Let me cut to the chase: I almost threw my phone across the truck cab during the middle act of this thing.
Was driving back from a client site in Houston—four hours of I-10 that feels like six—and McFadden had me white-knuckling the steering wheel for reasons that had nothing to do with traffic. The setup is clean: woman on the run, snowstorm, creepy motel with a wife watching from the window. Classic cat-and-mouse scenario. I've seen this play out in real life, minus the snowstorm. People running from something always end up somewhere worse. Haunted had that same sense of inevitable doom—characters making choices that only dig them deeper.
The Operational Tempo Problem
Here's where it lost me. The first couple hours? Tight. Efficient. Quinn's fleeing, the tension's building, Nick Baxter's giving off that helpful-but-something's-wrong vibe that makes your neck itch. But somewhere around hour three, the mission stalls. The pacing goes from tactical movement to sitting in a foxhole waiting for something to happen. Ranger actually fell asleep during this stretch, and that dog has sat through some seriously boring surveillance audiobooks with me.
McFadden clearly knows how to construct suspense—she's a physician, so I'm guessing she understands how to keep a patient alive long enough to get to the operating table. But the middle section needed a medic. Summons had similar pacing issues in the middle stretch—strong setup that lost steam before the finale. Too much circling, not enough forward momentum.
Holly Adams Gets It Done
The dual narrator setup works better than I expected. Holly Adams has this quality to her voice—someone compared it to Jennifer Tilly, and I can hear it. There's a slight breathiness that fits Quinn's situation perfectly. Woman's running scared, making bad decisions, and Adams captures that particular brand of desperation without overdoing it.
Daniel Thomas May handles the other perspectives with what I'd call command presence. Energetic, confident, knows when to push and when to pull back. The character Greta apparently gave both narrators something to work with—multiple reviews mentioned her specifically, and yeah, there's something distinctly unsettling about how they voiced her.
No audio issues to report. Clean production, no weird volume jumps or pronunciation disasters. (You'd be amazed how many audiobooks butcher basic military terminology. This one doesn't have any, so no complaints there.)
That Ending Though
Alright, here's where opinions split like a convoy hitting an IED. The ending. Some folks loved the twist. Others—and I'm leaning this direction—felt it came out of nowhere like a surprise inspection. Not the good kind of surprise where everything clicks into place. More like the kind where you're left wondering if you missed a briefing.
Look, I've read enough thrillers to know that twists need to be earned. You can't just drop a revelation in the final hour that contradicts everything you've been building. The clues should be there when you look back. With this one... I'm not entirely sure they were. Or maybe I was too focused on not rear-ending a semi to catch them. Either way, the landing felt rough.
The characters also aren't particularly likable. Quinn's done something terrible—we know that from the jump—and the people she encounters at the Baxter Motel aren't exactly warm and fuzzy either. That's fine. I don't need to like characters to find them interesting. But I do need to understand them, and some of the motivations here felt thin.
Who Should Check In (And Who Should Keep Driving)
If you're a McFadden fan, you probably already know what you're getting: fast psychological thriller, creepy atmosphere, twist ending. This delivers on brand. If you're new to her work, this isn't a bad entry point, but know that the middle drags and the ending might leave you scratching your head.
Skip if you need airtight plotting or you get frustrated when books don't stick the landing. Also skip if you're listening at bedtime—there's enough tension here to keep you awake, but not quite enough payoff to make the lost sleep worth it. Perfect for long drives where you need something to keep your brain engaged but don't mind if the destination disappoints.
Mission Debrief
Seven hours and fifty-three minutes. Solid setup, sagging middle, controversial finish. The narration by Adams and May elevates material that might have fallen flat on the page. Worth your time? Depends on your tolerance for endings that feel like the author ran out of runway.
Ranger's verdict: he slept through the slow parts but perked up for the finale. Make of that what you will.
