seeks
forgiveness, you invite her to your engagement party as a gesture of
reconciliation. But seething hostilities rise to the surface, ruining
everyone’s evening. After an awful night, your friend’s battered,
lifeless body is found at the bottom of a rocky cliff.

Newly
engaged Marissa Parlette is living this nightmare. She should be
celebrating her upcoming wedding, but she can’t shake the image of her
friend lying dead on the beach. Did she fall? Was she pushed? Or did she
take a purposeful step into darkness? Desperate for answers, Marissa
digs deep into the events of the party. But what she remembers happening
after nightfall now carries sinister implications: the ugly sniping,
the clandestine meetings, the drunken flirtations. The more she
investigates, the more she questions everything she thought she knew
about her friends, the man she once trusted, and even herself.

Bestselling
author A. J. Banner keeps readers on a razor-sharp edge in this
intricately plotted novel of psychological suspense…in which nothing is
as it seems.

My thoughts:  This is the first book I’ve read by A.J. Banner and I was hooked from the very beginning. I love books that keep me on my toes and guessing all the way through and that is exactly what this book was.

This is the type of story where nothing is as it seems. As you meet the cast of characters, you immediately start to wonder if they are trustworthy and as you get further into the story, you are left with more questions than answers. I love stories like this. The doubt and suspense builds around what is going on as I try desperately to figure it out before the final reveal.

I loved that this book is told from a single point of view – that of Marissa. While I do like when stories are told from multiple perspectives, in this case it worked having only the single perspective. I might not always have liked Marissa or felt I could always trust her, but I felt she was the best character to tell this story. 

This is such a creepy, thrilling story. It’s not as straight-forward as you might first be inclined to think and that’s the beauty of it. Everyone is made to look suspicious and let me tell you I kept thinking I had it figured out time and again, only to be proved wrong. This book is full of twists and turns that keeps you completely captivated and guessing right up until the very end.





Audio thoughts: This was a fun, yet creepy book to listen to and I thought Teri Schnaubelt did a good job with the narration. She was able to give each character their own voice and her pacing and intonation was good.