Audio Review: In the Afterlight by Alexandra Bracken

In the Afterlight by Alexandra Bracken
Narrator: Amy McFadden
Series: The Darkest Minds #3
Published by Brilliance Audio on 2014-10-28
Length: 17hrs
Reviewing Audiobook from Audible
Rating:
Reading Challenges: 2019 Audiobook Challenge, 2019 Finishing the Series Challenge, Beat the Backlist 2019

Ruby can’t look back. Fractured by an unbearable loss, she and the kids who survived the government’s attack on Los Angeles travel north to regroup. Only Ruby can keep their highly dangerous prisoner in check. But with Clancy Gray, there's no guarantee you're fully in control, and everything comes with a price.

When the Children's League disbands, Ruby rises up as a leader and forms an unlikely allegiance with Liam's brother, Cole, who has a volatile secret of his own. There are still thousands of other Psi kids suffering in government "rehabilitation camps" all over the country. Freeing them—revealing the governments unspeakable abuses in the process—is the mission Ruby has claimed since her own escape from Thurmond, the worst camp in the country.

But not everyone is supportive of the plan Ruby and Cole craft to free the camps. As tensions rise, competing ideals threaten the mission to uncover the cause of IANN, the disease that killed most of America's children and left Ruby and others with powers the government will kill to keep contained. With the fate of a generation in their hands, there is no room for error. One wrong move could be the spark that sets the world on fire.

Oh my heart!!! I need a moment….

In the Afterlight by Alexandra Bracken picks up where Never Fade left off. A little recap….If you have not read the series to this point, there are spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk. View Spoiler »Ruby and her friends found the flashdrive that revealed the cause of their Psy abilities, but at a terrible cost. The president bombed their headquarters, and the sweetest of the group died in the escape 😭 Cole is a Red, but 🤫 Liam doesn’t know. They have Clancy and the papers he was trying to destroy. Now what remains of their group are making their way to the Farm. « Hide Spoiler Ok you’re all caught up. 

Ruby is grief stricken at the opening of the story and rightfully so. I am grief-stricken and it’s a fictional character! Processing her grief and continuing to protect all those she loves is becoming too hard for her to handle on her own. So she turns to a Stewart, but not the one you’re thinking. She can’t face Liam. What she did to him, he may have forgiven her, but she hasn’t forgiven herself. And now she has Cole’s secret to keep too. It’s all too much, anyone would crack under that kind of strain. It’s just a matter of when.

We get more of Cole in this book than the previous, and y’all I didn’t expect to fall in love with him, but I did. He is an older version of Liam with a hard demeanor that puts people off. His one priority is Liam, to protect him at all costs. This is how he has lived his life, and now Liam is in the middle of the action, and he doesn’t know how to handle it. Add in that his confidantes are dead or missing and he is now the leader of this ragtag group, his Psy abilities are getting the best of him. With Ruby, or “Gem” as he affectionately calls her (y’all I love that nickname, like I sighed everytime he said. I really ship them hard! Even though I love Liam too), he can let his guard down and be himself. He shows her his vulnerability which she encourages he shows the others as well. They are close, like brother and sister, and I love how the author shows their platonic relationship.

Liam and Ruby are at odds. Liam doesn’t want to fight, Ruby is aiming for one. She has trained to take down the Psy camps, Liam wants to expose them and let the adults do the work. Ruby doesn’t trust that will work. She only trusts her plan of getting the kids out herself. It is why she has stayed with the Children’s League as long as she has. The promise of retribution, of releasing her friends, girls that were her family before she met Liam and Chubs and Zu on the road. 

Amy McFadden kills it again as the narrator. She is fantastic! Y’all I have bought audiobooks to listen to just because she is the narrator without reading the synopsis. I found myself aching listening to her tell Ruby’s story which is so full of heart-break. I even shed tears and had to pause it more than once to collect myself.

Overall In the Afterlight is a fantastic, explosive conclusion to the series (though I know that Zu gets her own book and I do plan to read it as well). Ruby, Liam, Cole, Chubs, and Vida are at the heart of this story and really drive the plot. If you enjoy YA dystopia, put this series on your must-read list!

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