Run Time

Howard (56 Days) returns with a multilayered, metafictive thriller. Former soap star Adele Rafferty is trying to resuscitate her acting career in L.A. after a major setback in Ireland. She is offered a role in the horror film Final Draft and is immediately flown back to Ireland to begin shooting. But she soon finds herself in the same situation as the movie’s protagonist—lost, alone in the dark, and with no cell service. The role that could be her big comeback could be the one that kills her career–and her–for good. The story-within-a-story structure can be intimidating, but Howard’s parallel narratives of movie and novel, along with the audiobook’s vocal talents (Alana Kerr Collins, Alan Smyth, Gary Furlong, Gerard Doyle, Siobhan Waring, and Alison McKenna), keep the book’s chapters distinct and digestible. Adele’s first-person narration puts readers right in the action, while other chapters with movie script pages are read in a distinctly detached, clinical voice.