From the TBR Pile: Blog Tour: Review of After Nightfall by A.J. Banner

Friday, August 10, 2018

Blog Tour: Review of After Nightfall by A.J. Banner

Author:A.J. Banner

Publisher: Lake Union Press

Date of publication: July 2018

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.

In After Nightfall, Marissa hosts a party with her new fiance so they can announce their engagement to their friends. Later that evening, her friend Lauren falls off the cliff behind the house. Marissa is convinced that she was murdered and didn't kill herself.

I have very mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, I thought the mystery was pretty well planned out. I didn't call the solution, so that was a nice surprise. However, I had a hard time liking any of the characters. Especially Marissa. I did admire her drive to figure out what happened to her friend. But when she finds out what Nathan was doing late at night, I couldn't get behind her reaction. I don't want to spoil it, but I was seriously disappointed in how she didn't believe him. It seemed false and kind of made me lose respect for her. There is a small twist at the end that didn't really fit and I felt like it was thrown in for shock value. Especially since the book just ends.

The book is well written, I just didn't love it as much as I wanted to. It's one of those books that you will have to read and decide for yourself.

Purchase Links

Amazon | Books-A-Million | Barnes & Noble

About A. J. Banner

Born in India and raised in North America, A. J. Banner received degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. Her previous novels of psychological suspense include The Good Neighbor and The Twilight Wife, a USA Today bestseller. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and six rescued cats.

Connect with A. J. Banner

Facebook | Instagram

Instagram Tour:

Monday, August 6th: @read.write.coffee

Tuesday, August 7th: @chaptershoe

Wednesday, August 8th: @ladyofthelibrary

Thursday, August 9th: @prose_and_palate

Friday, August 10th: @thats_what_she_read

Saturday, August 11th: @girlandherbooks

Sunday, August 12th: @girlsinbooks