Ein Engel in der Nacht [Angel Heart]

I’ll admit: I was skeptical about an audiobook that bills itself as part thriller, part concert. But *Ein Engel in der Nacht* delivers something rarer—a story that *needs* its audio format to work. Cornelia Funke’s narration is a masterclass in restraint; she doesn’t *perform* so much as *confide*, her voice dropping to a near-whisper during the story’s most unsettling moments (like the scene where the protagonist finds the frozen angel statue—*shivers*). The real gamble, though, is the music. Some tracks (like the snippet of *Blackbird*) feel almost too on-the-nose, but others—particularly Luna Pearl Woolf’s dissonant original pieces—wrap around the prose like frost on glass. It’s not background noise; it’s a character. The pacing is where things get tricky. At 67 minutes, the story *moves*, but the musical interludes occasionally disrupt the momentum. The midpoint lull (where a Humperdinck lullaby plays over a flashback) drags just enough to make you wonder if the experiment is worth it—until the final act, when music and narrative collide in a crescendo that’s equal parts beautiful and terrifying. My one gripe? The supernatural reveal feels slightly rushed, as if Funke trusted the atmosphere to carry the logic. But that’s a minor quibble for an audiobook this ambitious. If you’ve ever wished *The Sixth Sense* had a soundtrack curated by a gothic DJ, this is your fix. Just don’t listen alone at night.