Backstory

By: Gabriel Bergmoser

Narrated by: Emma Harvie, Zahra Newman, Ryan Johnson, Zenia Starr, Tom Conroy, Zoe Trilsbach, Michael Caton, Brooke Satchwell, Helen Thomson, Jonathan Jagoe, Uppy Chatterjee

Five friends, one university creative writing course, one weekend away to celebrate. Nobody expected it to end in disaster.

Ten years ago, promising young writer Keith Brooks fell to his death during a weekend getaway with his university friends. The official story? A tragic accident. But when disgraced journalist Phoebe Black stumbles upon conflicting accounts from Keith's surviving friends, she uncovers a web of lies that suggests something far more nefarious happened on that fateful night.

As she delves deeper into the past, Phoebe uncovers a group of once-close friends torn apart by jealousy, lies and ambition. With each revelation, the lines between truth and fiction blur, and the consequences of that night reach far beyond Keith's death. Phoebe must confront her own past and the nature of truth itself as she races against time to catch a killer.

Whose version of events is accurate? And how far will these people go to hide their dark secrets?

©2025 Gabriel Bergmoser (P)2025 Audible Australia Pty Ltd

Well voiced characters both literally and in the literary sense

I appreciated how different every character’s voice was both in the literary and literal sense. At the start I had some difficulty differentiating between the characters, but as the story developed, the way every character has their own unique way of writing and speaking really stood out to me. Information is well paced and presented making this one hard to pause. Got me through a full work shift and making dinner afterwards. As someone who majored in journalism myself, I appreciated how each character was presented as archetypes that we we’ve all seen and known. To me, the ending wasn’t a big twist, but it was well worked up to. Worth the listen!

Great cast!

I couldn’t stop listening! One of my favorite audiobooks of the year. I look forward to exploring this author further. Also this would make an excellent television series 👀

Great interwoven conflicting narratives

Really well fleshed out characters. Rashomon-type conflicting narratives that give not only widely different accounts of events, but widely differing takes on people's characters and action. Not only do you have the fun of whodunnit, you have the curious puzzle of who each person really is. Will the guilty escape justice?

Good listen

I enjoyed the narrator and the story was good. Will look for more from this author

Starts slow but finishes well

Complexity of relationships and motives make for an interesting story. The wrap up was welcomed due to that mystery.