A user device that plays back audio books for a user can include a dynamic pause that provides a user with greater flexibility in when to pause playback of an audio book. Dynamic pause includes initiating playback of an audio book using a user device; receiving a pause request as input to the user device, the pause request received at an input time index during playback of the audio book; retrieving a subset of candidate pause points, each candidate pause point comprising a time index within the audio book that corresponds to a break point located within an eBook corresponding to the audio book; selecting one of the candidate pause points from the subset, the time index of the selected candidate pause point determining a pause time index when playback is to be paused; and pausing the playback at the pause time index.