Back of Book: 

Sloane Becker is haunted by the events of one night one year ago—the night her friendship with her best friend ended. But when strange things start to happen around Sloane, she realizes that she has the ability to manipulate time—even travel back to that terrible night.

She’s not the only time traveler out there, though. A community of other travelers exists, with one main rule guiding them: don’t alter the past. This doesn’t stop Sloane from wishing she could fix that one night. Nor does it stop the mysterious woman who seems to be stalking her through time, trying to kill her.

As Sloane struggles to master her newfound abilities, as well as her complex relationship with her mysterious coworker Eric, something keeps pulling her back, over and over again, to that night everything went wrong. Sloane knows she shouldn’t do anything to change the past—but what if her future self has already made those choices for her? 

Book Number: One 

Genre: Adult | Science Fiction | Fantasy 

Review:  🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

A thrilling time travel mystery that had me entirely engrossed in the world, the characters, and the complexities of having multiple versions of oneself existing in the same moment. 

After returning to her hometown for her first summer after college, Sloane is ready for a mundane summer working at her father's law firm. At least she finds herself working with a cute coworker named Eric who makes the days feel a little less long. Before long though, Sloane's life takes an exciting turn when she starts manifesting strange powers—powers that let her manipulate time itself. With the help of a mysterious man named Adrian and his young daughter Maddie, Sloane begins to understand the elusive powers that she possesses and the complex world of time travel that she finds herself ensnared by. Things take a turn for the worse though when a woman with fiery red hair tries to kill her. Now on top of learning to harness her new abilities, Sloane must do everything in her power to prevent her time in this secretive world from being cut short before it hardly even begins.

It has been a long time since I've felt this absorbed in a book! The fast pacing in this book kept me flipping the pages, and I seriously considered staying up until three in the morning to finish it (but I restrained myself). Between the mysterious incident that broke Sloane and Tom's friendship, the mechanics of how time travel worked, and the murder mystery elements of this book, literally every angle of it had me so curious to know what happens next. 

Usually I'm not the biggest fan of time travel books due to the fact that the science behind is just too complex for my brain to truly understand. The way that Andersen approaches talking about time travel in this book was really easy to follow (even if she did include some math equations that definitely went straight over my head). Also, I have to give her kudos for keeping everything in this book straight. In the course of this book, Sloane revisits the same night at least five times and by the end of it, there are so many versions of her and her friends running around that I found myself forgetting where they all ended up. Luckily, I'm not the author of the series, and it is not my job to keep all of the timelines straight. 

I really like the secret societies of Time Wardens in this book. There's this one group that has very strict rules and a Council of Lunai to keep everyone in line, which is the group that Sloane is a part of. There is so much lore surrounding what they can use their powers for, how they came to be, and who is allowed to know about them. There is also a rogue group of time travelers that I won't say much about, but their whole vibes adds strong tension to this book. I think it is really fun that the Lunai call the non-time travelers Temps. It really reminds me of how Wizards call non-magical humans Muggles in the Harry Potter universe. All the history and lore in this book can be a little complex, but it makes the world super immersive to read about. 

The characters in this book are also golden. Sloane is definitely flawed in many ways, and she has a hard time following the rules of the Time Wardens. This leads to some quite grievous errors on her part, but it also makes Sloane feel like a full-fleshed human who goes through many real issues. I also found myself absorbed in many of the side characters' lives, especially Tom's and Adrian's. Tom was Sloane's best friend before they had a huge falling out after high school graduation. I was so excited to learn any little tidbit about him, because he seems like such a nice dude, and I knew there had to be some kind of misunderstanding between him and Sloane, though I didn't know what that would be. Adrian is the leader of the Los Angelese area Lunai and leads the Council there. I found him to be such a nice mentor character, and I found it nice to see how he treated all the Lunai that are under his care. 

The romance subplot in this book is also pretty subtle, which is nice. I enjoy having romance in my books, but I really appreciated how the romantic elements didn't consume the plot in this one. Also, all the spicy scenes were closed door, which is something I appreciate in my adult novels. Eric seems like a pretty solid love interest, but I still think I need more info on him before I can make an accurate assessment of his character. 

This book ends on a pretty nasty cliff hanger, which has me desperate to read the next one, even though I read this book pre-publication date, so I'll still have quite a while to wait for it. The thriller vibes in this book go all the way until the very end, so I kept rapidly turning the pages until there were no more crumbs for me to consume. I always love when a book has me desperately reaching for the next one. I guess I have another book to add to the list of books that I'm anxiously waiting to get my hands on! 

Overall, "The After Hours" is a magnificently penned sci-fi thriller that has me desperate to read the next installment. I adore the worldbuilding, the characters, and the writing style. The time travel elements in this book are handled so masterfully; it was always easy for me to follow, and I never felt too stupid to understand things or completely lost at any point. It has been a while since I've found myself so absorbed into the pages of a novel (which is really saying a ton, because I don't love reading ebooks for long periods of time, and I still found myself not being able to tear myself away from the screen). I am so glad that I happened across Andersen's street team; I very much hope that I'll get to live through this experience again. I can't wait to read book two in this series and see how Sloane manages to get herself out of the mess that she has made!