Newly-engaged Marissa Parlette should be the happiest woman in the world: she has found the man of her dreams, and she will gain a step- daughter, Anna. However, the day after her engagement, Marissa's frenemy, Lauren, is found dead after apparently falling from the top of the cliff. He death has been ruled a suicide, but Marissa knows Lauren would never kill herself. As she begins to try and figure out what happened that night, Marissa has no idea that her investigation will involve numerous hidden skeletons she doesn't want to disturb, and that her enemy is closer than she thinks...

The best thing about AFTER NIGHTFALL by A.J. Banner is the tension created in the story through small and seemingly inconsequential details that later on turn out to have a huge bearing on the story. I would sit down with AFTER NIGHTFALL, intending to read only a few pages, but somehow those few pages became twenty or more pages. The history between Lauren and Marissa also held my attention, and it is far more complex than anything I have encountered in other mystery novels.

AFTER NIGHTFALL is a page- turner and its definitely designed to hook the reader into the mystery of who might have killed Lauren. Banner does an excellent job of stringing the reader along on possible suspects, causing me to doubt and change my mind constantly about who the real killer might have been... Although I read a lot of mysteries, the ending and its twist in this book left me surprised and shocked because I did NOT see it coming.

For a reader who is seeking a book that is a cross between women's fiction and mystery seamlessly blended together into a delightful and devious cocktail, AFTER NIGHTFALL by A.J. Banner should be a perfect read.

Book Summary

Beware of friends with secrets…

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.