So I was deep into a coding session at 1 AM — ostensibly working on my procedural dungeon generation module, actually just staring at a blinking cursor while my thesis deadline silently judged me — and I needed something to fill the void. I'd been on a Sanderson kick for months, but my brain was fried enough that I wanted something shorter, younger, less "here's a 200-page appendix on allomantic metals." Kelley Armstrong's The Summoning had been sitting in my queue since a friend from my old D&D group texted me "necromancer girl in a haunted group home, you'll love it." At 8 hours and change, it felt like the audiobook equivalent of a one-shot campaign. Quick. Self-contained-ish. Low commitment.
I was wrong about the low commitment part. I finished it in two sittings and immediately looked up the next book in the Darkest Powers trilogy.
A Necromancer Walks Into a Group Home
Here's the pitch: Chloe Saunders is fifteen, sees a dead janitor in the stairwell at school, freaks out publicly enough to get institutionalized, and ends up at Lyle House — a group home for "troubled teens" that is very obviously not what it claims to be. If you've ever played a campaign where the DM drops you into a seemingly mundane setting and you know something's off but you can't quite prove it yet? That's this entire book. The slow reveal of what Lyle House actually is, what the other kids can do, what Chloe's powers really mean — it's that beautiful paranoia of "the NPCs are lying to me and I'm rolling terrible Insight checks."
Armstrong nails the YA voice without making it feel dumbed down. Chloe is genre-savvy in a way that feels earned — she references horror movies, she second-guesses herself, she makes decisions that are occasionally dumb but never stupid, if that distinction makes sense. She's not the Chosen One swooping in with confidence. She's a kid who sees dead people and is terrified and trying to figure out who to trust in a house full of supernaturals who may or may not be on her side.
Compared to something like the Percy Jackson books, the worldbuilding here is much more grounded and paranoid. There's no camp, no mentors handing you a magic sword. The adults are the antagonists — or at least deeply untrustworthy. It's closer to Stranger Things energy than high fantasy. That same vibe of creeping institutional dread runs through Last Time I Lied, which leans even harder into the "something terrible happened here and everyone's pretending it didn't" territory. And compared to Armstrong's adult Otherworld series, this is leaner, tighter, less romance-heavy. The progression is satisfying but understated. You're not getting stat blocks or power scaling charts (sadly), but Chloe's necromancy manifests in creepy, escalating ways that kept me hooked.
Cassandra Morris and the "Teen Voice" Debate
Okay, let's talk about the narrator situation, because this is where opinions split hard.
Cassandra Morris — who's won Earphones Awards and been an Audie finalist, so she clearly knows what she's doing — commits fully to Chloe's fifteen-year-old perspective. Her voice is young. Like, genuinely young-sounding. And here's the thing: some listeners hate this. I've seen complaints that it "makes it feel like a children's book," and I get why someone would say that. If you're coming off Steven Pacey's gravel-voiced Logen Ninefingers (Steven Pacey walked so other narrators could run, fight me), Morris's delivery is going to feel like a different universe.
But here's my take: it works for this book. Chloe IS fifteen. She's scared. She's in over her head. Morris captures that breathless, slightly panicked internal monologue in a way that feels authentic rather than performed. The suspenseful moments land — there's a tension in her delivery during the ghost encounters that kept my attention even when I should've been sleeping. Where it falters is the middle stretch. Around hours 3 through 5, the pacing dips as Chloe navigates the social dynamics of Lyle House, and Morris's consistent energy doesn't quite compensate for the slower plotting. I bumped it to 1.25x through that section and it helped.
I will say — and this is a gap I noticed — Morris doesn't get a ton of range for differentiating the supporting cast. Derek, Simon, Tori, Rae — I wanted more vocal distinction between them. When you're used to narrators who give every character a fingerprint, it's noticeable.
Who's Rolling Initiative on This One
If you're a YA fantasy fan, a Kelley Armstrong completionist, or someone who likes their supernatural stories wrapped in institutional paranoia — this is a solid listen. My D&D group would love this as campaign inspiration, honestly. Group of teens with different powers trapped in a facility run by shady authority figures? That's a session one hook right there.
If you exclusively listen to epic fantasy doorstoppers and can't handle a younger protagonist or a narrator who sounds like one? Skip it. This isn't trying to be The Way of Kings. It's a tight, spooky YA mystery with a necromancer lead and a cliffhanger ending that absolutely got me. Torment scratches a similar itch — another YA supernatural sequel-bait situation where the protagonist is mostly just trying to survive the people around her — though it didn't hook me quite as hard.
I read this instead of writing my thesis. Dr. Patel would not approve. Worth it.
