The Alone Time
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The Alone Time
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Narrated by:
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Jennifer Aquino
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Christina Ho
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Naomi Mayo
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Kenneth Lee
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By:
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Elle Marr
About this listen
For two sisters, confronting the past could come at a terrible price in a riveting novel about a family tragedy—and family secrets—by the #1 Amazon Charts bestselling author Elle Marr.
Fiona and Violet Seng were just children when their family’s Cessna crash-landed in the Washington wilderness, claiming the lives of their parents. For twelve harrowing weeks, the girls fended for themselves before being rescued.
Twenty-five years later, they’re still trying to move on from the trauma. Fiona repurposes it into controversial works of art. Violet has battled addiction and failed relationships to finally progress toward normalcy as a writer. The estranged sisters never speak about what they call their Alone Time in the wild. They wouldn’t dare—until they become the subject of a documentary that renews public fascination with the “girl survivors” and questions their version of the events.
When disturbing details about the Seng family are exposed, a strange woman claims to know the crash was deliberate. Fiona and Violet must come together to face the horrifying truth of what happened out there and what they learned about their parents and themselves. Before any other secrets emerge from the woods.
©2024 Elle Marr (P)2024 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.Critic reviews
“Jennifer Aquino, Christina Ho, Naomi Mayo, and Kenneth Lee perform this thriller about two sisters who survived a small plane crash and 12 terrifying weeks in the Washington wilderness.… The four performers deliver the four points of view; each character has a distinct voice and personality. The variety of performers keeps listeners engaged from the innocent beginnings of the mystery to its jaw-dropping ending.” —AudioFile Magazine
“Twisted, cleverly red herring-littered plotting. Readers will gladly follow [Marr’s] lead to the final page.” —Booklist
“A steady build-up that questions the origins of a tragedy and the motives of the survivors and pits survival, ambition, and perhaps the truth against each other, leading to a finale that will surprise even the most perceptive readers. Will appeal to fans of Jennifer Hillier, Jordan Harper, and Michelle Sacks.” —Library Journal
The story centres on sisters Violet and Fiona, survivors of a childhood plane crash that killed their parents and left them stranded in Olympic National Forest for months. Twenty-five years later, when a woman emerges claiming to have been their father's mistress, their carefully constructed narratives about what happened in those woods begin to crumble. What starts as a mystery about survival becomes something much more psychologically complex about memory, trauma, and the stories we tell ourselves to stay functional.
Jennifer Aquino, Christina Ho, Naomi Mayo, and Kenneth Lee each bring distinct voices to this fractured narrative structure. Having both male and female voices creates this layered, almost kaleidoscopic effect that mirrors the story's themes perfectly. We get chapters from the parents during those final days in the wilderness, alternating timelines from both sisters, and fragments from seven-year-old Violet's survival journal. Each narrator becomes unreliable in their own way, whether through trauma, guilt, the passage of time, or something more deliberate, and hearing these different vocal interpretations really drives home how subjective each perspective is.
Fiona has channeled her trauma into art, creating sculptures from organic materials that become "the tangible manifestation of trauma using the very source of trauma itself" - there's something both beautiful and deeply disturbing about that concept that comes through in the performance. Meanwhile, Violet has struggled with addiction and aimlessness, only recently returning to writing. Even decades later, they can't escape being defined as "the girl-survivors," and you can hear that suffocating reality in how the narrators handle their dialogue and internal monologues.
The mystery elements work well, though they're really secondary to this psychological exploration. I found myself constantly questioning not just what happened, but whose memories could be trusted. Each character harbors secrets - Henry's PTSD from military service making him potentially dangerous, Janet discovering her husband's infidelity right before the crash, and that mysterious reference in Violet's journal to "the woman" being back, suggesting someone else might have been out there with them.
Now, I'll be honest - there are logical gaps that might bother listeners looking for strict realism. The survival timeline stretches credibility, some plot mechanics feel convenient, and I'm still not entirely sure how they survived as long as they did without being rescued sooner. But approaching this as straightforward survival fiction completely misses what Marr is actually doing here. This is trauma literature wearing the mask of a thriller, and that slightly surreal quality is intentional. As Marr herself noted, this story came from her "wildest dreams and nightmares," and the audio format somehow makes that dreamlike, unsettling quality even more pronounced.
The performance quality across all four narrators is exceptional. They each bring something unique to their characters without ever feeling disconnected from the overall tone. The pacing kept me completely engaged - I genuinely found it hard to pause, which is always the mark of a compelling audiobook. There's this ability to create unease where you're not quite sure what you should be afraid of, but you know something terrible is lurking just beneath the surface. When the revelations come, they feel both shocking and inevitable, and the vocal performances really sell those moments.
I'm honestly surprised by some of the negative reactions this book has gotten. Yes, it's disturbing. Yes, it doesn't follow conventional thriller rules. But that's precisely what makes it fascinating. Marr isn't interested in clean resolutions or comfortable psychology. She's exploring the kind of childhood trauma that fundamentally breaks something in you, and the story reflects that fracture in its very structure.
The title itself is perfect - eerie and fitting for a tale that explores what happens when children are forced to confront horrors they're not equipped to understand. In audio format, that sense of isolation and psychological claustrophobia becomes even more palpable.
If you're looking for a neat, tidy mystery with clear motives and realistic survival details, this probably isn't your audiobook. But if you're willing to sit with discomfort and ambiguity, to let a story be deliberately unsettling, The Alone Time offers something genuinely haunting that will stay with you long after the final chapter. The multi-narrator format elevates an already compelling story into something that feels almost like a psychological audio drama - uncomfortable in all the right ways.
A Haunting Audio Experience That Gets Under Your Skin
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Very enjoyable. Worth 4 stars. First book listened to by this author.
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Paper thin plot
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