After Dark

I’ll admit, I went into *After Dark* skeptical of yet another ‘woman with a dark past’ thriller, but Kent’s precision with pacing and the narrators’ performances won me over—mostly. The story follows a woman (whose name you won’t learn for a while, a deliberate choice that heightens the paranoia) as she flees to a remote town, only to realize her new neighbors might be more dangerous than the life she left behind. The dual-timeline structure isn’t revolutionary, but the way Kent weaves the past into the present—through fragmented memories and abrupt revelations—feels fresh. Hannah Church’s narration as the protagonist is *exceptional*; she nails the exhaustion of someone perpetually on edge, her voice cracking at just the right moments. Hayden Bishop, as the man tracking her, is equally compelling, though his delivery occasionally veers into *too* smooth, making his character feel more like a villain archetype than a fully fleshed-out threat. Where the audiobook stumbles slightly is in its midsection. The tension flags around the 5-hour mark when the plot relies a bit too heavily on characters making bafflingly poor decisions (because, of course, no thriller is complete without someone ignoring glaring red flags). The sound design, however, is flawless—subtle enough to avoid gimmickry but present enough to make you jump when a car door slams unexpectedly. The ending, too, is polarizing: it’s bold and thematically fitting, but some listeners might find it *too* abrupt after the slow-burn setup. Still, if you’re a fan of audiobooks that use narration as a weapon—where the voices themselves become part of the suspense—this is a standout. Just don’t listen to it alone at night unless you *want* to sleep with the lights on.