I’ll Be Waiting is a paranormal horror that covers many topics. Nic has Cystic fibrosis and never expected to out live her husband. When he passes, he has some famous last words that turn his death into a media frenzy. Nic is determined to see it hear him again, but at what cost. The heaviness of grief is palpable as you read. The atmosphere was tight with an eerie feeling and a determination.This is such a binge able audiobook, the narration just added to the whole experience.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and Netgalley for my #gifted copy.

Nicola, who has CF and lives beyond her life exposure to medical innovation, falls in love in her 30’s. Her husband, Anton, passes away in a car accident just months into their marriage. But he leaves her with a message, “I’ll be waiting for you.” Many seances ensue.


I loved the first maybe half of this story. It focuses on grief and the lengths humans will go to contact the other side. Nicola attends many seances and can easily pick out a fraud. Partly due to her involvement in a few séances gone wrong in her teenage years. It’s heartfelt and creepy at times.


I loved the secluded setting. It added a lot to the overall vibe. House at the edge of a lake isn’t a new setting, but always enjoyable. What is relatively new for me, to my detriment, is an MC with Cystic Fibrosis. It’s a main point of the story, a la zest for life style, but it’s also not. Nicola goes about her daily activities living with CF, and it’s just normal. I’m not sure of the accuracy here because I’m ignorant on the topic, but it is nice to have some inclusion in horror.


The middle of the book is extremely repetitive. It became a bit hard to push through when the same “did you hear that,” scene played over and over. It’s a good thing the narrator was so talented and kept me wanting to engage with the story.


You’re going to have to suspend your grip on reality for the ending. Once you do that, it’s actually super fun. There’s a 90’s throwback horror vibe to the whole thing that I really got into.


I enjoyed this one and think it’s a good addition to your spooky season tbr! That you to @macmillan.audio and @netgalley for my review copy!

I am a big fan of Kelley Armstrong’s A Rip in Town series, a time travel crime series. I also really enjoy old fashioned ghost stories and looked forward to this audiobook, which appeared to involve a young wife missing her husband who died in a car crash. However, it evolved into another more sinister being stalking the young widow. While the beginning of the story is very well written and engaging, the ending caught me by surprise because there were no little hints or nuggets to allude to who or what might be involved in the haunting. Rather than a big reveal that made sense, I was very confused, and went back and relistened to it to make sure I understood what was going on, which was like a double possession. I really enjoyed the narrator and glad I listened to it, Happy Halloween!

Kelley Armstrong is one of those authors that I would read no matter what she writes.....and I pretty much do that. She writes in different genres and I read her books in each of them without fail. Needless to say, when an opportunity came out to read a new spooky read from her, I jumped at it and snagged I'll Be Waiting.

Our main character, Nicola is grieving the sudden loss of her young husband. As if the loss wasn't enough, he was seen telling her "I'll be waiting for you." Onlookers saw it and made a big deal of it which didn't help Nicola dismiss it. This probably wouldn't have felt like such a big deal except Nicola has already been exposed to ghostly haunts in the past so she has a strong belief in the otherworldly and supernatural.

This book revolves around the story from her youth and how that influenced her entire life as well as her recent loss and how that added to the stress and grief she was already balancing from her earlier years. When Nicola decides to try for a seance, her brother is protective and questions if it's okay for her. But she feels like she won't be able to move forward without answers. From the moment the group arrives at the house where they plan to carry it out, things are strange and only continue to get worse.

This book as well-written and twisty. I enjoyed it and could barely put it down.

AUDIOBOOK REVIEW: I was also provided with an early listening copy from NetGalley. I really enjoyed the audio - - the narration was really strong and made the storyline even more believable. I would recommend the audiobook for this book without question. 5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley for early copies of both the ebook and audiobook.

I’ll Be Waiting- Kelley Armstrong
Narrated by Jennifer Pickens

Rating ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Narration 🎧🎧🎧🎧🎧

Y’all I have read my fair share of horror and thriller books and the sheer fear that this book induced in me has never happened before. I felt like I was right there in the action of the book that genuinely was scared about what was going on. There were so many twists and turns and revelations that I was audibly gasping. This was such a phenomenal book, I’ll be thinking about it for a while.

Jennifer Pickens did such a great performance with this audio. She knew exactly how to capture the fear the characters were feeling and make the listener feel the same fear. Fantastic job!

I was really looking for something spooky for Halloween this month. This book did deliver! I really enjoyed the plot and the build up but I felt like the ending just got a little too out there for my liking. Very reminiscent of The Exorcist or a possession type movie and sometime they just aren't for me. I did enjoy the ride though!

Recently Kelley Armstrong has become one of my go-to authors for several genres from romance to mystery, time travel, paranormal, and horror. I enjoy her stories, settings, characters, etc. and her latest entry into what I would call a mystery/paranormal/horror mashup is just another example of my growing love for her stories. I find them enjoyable, accessible, and relatable. I quickly switched between the ebook and audio for this one because I was too intrigued to put it down. The audiobook is narrated by Jennifer Pickens who smoothly led me through the story and gave great voices to the characters and suspenseful setting.

Nicola drew the interest of the media when her late husband, Anton, was caught on video in their final moments expressing his sentiments that he would be waiting for her. The drama drummed up by the media implying she is a dying woman is a far cry from her daily life as a cystic fibrosis patient and results in all sorts of spiritualists and frauds soliciting her business to hold seances to provide closure. Nicola’s friends and family are concerned by the way she is coping with her grief. They all agree to one last final attempt at contact with Anton with a reputable professor of parapsychology in an isolated Lake Erie beach house previously owned by Anton’s family.

The story is told in first person by Nicola. I’m not very familiar with cystic fibrosis or how to manage living with it, so I found this aspect of Nicola’s life very educational. The opening accident and subsequent seances quickly drew me into the story fascinated and questioning exactly what was happening. It’s implied early that there are secrets in Nicola’s past that are contributing to the strange events from the seances despite the obvious fraud.

The story alternates between the strange happenings in the rental house and Nicola’s memories of events from high school when something tragic happened in her group of friends keeping me on the edge of my seat. My only quibble is that I figured out a major twist early on, but I still enjoyed the ride and was surprised by quite a few of the later revelations.

Recommended to readers who enjoy ghosts and séance type stories.

Thank you to Netgalley, Macmillan Audio, and St. Martin’s Press for a copy provided for an honest review.

Well that was more gruesome than I was expecting. This started out as a kind of spooky story involving grief, ghosts, and a plague of midges that kept me wondering where this story was really going. Unfortunately I didn’t like what it led up to. Certain actions still don’t make sense to me. The first half was great, but the second half felt rushed and unnecessarily gory. So 3 stars is my final rating.

I received an ARC of the audiobook for free via NetGalley but this did not impact my rating/review.

Thanks, Macmillan Audio, for the ALC.

I have been a massive fan of Kelley Armstrong’s writing since I started reading her when I was younger. I love how she writes different genres and she always has amazing stories to tell. I’m sad to say that the audiobook for I’LL BE WAITING was a gigantic fail. But I genuinely don’t think this was Armstrong’s fault; I think it was the narrator’s. I can’t remember DNFing a book as early as 10% like I did this one. But Jennifer Pickens made me want to pull my ears off my head because it was so bad. I think the only reason I got 10% into the book was that I liked the story, and I kept trying to find different speeds to see if it worked, but nothing - NOTHING! - worked. 😩 It was so monotone, unemotional, and had this overall blah and blandness that I first thought I was listening to uncorrected ALC. But no, it was an actual finished copy, which I don’t understand how that was allowed out in the world! Maybe it was the intention of the book’s tone, but I couldn’t handle it. Not even with my love for Kelley Armstrong’s writing.

I cannot recommend this audio. Stay away.

I will be getting this book because I want to read it with my eyes. What I heard of the story was very cool and lived up to Armstrong’s creativity. I’m just sad the audiobook did not.

Content warnings: (from what I read): familial death, car accident, chronic illness (Cystic Fibrosis)

Nicola always thought she would precede her husband in death due to her battle with cystic fibrosis, but he is killed in a car accident shortly after they are married.

After an incident from her childhood, Nic is convinced there are ways to talk to the deceased and spends her time trying to find an authentic method of talking to her late husband. Her efforts dredge up memories of her past and her interactions with the paranormal that had catastrophic endings. Was it real then? Is it real now? And when is it time to give up?

Very fast paced and held my attention to the end, but it did feel like it jumped the shark there at the end and turned gruesome.

Great audio narration!

This was a nailbiting suspense as Nichola and friends do a seance to try to summon her dead husband , only her past comes back in full force and the evil begins .

Nicola has dealt with the fact that she is dying her entire life. Born with cystic fibrosis she never expected to live long enough to fall in love and get married. Once she did she always expected he would outlive her. Now she is dealing with his death after a fatal car crash. Searching for proof of life after death things turn twisty in a secluded airbnb. Good narration, keeps you coming back to find out what happens.

I have read many books by Kelley Armstrong and I have to say that this one was just not one I enjoyed. I was bored and it took me forever to read.

I received an audiobook copy from the publisher via Netgalley for an honest review.

I would say this is more like 3.5 stars.
This was good from the beginning and had awesome creep factors throughout the novel and I would have absolutely given it more stars and then.....the last few chapters. They were just jam packed with so much craziness and not necessarily in a good way. The 'who done it' seemed rather ridiculous and rushed. It felt like the author was just trying to ensure all questions were answered and it was convoluted answer to all the questions, including from childhood. With that, since this was the audiobook, it was a little confusing when we went into flashbacks/dreams/memories of Nicola's past because it did not seem to differentiate it. I would be confused about what was happening, then realize it was in the past, not present time. I am sure reading it the font changed or something, in the audiobook it was not well separated. Then we get to the very last chapter of the novel and...it felt like a super abrupt ending and now we are done. Just an odd ending. I really love Kelley Armstrong's time travel murder mystery novels, but thus far with her horror ones, they seem really good, until the ending.

This book was creepy and thrilling and just so so so good. It was the perfect fall read to bring in spooky season with. I cannot recommend it enough for thriller lovers

A perfect read to start spooky season! I love a paranormal story with just enough creep factor to make me turn the lights on if I’m at home by myself, and this was definitely a great choice for the start of fall.

The pacing drew me in right away, and had me flipping the pages so fast to find out what would happen next. I thought the characters were well developed, and I was curious to find out more about Nicola’s past.

𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗧𝗢 𝗘𝗫𝗣𝗘𝗖𝗧
Ghosts
Sprawling estate with creepy dolls
Mystery
Themes of grief
CF rep

🎧I did an immersive read of the book with the audiobook and loved it! The narration was great, performed by Jennifer Pickens, and she truly paired the voice of the characters so well. It added so much tension to the atmospheric story, and gave me the unsettling vibes as if I were right there summoning spirit in a sprawling estate.

*many thanks to Minotaur Books and Macmillan Audio, and Netgalley for the gifted copy for review

This was a sad and semi depressing story. Nicola Laughton has Cystic Fibrosis and was never supposed to make it to adult hood. She has and married Anton. Months after their wedding, they are in a car accident and Anton dies. While dying he tells her “I’ll be waiting for you.” Since the accident, Nicola is obsessed with mediums who claim they can contact the dead. During one of the sessions, weird things start happening. I did think this was going to be more of a horror story, and it just wasn’t quite there. There was a lot of repetition in the writing, and I never really connected with Nicola as a character. I predicted the large twist at the end and the last third of the book seemed out of character from the first two thirds. I do like paranormal reads, just this one wasn’t for me.

I enjoyed this audiobook. It was perfect for spooky season. I liked how yes it was a horror book, it also had more emotional depth and great character development. I was intrigued right from the start. The only thing that I struggled with was all the secondary characters, so it was hard to keep track who was who. I did a review post on this on my Bookstagram that I have linked down below.

I sadly could not get into this book. Possibly because I am not really into mediums and physics and such which is what this book is based on. I still enjoyed the narration and the basic idea of the plot though!

Thank you for this ALC!

4.5/5
My first Kelley Armstrong, but most certainly enough to make me want to go right back and read every single thing she's written, and to keep an eye out for all future releases. This was the best kind of horror there can be as far as I am concerned - as careful and tender in its approach to the horrors of real life as it is unflinching in its approach to the horrors of a world beyond. I'LL BE WAITING starts off quiet, mellow in its grief, but it slowly becomes an unhinged rollercoaster that makes it nothing short of unputdownable. I find it rare for horror to manage to get a physical reaction out of me, but this made my skin crawl and my hair stand on end on quite a few occasions, and it kept me tense and on edge more often than not.
I cannot recommend it enough.