Listen free for 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo + applicable taxes after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
The Waiting Hours cover art

The Waiting Hours

Written by: Shandi Mitchell
Narrated by: Marcia Johnson
Try for $0.00

$14.95 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $33.25

Buy Now for $33.25

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Tax where applicable.

Publisher's Summary

“The most impressive trick of this book - and it is a very good one - is the way Mitchell pulls off a literary thriller that is as suspenseful as it is introspective.” (The Globe and Mail)

When you spend your life saving others...who will be there to save you?

When tragedy erupts on a stifling summer night, three ordinary people, with the extraordinary jobs of rescuing strangers, are connected to one another in ways both explicit and invisible. Each is deeply devoted to what they do, but they are all beginning to crack under the immense pressures of their work. 

Tough-as-nails Kate, when she's not working with her beloved search-and-rescue dog, Zeus, is a trauma nurse who spends her off-duty hours trying to forget what she has seen. Estranged from her troubled family, she must confront the fact that resolution may elude her forever. Respected police officer Mike is on the edge of burnout and sets himself on a downward spiral that may be impossible to break, fraying the bonds of love that hold his family together. Tamara, an agoraphobic 911 dispatcher, who is trying her hardest to remain as calm and emotionless as an automated message, is propelled into the middle of a story that she can't avoid and must enter the world to find out how it ends. 

With a city prickling under a heat wave and a hurricane threatening to make landfall, these responders will be forced to make fateful choices that will alter lives. A storm is coming, and nobody is prepared.

©2019 Shandi Mitchell (P)2019 Penguin Random House Canada

What the critics say

“The most impressive trick of this book - and it is a very good one - is the way Mitchell pulls off a literary thriller that is as suspenseful as it is introspective.” (The Globe and Mail)

"A propulsive and invigorating book. The strange, difficult work of frontline workers will be fascinating and unfamiliar territory to most readers, but the rich inner lives and emotional fractures of Mitchell's characters are painfully -beautifully-recognizable." (Katrina Onstad, author of Everybody Has Everything)

 “[A] novel that seems to strike at the core of what it means to be a first responder.... [The Waiting Hours] looks both at emotional and physical loss, and at how people find themselves afterwards." (The Standard)

What listeners say about The Waiting Hours

Average Customer Ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    8
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1
Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    7
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    2
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    9
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    1

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Well done

Well done by the author and narrator. A glimpse into the life of a first responder's life.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

What a great book!

It was an easy read and characters you liked from the beginning. I do wish the characters would have intertwined a bit more. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good fiction book with first responders.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    1 out of 5 stars

Boring diary

My family work in police and emergency hospital care, so I thought this might give me good insight into their world.
I am not sure if it’s the narrator or the story, but after 10 of 50 chapters I kept skipping ahead hoping for a thread of purpose to the story. It’s really more of a diary of various emergency experiences. No real goal or purpose.
Maybe some would enjoy that but not me. Sorry.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

When will it ever end?

This book tells the individual stories of characters whose lives intersect. Several are first responders - a police officer, a 911 operator, a nurse/search and rescue technician, her brother, a cab driver. The story starts with the shooting of a young boy, and then carries on, telling the life story of each of the characters. You know that at some point some incident will happen that will bring them all back together. But in the meantime, the individual stories go on, and on, and on. The stories are mildly interesting, and the narrator held my interest. I would put it on while driving the car. While listening I kept asking - WHERE is this going? WHEN will it ever end? As it does get close to the end a storm is about to break, so you think that the final event is related to the storm, but it isn't. Someone gets shot and all of a sudden the book is over, leaving threads of the story dangling. I wanted to know what happened to Tamara? What happened to Hassan?

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!