Emily Arsenault Audiobooks

When All the Girls Are Sleeping: unease on the young adult shelf, after dark

1 audiobook reviewed

★ 4.2/5 average

127 listener ratings

Who is Emily Arsenault?

Young adult fiction is under no obligation to be gentle, and When All the Girls Are Sleeping takes the exemption. The title does its atmospheric work before the story starts, all night-time and sleep and the implication of somebody awake inside it, which places Emily Arsenault at the darker end of the teen shelf rather than its reassuring one.

Length is the second signal. At over twelve hours this is a full-scale novel rather than a quick young adult read, with the space that implies for backstory, misdirection and a slow accumulation of dread. We hold to what the recording supports, and the recording supports a writer content to take the long way round.

Emily Arsenault in audiobooks

Laura Knight Keating narrates, and the reading is well judged for material that depends on withheld information: steady, unhurried, never nudging the listener towards the twist before it arrives. Twelve hours and twenty-six minutes gives that patience somewhere to go.

Ratings are solid across a decent sample, which for a mystery aimed at teenagers is a reasonable sign that the ending pays its debts. Choose it if you want teen fiction with genuine tension rather than gentle drama, and set aside a couple of long evenings for it. The full entry is below, with running time and rating.