I'll be waiting by Kelley Armstrong is a ghost story built on tragedy.

When Nicola’s husband died in a tragic car accident and his dying words were.. I’ll be waiting for you… but a witness says his ghost said it.. so Nicola spends her time trying to reach him in the afterlife.

When her friends contact a parapsychologist to help contact Anton, she hopes this stops her spiraling.

This isn’t the first time Nicola has contacted the dead and Nicola isn’t even her real name..

It was a clever piece of supernatural fiction. The slow steady creepy build up was really entertaining. The tension was palpable and real.

Nicola wasn’t expected to live this long. She has CF and she certainly never expected to outlive her husband. All the characters were ok. I don’t think the book was there to make friends and it showed.

It does get hella crazy past the halfway point. It goes to a place I didn’t think it would go to and I actually thought the shock was brilliant! The end was done well too. It tied up all the questions I had and really, it was an epic book to start the spooky season with!

4 stars

Thanks St Martin’s press and netgalley for my gifted copy.

There were some elements I really liked about this book, but overall it didn’t really stand out enough. There wasn’t quite enough suspense and the horror elements were more gore based, ultimately it didn’t land for me.

Loved it! This was a great stand alone and perfect for an October read! Spooky seances, murder, mystery, ghosts, twist and turns, it has everything you could want in a spooky read!

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this ARC.

I've read some of Kelley Armstrong's series back in highschool and college & loved them.

When I saw this one as an adult horror, I knew I had to read it for spooky season.

I really enjoyed the journey and it was an actual horror, which I feel like is hard to find. I loved the dual timelines and the mystery. I did figure out the twist but not until the very end.

Overall this was a very spooky and fast read I really enjoyed!

This was a very good haunting story! I enjoyed the way it incorporated skeptics and believers into the story. I think it dealt with the character's grief very well and was a fun story all throughout.

I really like the Canadian setting in this one. I live close to the border, so it seemed local to me. The story was tough to read about a woman who lost her husband, but intriguing nonetheless. I did see very early on where it was going, and while there was a surprise twist after that, it felt very predictable. If you love a haunted house or the supernatural, you may like this one.

I love the majority of Kelley Armstrong’s books and I am enjoying her foray into supernatural horror.

The story grabs you in the beginning. You think you know what is going on, but you don’t. There were unexpected twists I didn’t see coming. There is a part where you know that one of the characters is going to be related to the “wronged” party, but there is another twist.

Great story to start October!

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Kelley Armstrong for the eARC.

Going into this book I completely thought it was going to be in the vein of Simone St. James, a mystery with supernatural elements, sadly it wasn't that. The dead body hinted at in the blurb was not found until the final action sequence of the book, which left the rest of it just a bunch of silly, spooky sounds and things going bump in the night. It was pretty easy early on to figure out what was going on and I feel like that was a bit of a disservice to the reader because we then had about 250 more paged to get through.

With that being said, I was enthralled with Nicola and her journey. She is just the type of female character I love. Self sufficient, kick butt and independent. She has been through enough in life to know not to take any moment for granted. I wish we would have gotten more peeks into her life with her husband. I feel like the ones we got were pretty small. There was that little twist involving her husband that I definitely didn't see coming.

All in all I gave this 3.4 stars. I would probably recommend this to someone who hasn't read a paranormal thriller before as a dip your toe to see if you like it kind of story.

I'll Be Waiting is a stand-alone tale of supernatural terror by Kelley Armstrong. I fell in love with Ms. Armstrong's series Casey Duncan, Rockton and A Rip Through Time, and I've really enjoyed some of her other stand-alones, such as Hemlock Island (which was also a horror story). I've recently become a fan of horror fiction again; I loved it years ago, but my tastes had changed. I'm glad I found my way back to it, as I would hate to have missed this thrilling book. It will have you sitting on the edge of your seat!

Nicola Laughton was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis (CF) as a child. She didn't think she'd ever make it to her mid-thirties, never mind to adulthood. But medical advances had given her a greater lifespan and hope, and just a number of months ago she fell in love with Anton and married him. He gave her hope for a future together... until that future was quickly ended by a car crash. As she held him as he died in her arms, he had the chance to say to her, I’ll be waiting for you.” Someone at the scene took a picture of the scene and released it to the press, also revealing his last words. To make matters worse, that person said those words uttered were not by Anton, but his ghost hovering over his body. Since then, Nicola has been visiting spiritualists, hoping for closure. After visiting the latest charlatan, her family and friends decide to locate a reputable medium—a professor of parapsychology - in an attempt to stop Nic's downward spiral. For the séance, they rent the Lake Erie beach house that Anton’s family once owned where Nic and Anton made happy memories. The séance has barely started before odd happenings occur. Clouds of midges surround the house. Locked doors unlock. Nick hears voices, footsteps and the old dumbwaiter creaking, never mind the shaft is empty. And then Nic begins to have nightmares about her past, one unknown to the others. This isn't the first times she's contacted the dead, and her name really isn't Nicola...

This book was a lot of fun, and at times disturbing. It was one of those stories that you want to speed through to find out what happens and who lives and dies, but you make yourself slow down because you want to savor it. First, the characters... Nicola was a Cystic Fibrosis patient, but she was bucking the odds with new meds and treatments. I had heard of this disease, but really wasn't very familiar with it. Oh, what those patients have to deal with is horrifying, and I am in awe how people with such illnesses can fight for normal lives. She lost both of her parents, but has a very supporting brother, Keith. Nic became an engineer, and had recently married Anton, who she knew in high school and later reunited and fell in love with. They were discussing a cruise to Iceland when the fatal accident occurred. It was heartbreaking, and of course I cried. His death sent Nic looking for mediums to find out if Anton was okay, and the charlatans kept killing her hopes. Brother Keith, his husband Jin and Keith's ex-wife Libby (took me a minute to wrap my mind around that group), her best friends, were determined to find a medium who could either contact Anton or find that there was no way it was going to happen. Jin agreed to accompany Nic to the Lake Erie home Anton's family once owned. I loved Jin; he was a very caring - and funny - friend and brother-in-law, and I loved his interactions with Nic. Also accompanying them to the home was Shania, a nurse who lost her sister and whom Nic was helping as a grief counselor. Shania seemed very excited to see if their professor of parapsychology could reach the other side. The plot really picked up when they arrived at the lake house. At first it seemed like a perfectly nice place; well, except for the room with LOTS of dolls. In my world, the only thing more terrifying than dolls (with their empty, staring, lifeless, soulless eyes) are clowns. Odd little things began to happen - locked doors would suddenly open, there were footsteps and voices in the room Nic would sleep in, and there was creaking in the dumbwaiter. I, unlike Nic, would not be opening it up in the middle of the night to see if anything was in there! What creeped me out were the swarms of midges that were like clouds. Jin referred to it as the bug-pocalypse; loved that! The suspense and fear really ramped up when Nic began dreaming of high school, and the séances she participated in with her two best friends. Those did NOT end well; was there any connection to the present? Nope, not going to tell you. Pick up the book and experience the horror for yourself! You'll see why I'm such a huge Kelley Armstrong fan.

I received an ARC of this book courtesy of the publisher. I received no compensation for my review, and all thoughts and opinions expressed are entirely my own.

First of all, the cover is gorgeous! I absolutely loved this book. It was creepy and is perfect for spooky season.

This was a very fast read and nicely creepy with the goings on of Nic’s last try of a séance to contact her husband Anton after his last words (alluding to something that needs to be uncovered) before dying in the car accident which brought back a dark event in both their lives. Fast forward to the last try (after all the fake seances) in what used to be Anton's family's house. Personally, I think I would have been out of there, the moment the midges arrived. Accidents. a missing person, and someone trying to bring up the dark past that Nic had avoided for years, even to the changing of her name and moving away. The beginning was nicely creepy and it built up well, with the voices, "accidents", and slow unraveling of what happened all those years ago. The ending went a little wonky weird though, I guess a bit too jarring from the slow spooky build up straight to bodies, chopping, and one very nasty stabbing with garden shears. I did like the little bits with Nic and Anton though, they really did love each other in a sweet way, despite what happened in high school.

So, to sum it up, lots of history and shared pasts revealed and someone with a plan to make sure Nic ends up joining her husband sooner rather than later. Also gross bugs. Good story and nice for the Halloween season.

Oh my gosh!! I can always rely on Kelley Armstrong to give me a story that sucks me in and doesn't let me go!!

This is listed as Supernatural Horror and I didn't ever feel too scared to keep reading. This was one of those books that I started reading and didn't stop until it was finished! I highly recommend this story to everyone!

I would like to thank Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for a copy of this kindle book to read and review.

I’ll Be Waiting by Kelley Armstrong ⭐️⭐️⭐️💫

So the first 75% of this one was cozy, slow, atmospheric and the last 25% was WTF! I preferred the last 25% and wished more of the book brought that energy. If I had to briefly describe what this book was about, I’d say it was about grief first and foremost. Add a splash of paranormal, a creepy house on a cliff, and some bugs and that was this book.

Throughout this read, I felt like I was working on two similar jigsaw puzzles simultaneously and the pieces looked like they belonged but also didn’t quite fit together. It felt a bit disconnected with all the threads and while they came together at the end, I felt it was a stretch.

All in all, the last little bit of this read was mostly worth the slow buildup. Fans of haunted houses, books with multiple layers, and seances will enjoy this one.

This was nice and spooky to start off my October. The two timelines equally held my interest. I really enjoyed piecing it all together and guessing at the twists. I liked that the main character wasn’t “typical” - she had cystic fibrosis. Nicola felt quite real. I don't know enough about CF to know whether the author got it all right but I like to see the representation. And what a wild ending! I was glued.

Wow! Nic has your sympathy right off. She has far outlived her life expectancy as a person with cystic fibrosis. She finds love and then loses it in a tragic accident. Her final moments with her love, Anton, are witnessed by a lot of people who share her story and make har a minor celebrity.

My opinion of this book changed every few paragraphs. I loved the parts in which the con-artist mediums are exposed. All of these people wanting to take Anton's last words "I'll be waiting" and somehow make them true. Prove that he was really hanging around waiting for her. But they all fail.

There are more seances and that part starts to get repetitive. A spooky story brings it back. Towards the end it goes from connecting everything in a satisfying way to completely over the top. It's hard to say too much without saying why I had these opinions, which would be too revealing. Let's just say there is some romance, some supernatural, some violence. It's all there.

I’ll Be Waiting is one of the best Kelley Armstrong novels I have read in some time.

“I’ll Be Waiting”, were some of Anton’s last words. Nicola had thought their short time together would be because of her illness, Cystic Fibrosis. She cannot accept that he is gone, so she hops from one seance to another.

Don’t we all know, don’t go in the basement. Yet, she does.

I didn’t trust the right person and did trust the wrong person. That’s some great writing. Sucked me right in.

I love that Kelley Armstrong had my head spinning. I couldn’t figure out if Nicola was being played or if it was true. I do love a convoluted ghost story. One that I am not able to figure out for myself. I was fooled and when I found the truth, I loved the book all the more. It’s nice to be surprised. I couldn’t figure out who to trust and was sucked into the ghostly mystery.

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This book grabbed me from the start. Some books have a slower start, and I have to read for a while to find interest. Not so with I’ll Be Waiting! This thriller kept me guessing until the end. Each time I thought I had figured it out, there was another twist. I enjoyed the writing style and I highly recommend this read!

Kelley Armstrong can do no wrong in my eyes! Her latest is a haunted house mystery with an unreliable narrator and unpredictable plot twists. The last part took an interesting turn, a bit outlandish, but you know what? It worked. The end was satisfying, not leaving the reader with more questions than answers. All in all, another solid read by Armstrong and good addition to the paranormal fiction genre.

Thanks for the opportunity to read in advance!

Ghost stories often have a healthy dose of mystery to them. Readers and characters want to know why the specters are haunting a particular location and why they haven’t moved on to whatever lies beyond. Kelley Armstrong’s “I’ll Be Waiting” appears to be a straightforward ghost story at first. But as the novel progresses, readers learn that it’s more of a puzzle than an outright fright. I never had the lingering, uneasy feeling I have when I read the best horror fiction. Instead, I was fascinated by the intricate plot the author gradually revealed. By the end of the book, the storyline resembled the intricate craftiness of a Ross MacDonald novel. Best of all, the author finally ties up all the loose ends in a way that will please even the pickiest readers.

Since “I’ll Be Waiting” is more a mystery than a horror novel, I must be vague in describing the plot so I don’t spoil any of the twists. The title phrase refers to the last words that the narrator, Nicola’s husband Anton, said to her before he died in an auto accident in which she was barely injured. His death brought a tragic end to a storybook romance. Nicola has cystic fibrosis, and she approached middle age with the knowledge she only had a few years to live at best. But then she met Anton, who seemed to be Mr. Perfect until his tragic death. Later, Nicola could not get over her loss and engaged a variety of charlatan would-be psychics who claimed they could contact Anton’s spirit.

As the story begins, Nicola holds one last seance at Anton’s former summer lakefront home. The seance will be conducted by a professor of parapsychology whose specialty is debunking fake psychics. He intends to take scientific measurements to prove or disprove any ghostly manifestations. Nicola brings her brother-in-law and a young woman from her grief support group to lend some support. Strange things occur in or near the house, including a thick swarm of annoying insects outside and weird noises inside.

Nicola is a classic case of an unreliable narrator. Readers eventually learn that she was involved in some seances back when she was in high school that did not go well. Her high school experiences explain, to a large extent, her current-day attitudes. However, the author reveals this information arbitrarily in flashbacks. This makes the book’s central mystery much more entertaining for readers. Through the timing and content of those flashbacks, the author determines how much readers need to know about the events that occurred when Nicola was in high school. These revelations rarely have anything specific to do with what Nicola is doing in the present day but rather because the author feels it’s an excellent time to let readers in on a little more of the backstory. This gimmick can frustrate readers, but the author handles it well. The result is a well-crafted mystery that comes together over the course of the novel.

One shocking discovery (which I won’t reveal) occurs after about 80% of the book. At first, I was thrown off by some of the characters’ subsequent actions in the immediate aftermath of the discovery. I felt the author had lost control of the characters and was making them behave in implausible ways to complicate the plot. When I finished the book, however, the scene made complete sense. I realized my lack of knowledge of crucial facts made the book seem implausible. The author fooled me in the way the best mystery writers sometimes do.

Readers who try to solve the mystery before the author reveals the solution may have difficulty. The author primarily plays fair with readers, leaving most of the clues in the text. However, Nicola occasionally only remembers an important detail late in the book, making it impossible for the readers to precisely piece some earlier events together. My advice to readers would be to just go with the flow, enjoying the surprises as they come.

The author’s emphasis on the mystery elements of “I’ll be Waiting” comes at the expense of horror. The events Nicola recounts would undoubtedly scare me if I were in the room with her when they happened. However, her narration of events leaves out some details that could have intensified the experience. Nicola glosses over the details of the seances, making the sights and sounds that occur later less potent than they should have been. The horror elements in “I’ll Be Waiting” are creepy (the book has some graphic violence) but not too scary. The abrupt transitions from present-day events to Nicola’s high-school flashbacks are also jarring at times.

“I’ll Be Waiting” is being marketed as ghost horror fiction. It’s really not. It’s a mystery with paranormal elements. The author has written several time-traveling mysteries in another series, and she’s pretty accomplished in the genre. As a supernatural mystery, “I’ll Be Waiting” is one of the best examples of the genre I’ve read in a long time. Die-hard horror buffs may be disappointed by the relative lack of outright shock moments. Those of us who just enjoy a good ghost story will be mystified and then satisfied by the surprises in “I’ll Be Waiting.”

NOTE: The publisher graciously provided me with a copy of this book through NetGalley. However, the decision to review the book and the contents of this review are entirely my own.

I have been a fan of Kelley Armstrong’s paranormal series for 20+ years (Bitten and Stolen are seriously some of my fav werewolf books of all time), but I this was my first time reading her more contemporary books. I was reminded with this novel what a brilliant writer she is, especially when it comes to creating characters that are fully realized and complex.

Overall, I’ll Be Waiting is a good old fashioned haunted house story. The psychological stress as the main character battles with whether she is witnessing true paranormal phenomena, or if her mind is conjuring ghosts from her own tragic past, creates plenty of suspense and creepy vibes.

I felt like the first half of the book was very engaging, but the middle was too long, dissipating the tension. The finale of the book was action packed and paid off in many ways, if not entirely unpredictable. Overall, an enjoyable read and perfectly timed for adding to a spooky season TBR list.