It took me a few chapters to truly be able to immerse myself in this book. I love audio books, but sometimes, due to changing from past to present or different point-of-views, audio makes it just a bit more difficult to follow along seamlessly.

The review:

Nicola is a mid-30s female, who's battling CF, and who tragically lost her husband soon after being married. His last words to her, as he lay dying, we're "I'll be waiting," Struggling with his death, she decides to hire several psychics to help her talk with her deceased husband. They all turn out to be fake, and Nikola is left searching for answers.

She finds a professor at a university who says he can speak with the dead, so she hires him and they set up to hold a seance using her husband's cremations to summon her husband, Anton. Also attending is her brother-in-law and a woman Nic met at a grief group, along with the professor and Nic.

Strange things start happening right away. There are midge swarms encasing the property, strange noises throughout the house, and a missing neighbor.

The book begins great by telling us just enough to want more. By the middle, it feels like the same things are being repeated (constantly mentioning her CF, for example). The last quarter picked up, however, it also took on such a back and forth of what was happening, it made it a bit more difficult to follow again at times. I feel this would be such a great book, had it not turned to such elaborate far-fetched details toward the end.

For this reason, I am going to give this an average rating of 3 stars. If some things get tweaked, I absolutely feel this could be a 5 star read.

Kelley Armstrong is one of my favorite authors through several series and standalones I have enjoyed everything she’s written and this book did not disappoint me. I will admit I didn’t read the description of this book at all because of the author and I was a little surprised by the amount of grief it punched me with (I shouldn’t have been, it’s clear in the description, this was my stupidity). It was well written, but perhaps a little too close to reality of grief and this is a tough time of year for me, I might have waited a bit but I still enjoyed it.

Nicola lost her husband in a car accident which wasn’t how it was supposed to go, she has had CF her entire life and achieved so much she was told she’d never have, but she always knew she would die and leave her healthy husband behind. After his death she is desperate to communicate, but she knows all of the mediums and clairvoyants she went to were scam artists feeding off her grief and taking advantage. She and her closest supports, her brother Keith, his wife Jin, and Keith’s ex-wife Lori all decide she needs to give it one last attempt. I did find the plot of the story to be fairly predictable, but it was very creepy and a fun ride. I was completely surprised by the midges!! While they seemed bigger than what I’ve seen clouds of bugs that cover everything is accurate and they are completely creepy. Definitely upped the atmosphere for me. Overall I gave this 4.5 stars rounded up because the story was very fun.

Nicola loses her husband in a car accident. She never expected to lose him. It was always supposed to be her first since she has CF. Now in a grieving group, she is hoping to get closure from her husband's last words through siances only to be tricked over and over. Her family decides to search for a real professional to do a proper Siance one last time and be done with it. Nicola and her brother-in-law, along with her mentee from the grieving program, plan to meet Professor... to do a proper séance at her husband's grandmother's lake house. Nick hopes to get answers to her husband's last words. He seemed to have been ready to confess something. But now... this week at the lake house is bringing up her unwanted past. More and more things are happening at the lake house and she can't tell what is real and what could be just tricks.

I really liked this book. I was constantly on the edge of my seat. I loved that Nick was also trying to explain how the professor could be tricking her. And the past totally creeped me out. It was a good haunting story. Toward the end, I couldn't trust anybody and I never knew how it was truly going to end. Thank you Macmillan Audio for giving me the chance to review this book through Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

A truly creepy ghost story from start to finish!

Didn’t see them coming at all right up until it was happening.

Kelley Armstrong is one of my favorite authors and so I stepped out of my comfort zone to read her latest book, I’ll Be Waiting. I’m not generally into horror or whatever genre this might fall under, but I figured I’d give it a try because of the author. And it was really quite good!

This is more of a ghost story than horror, although there are some pretty gruesome things that happen along the way. Nicola has cystic fibrosis and wasn’t expected to live to adulthood but here she is, married to Anton and in relatively good health. She has a new medication and some fancy gear that combine to help her handle the CF. I didn’t know that much about this illness so this was quite informative. Because of her CF, she and Anton never figured that she would outlive him, but she does, because of a terrible car crash. As he’s dying, he tells her “I’ll be waiting”, which is where the title of the book comes from. Bystanders video all of this, and her story goes viral.

Everyone grieves in a different way and Nicola becomes obsessed with Anton’s last words. She consults mediums and go to seances and tries to contact Anton. I enjoyed the first seance described and how Nicola figured out how the charlatan was doing things.

The later sections got a bit convoluted and left my head spinning. The bulk of the book leads you through a multi-day retreat in an effort to reach Anton, guided by a professor who she believes is the real thing, not a charlatan like so many others. In addition to Nicola, a younger woman from her grief group comes along, as well as Nicola’s brother-in-law Jin. There are a lot of weird and spooky things that go on - including a massive swarm of midges, which sounded absolutely disgusting - and we gradually learn about something tragic that happened when Nicola was in high school.

If you enjoy ghost stories and don’t mind some violence and gore, you should definitely pick this one up!

Thank you to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance reader copy of this book and to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for the opportunity to listen to an advance copy of this audiobook. It was beautifully narrated by Jennifer Pickens. All opinions are my own.

This one kinda snuck up on me. It was a little slow in the beginning--the heartbreak had me reeling a little, and I was wondering when the "sinister" would show up. Well, IT DID.

If you like ghosts, seances, the afterlife, anything paranormal, I recommend!

The concept of this book intrigued me, prompting me to dive in! Although the audiobook narrator performed exceptionally, I only truly engaged with the plot around the halfway mark. The initial chapters progressed slowly, and I struggled to connect with the protagonist, yet this wasn't a major issue. My main challenge lay in the repetitive sequences that made the narrative drag a bit.Around the midway point, the story began to captivate me, building up suspense and leaving me curious about the unfolding events! The mysterious atmosphere intensified, keeping me hooked. However, the conclusion felt somewhat disconnected from the earlier sections. While the beginning focused on mystery, grief, and hints of the supernatural, the latter part veered into horror territory. Upon finishing the book, I was left with lingering questions, craving a more cohesive resolution to tie up loose ends.

What an ending! Definitely a great thriller read. This was great as an audiobook. Car accident, paranormal, mystery, and suspense. Murder? Possession? Enjoyed this one. The cover is stunning too! :)

An utterly terrific ghost story! Part psychological thriller part horror, all wonderfully gruesome. A horrific auto accident leaves Nicola "Nic" a grieving widow seeking closure regarding her husband's death. She tries using mediums to communicate with her dead husband, but everyone she encounters proves to be a sham.  The past is not what it seems. When a body turns up, things get very interesting. A very fast paced, well written book with a great cast of intriguing characters

I would like to thank the publisher for giving me an audio-arc in exchange for an honest review through NetGalley.

This was such a wild ride, and I was absolutely here for it.

Nic lost her husband in a car accident, but not before he gave her a message. After that, people reported seeing his spirit leave his body, and Nic has spent her time since then trying to contact him through a medium/seance in order to speak to him one last time. She finally finds one last person who just might be able to help her, and so she goes to spend a week at a beach house her and her late husband would stay at along with her friend and her brother-in-law in order to try and contact her husband one last time.

And then everything goes absolutely off the rails.

We have a missing person, we have bugs that are swarming, creaks and footsteps in the house, voices, objects moving on their own, and an overall eeriness that makes reading this book rather unsettling. I was hooked from the very beginning and couldn't put it down. The horror isn't in your face, it's subtle, it quietly lets itself settle in until you start to question everything yourself along with Nic.

I know there's mixed reviews about that ending, but in my opinion, I thought it was fantastic. It was wild and portrayed a familiar old trope in a new way that was refreshing and exciting. I loved the reveal, and the finale had me at the edge of my seat. Overall, excellent book to kick off the spooky season. And if you get a chance to listen to the audio, take it. Jennifer Pickens does a fabulous job at ramping up the creepiness from beginning to end.

Narration and story are both 5 stars.

I generally don’t consume any horror media but the cover, title, summary, and a chronically ill protagonist grabbed my attention.

I had to pause the book several times and avoid reading it at night alone because it scared me! I agonised over Nic’s decisions, fearing for her. As a disabled person, I love how Nic’s character is not all about her cystic fibrosis- instead her intelligence and logical thinking is what really shown through for me.

The ending was brutal and thrilling.

The narrator delivered Nic’s lines perfectly and captured the emotion easily.

Perfect story to read as you get ready for Halloween this year.

Thank you to MacMillan audio and Kelley Armstrong for the audiobook ARC.

The story kept me very invested and I appreciated how everything wrapped up in the end. The narrator was great! I would recommend this book to anyone that wants a light paranormal book and doesn't mind a bit of gore.

Kelley Armstrong delivers another gripping paranormal horror!

Nicola knew that her marriage wasn't meant to be long, but she thought it would be her going first due to her cystic fibrosis - not her husband being taken early by a fatal car accident. Desperate to connect to his spirit and gain some closure, she hires the best of the best and sets up a secluded seance.

I thought this had some fun twists, and I love a good MC with a sketchy history. The past and present chapters were done very well and there was the perfect amount of bumps in the dark. The ending verged on the brink of a little silly, but this is a great fall spooky read and definitely keeps you flipping pages!

I almost had to be in two different head spaces when listening to this. One side is suspending beliefs about spirits and ghosts and seances, listening to a supernatural horror, while the other side this was simply a crime novel. Additionally, going along the ride with MC Nicola was also balancing between two sides: one where she's this widow so desperate to connect with her husband and Nicola as someone trying to grasp what'd happened when she was young. Either way, this was an absolutely great listen for a horror book that contained all the elements that you'd expect.

I liked all the characters in this; each supporting characters were just as interesting to get to know. I loved the pacing and the eventual reveal and outcome; this was so so enjoyable! There were so many moments that would play with your senes - being scared with ghost stories, sad with Nicola missing her deceased husband, aloof when the past started to reveal itself, and just intrigued any time seances were happening. The author will definitely have you so hooked into what would happen for sure.

Thank you to NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for an audio copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

2.5 stars rounded up. I was really excited going into this one, especially with Halloween being right around the corner. I feel like I just couldn't get into this book though. It started off interesting but became a little repetitive once they got to the vacation house. It stays pretty slow until about 80% when so many different things start happening really fast. I wish that all the exciting things wouldn't have been pushed to the very end and that there were scary things happening all throughout. Overall, it was a decent book.

The publication date is set for October 1, 2024. This audiobook is a perfect listen for fans of the horror genre, featuring all the deliciously wicked elements: a haunted old beach house that used to be in her husband’s family for generations (now a vacation rental), a séance, and a chilling tale about a boy who went into the woods and ended up killing his girlfriend.

The story begins with Nicola Laughton, who has cystic fibrosis, enjoying a happy moment with her husband, Anton. However, tragedy strikes, and instead of Nicola succumbing to her illness as they had both expected, Anton dies. His last words to her were, “I’ll be waiting…” In her grief, Nicola’s private moment is thrust into the spotlight. Desperate to find out what her husband meant and to get answers, Nicola embarks on a quest, consulting medium after medium, to contact her departed husband.

After encountering many charlatans, her brother’s husband, Jin, finally finds a professor of parapsychology who might hold the key to helping Nicola find her answers and hopefully move on. She invites her friend Shania, Jin, the professor Devon Cirillo, and herself to her husband’s family beach house to hold a séance.

Jennifer Picken’s crescendo narration draws you in slowly, building up to a whirlwind climax where everything culminates, and Nicola gets more answers than she bargained for. The story includes plenty of unexpected, shocking elements. Jennifer Picken’s intonations can really build the suspense and make you feel as if you’re part of the crazy and desperate moments. It’s a spine-tingling, paranormal listen that will keep you engaged to the point where you do not want to stop listening. Reading the story was one experience, but hearing Jennifer Picken’s narration made the book come alive, enriching it with the emotions the author intended.

Thank you, NetGalley and MacMillan Audio, for my digital advanced audio copy for my unbiased and honest opinion.

Thank you to NetGalley and MacMillan Audio for this opportunity.

Wow but this one will rip your heart out stomp on it shove it back into your body and then grab your hand and whisk you away on a thriller. Like the genre bouncing was wildly fun. The narrator Jennifer Pickens gave voice to Nicola in a way that made this fictional character feel real. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I love Kelley Armstrong and have read most of her books. When I saw this on NetGalley, I was excited to get it early!
I enjoyed this book. The characters were good, especially Nicola. A few parts seemed repetitive, and the possessions were a bit much but overall, it was a good read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

So I requested this audiobook from NetGalley because I really like Jennifer Pickens's narration. I'm not sure if she's relatively new to narrating or just not that prolific, but she doesn't have a huge backlog and I try to snatch up every new release of hers.

It didn't hurt that I'll Be Waiting also seemed like a thriller/horror, which is up my alley. I don't know how to review this novel without spoiling anything though. So much of this is exploring what's real and what's not real and I feel like to talk about that reveals where the plots go. The story did bounce around to cover grief, mysteries, relationships, potential charlatans, action, thrills, horror, etc. It was interesting seeing where the heck the story was going sometimes, and maybe it wasn't as tight as it could have been, but still super enjoyable.

I will also say that I really liked the MC. She's very in her head and analytical. I appreciate a good character who can seem a bit neurodivergent, but I can also see that not clicking with some people.

And back to Jennifer Pickens! Truly one of my favorite narrators right now and has been ever since The Collected Regrets of Clover.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher!

From the book description:<i> Nicola Laughton never expected to see adulthood, being diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis as a child. Then medical advances let her live into her thirties and she met Anton, who taught her to dream of a future… together. Months after they married, Anton died in a horrible car, but lived long enough to utter five words to her, “I’ll be waiting for you.” That final private moment became public when someone from the crash scene took it to the press—the terminally ill woman holding her dying husband as he promised to wait for her on the other side. Since their story went public, Nicola has been hounded by spiritualists promising closure. In the hopes of stopping her downward spiral, friends and family find a reputable medium—a professor of parapsychology. For the séance, they rent the Lake Erie beach house that Anton’s family once owned. The medium barely has time to begin his work before things start happening. Locked doors mysteriously open. Clouds of insects engulf the house. Nicola hears footsteps and voices and the creak of an old dumbwaiter…in an empty shaft. Throughout it all she’s haunted by nightmares of her past. Because, unbeknownst to the others, this isn’t her first time contacting the dead. And Nicola isn’t her real name. That’s when she finds the first body....</i>

I tend to use the book description when the storyline is complex or I don’t want to give away spoilers in my own description of events. This is definitely the latter case. The story is very intricate, with us meeting Nicola months after the death of her husband, meeting yet another spiritualist. Then the plans to hold one last seance are made and the real “fun” begins. It’s not hard to follow the storyline, but you have to follow along and pay attention.

The book is beautifully atmospheric and, pardon my pun, haunting in its simplicity as a good ghost story, complete with a remote location, seances, a medium you can’t get a good read on, etc. But things aren’t really that simple, of course. There’s always secrets and lies that complicate everything, and the characters in this book are no exception.

What’s frustrating, and kept this from a five-star is that the complications got a little too, well, complicated. There was a lot that went down toward the end, and some of it became hard to follow. Especially when Nicola was so quick to blame everyone and everything as soon as she got even a hint of something “off.”

But, in the end all was answered, and in quite an interesting way, I might add. I did enjoy the conclusion once everything was settled.

I highly recommend this book to fans of ghost stories and other horror genres. This is a spooky tale you won’t soon forget.