I'll Be Waiting was finally my first Kelley Armstrong book, after owning at least five and just... not getting around to them. Well reader, I have been missing out! In this twisty, exciting book, Nicola always planned to be the first to die. She was born with cystic fibrosis, and thanks to medical advances, has far outlived her initial prognosis. Even though she's doing well, she and husband Anton always planned for his survival, not hers. That all changes with a terrible car accident and Anton's untimely death.

Because of her diagnosis, she became headline fodder. "Terminally ill woman outlives husband" was everywhere, and Nicola could not escape it- or Anton's last words to her, the titular "I'll Be Waiting". Was it just him saying he'd be waiting for her in death? Did it mean something more? Nicola has been contacted by all sorts of mediums, psychics, and general fraudsters, trying to use her story to their gain. Eventually, Nicola takes one last chance, on a professor who also studies spiritualism, and they head to a weekend retreat/seance at Anton's childhood house that has been turned into a B&B.

There, things take all kinds of turns. The atmosphere is incredibly on point, and you certainly cannot help but feel for Nicola. Even though she is harboring some secrets of her own, it is still awful to think about what she's been through. And it is clear from the start of the trip that she really can't be sure who is being honest with her and who is using her for their own pursuits.

I enjoyed the many twists and turns, and trying to figure out what had happened, both in Nicola's past, and in the present at the retreat. I also found that I learned a lot about CF, including all the medical advances, so that was a big plus. I found the story to be very readable, though I did find the ending a tiny bit overwhelming, the story as a whole was very much worth it.

Bottom Line: Lots of twists and lots of uncertainly, this one definitely kept me hooked!

Author Kelley Armstrong's newest release, I'LL BE WAITING, is the perfect book to put readers in the mood for the spooky season. A grieving wife's desperate attempt to connect with her deceased husband beyond the grave turns deadly in this highly atmospheric tale of supernatural horror. Make sure you have all the lights turned on before starting this one!
Terminally ill Nicola Laughton considers herself to be a fortunate woman. While she's lived with cystic fibrosis since childhood, modern medicine has improved her quality of life as well as her life expectancy. Married to Anton, the man of her dreams, she's enjoying life to the fullest until the day a car crosses the center line claiming her husband's life. As Nicola kneels on the pavement cradling her husband in her arms, Anton's dying vow is to wait for her. Captured by cell phone cameras, the scene soon goes viral with rumors that Anton's ghost or spirit appears hovering over them while whispering to Nicola. The news is all it takes to bring self-claimed psychics out of the woodwork telling Nicola they can facilitate her reconnection to her dead husband only to leave Nicola disappointed and disillusioned. In one last desperate attempt, friends and family step in to set up one final seance with a reputable parapsychologist to take place at Anton's family's Lake Erie beach house where Anton spent a great deal of time. Soon after their arrival, mysterious events occur indicating the possible presence of entities residing in the old house. Is Anton reaching out? Or has something darker, more sinister been awakened?

I'LL BE WAITING is a tension laden, highly atmospheric paranormal thriller. A foreboding tone is set early enhanced by the setting in a secluded beach house complete with unexplained voices and footsteps, doors opening and closing, a creaking dumbwaiter, a room full of creepy porcelain dolls watching . . . and a history that includes a missing boy and murder. As the story progresses, short flashbacks give readers insight to past events raising more questions while leaving readers to decide what's real and what's not. The author slows the pace through the middle portion of the book, taking time to build the suspense while keeping characters and readers off-balance with a variety of eerie, goosebump worthy incidences only to pick up speed again as danger escalates through the final showdown. Some readers may find it hard to connect with characters who appear illusive due to the mysterious, ever-changing aura and circumstances surrounding them. Readers are challenged with uncovering the truth while figuring out who to trust in this tale of things that go bump in the night.

Author Kelley Armstrong has expertly rendered another paranormal page turner, a smoke'n'mirrors mystery, perfect for fans who enjoy a good ghost story without crossing over into full-blown horror. Armchair detectives will also enjoy the challenge of solving this one.

This is a very haunting ghost story following the grieving young widow, Nicola, who lost her husband to a tragic accident when it should have been her first for the “til death do us part”. Nicola had cystic fibrosis and wasn’t supposed to outlive Anton, so in her grief she tries to contact Anton by going to seances. After many failed attempts, Nic’s family helps her find a professor who will help conduct a seance for their final attempt.

This was such a beautiful and frightening ghost story! Full of grief, wanting to believe in the other side or an afterlife, and full of twists! It was spooky, tense, and just an overall excellent ghost story. The representation of CF felt very well researched and the characters were a fun group to follow. This is such a great book to add to your spooky season reads! 👻😍

This one was such a disappointment for me . I love this author and I loved the idea of ghosts and Seances m( I mean i did have a Ouija board when I was a teen and loved holding seances for fun ) but this was just so slow and at a 100 pages really but much had happened and I found myself scanning to try to the end .

2.5 ⭐️

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me to read and review an advanced copy of this novel. I highly enjoyed it and will be recommending it to others.

If you are looking for a light horror/suspense novel, I'll Be Waiting is a great choice. This book was full of creepy atmosphere and plot twists. While I did guess a few, there was so much more to the mystery than I initially anticipated. Which is always a fun surprise when reading a murder mystery. I give this book 4/5 stars

Thank you to NetGalley and St Martin Press for the opportunity to review I'll Be Waiting by Kelley Armstrong

3 ⭐️ This book started so strong, it has an interesting premise about a woman with Cystic Fibrosis who has defied odds and lived much longer than anticipated, she’s married and living a normal life. Then an accident kills her husband and his parting words to her are “I’ll be waiting for you”. She then goes down a path of trying to speak to her husband through seances and that’s when things go sideways. I think the problem was it was a bit too long and repetitive in the middle but overall it was an interesting read for spooky season. The book does have some gore, a little bit suspense around the ghosts but it wasn’t too scary. It’s a pretty mild horror novel in my opinion. I also think things went a little off the rails at the end, but I liked it and I didn’t see it coming until the book set me up to see it coming.

This book is out now! Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for the advanced readers copy in exchange for my honest review.

So this one was really creepy. It's an atmospheric, paranormal, horror ghost story and I was definitely entertained. Nic has cystic fibrosis and has met the love of her life, Anton. She ends up losing him in a horrible accident. While dying, he says to her “I'll be waiting for you”. A witness at the scene photographed that moment and it became public. Eight months later she rents a house that used to belong to Antons family to meet with a medium to contact Anton through a seance. Once there, unexplained things start to happen. It gets pretty damn crazy I'll tell you. You'll have to just roll with it and suspend some disbelief here. If you're good at doing that, then you will like this one. A great read for Halloween and spooky season for sure.


Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the gifted copy in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I am not a horror fan, but this is by Kelley Armstrong and that us the only reason I decided to give it a try. It was spooky and perfect for the Halloween season. It was very interesting and hard to put down, because I had to know what happened. I liked the characters and the story was well developed. I still don't like horror, but this felt more supernatural to me.

A grieving widow attempts a last effort to communicate with her late husband at an isolated lake cabin and awakens something else. This started out a strong four stars - atmospheric and tense. Unfortunately by the end of the book, it had downgraded to two stars - flat characters and weak plot, hence the three star rating. Thanks to MetGalley for a chance to read and review this book.

Wow, this book was so good. I of course was immediately drawn in by the gorgeous cover and started reading without even glancing at the synopsis. I don't think I've ever read anything by Kelley Armstrong but her writing style immediately drew me in. I honestly couldn't put this book down and couldn't stop thinking about it when I wasn't reading. I was not expecting so much grief and heart felt moments to be intertwined into a spooky haunted house book. I've never lost a spouse but some of things the main character experienced absolutely broke my heart. Having a chronic, terminal illness, losing the love of her life, and dealing with the trauma from her past was so hard to read. I don't think I've ever found so many relatable quotes in a thriller/horror book before. Speaking of horror and thriller, this book definitely had both. Certain parts were legitimately freaking me out until the main character's inner dialogue had me cracking up while I was spooked. Nic's perception of everything and her dry wit were one of my favorite parts about this book, she was hilarious. And man, the twists really got to me. This was one of those books where I constantly kept guessing and actually gasped out loud a couple of times. Definitely an author I'll be reading more of.

Many thanks to St. Martins Press for the gifted copy for my honest review!

Can a horror novel be beautiful? There are jump-scares and psychologically terrifying moments in I"ll Be Waiting, but beyond that, there's also a tragic love story about loss, grief, and yearning. This book is impossible to put down, and makes a lasting impression.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the eARC.

Just a perfect horror/suspense/supernatural?!?! read for fall. I really loved Nicola and the way she told the story.

Nicola has Cystic Fibrosis and never expected to live long enough to get married but she did, to the love of her life, Anton. She had also expected she would die long before he did but when he is killed in a car crash not long after their marriage, she is devastated. Like so many unable to let go of their grief, she has been to seances in hopes of contacting Anton but her logical mind has always been able suss out the fakery. Still, her friends convince her to try once more and they find a medium with a good reputation, a professor of parapsychology, hoping maybe this time it will help give her some closure. But almost as soon as they begin, odd things start to happen, things she can't easily explain including several possible attacks against her. And that’s before they find the first body.

I’m not a big fan of supernatural horror stories but I am a huge fan of Kelley Armstrong so when I spotted I’ll Be Waiting on Netgalley, I was thrilled to receive an e-arc. The story is told in the first person by Nicola and we get to know and feel everything from her point of view. It started out at a fairly even pace as we get to know more about her backstory, suspenseful and, at times, shocking but always from her rational perspective, often raising questions that she can’t or won’t honestly answer making her seem an unreliable narrator albeit not necessarily intentionally.

However, in the last quarter or so of the book, Armstrong really ramps up the tension until the suspense, the chills, and the horror feel almost palpable. A darkly atmospheric and emotionally charged supernatural story that reminded me why I love Kelley Armstrong’s books and a perfect spine tingling tale just in time for Hallowe’en.

Thanks to Netgalley and St Martin’s Press for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review

Delightfully chilling! The drama and mystery coupled with the supernatural elements in I’ll Be Waiting kept drawing me back to this even when I should have been doing other things. I found the characters well-developed and believable. The setting was suitably creepy and appropriate. Cautionary note for younger audiences: lots of blood and gore.

Thank you to #netgalley, the publisher, #stmartinspress and the author, Kelley Armstrong for this ebook to read. All opinions are my own.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the eARC in exchange for an honest review!

I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. The first third of the book dragged a little for me, but the last 2/3 of the book definitely picked up the pace. This will be the perfect book to read this October!

I really enjoyed the majority of this book. It had some really fantastic creepy factors that kept me on the edge of my seat and seriously started to creep me out when I was reading it at night. The author did a great job with making you feel Nicola's loss and understanding why she wants to reach out to her lost husband.
The latter half did start to lose me a bit though. The seances were feeling a bit repetitive and Nicola basically starts suspecting everyone around her, yet can't see the most obvious shit in front of her face. It just started to feel a little too long. While the possessions tie up loose ends nicely they're also a tad ridiculous and things start to lose the "creepy" factor that there was before. In the end the ending brings this down 4 star for me.

Perfect for spooky season! I love a good ghost story, and even if did kinda guess where it was going, I still really had fun with this one.glad to see Armstrong hitting her paranormal roots again!
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC.

Pros: LGBTQ rep. Cystic Fibrosis rep. Reads fast.
Cons: I couldn't get attached to the characters and therefore couldn't get invested as much as I would have liked. The flashbacks were weird because they were portrayed as dreams where Nic was reliving the past and those parts read very YA and not as if an adult were looking back and remembering. Also, early on we are led to believe that Nicola had an experience in her past that led her to believe in spirits, but she finds every excuse to dissuade herself that anything she experiences could be from a spirit.

I could not get invested into the characters. I fully got 30% into the book and did not care about whether or not Nicola could ever contact Anton on the other side. I decided to read a few reviews and several people liked the first third, but said the book went downhill and got weird from there on. So, I feel fully confident in stopping it here as I am not enjoying this enough to continue. I'm disappointed because I wanted a good spooky read for October, and this just wasn't it. :(

As a 30-something woman living with Cystic Fibrosis, Nic expected to be the first one to die in her marriage, but fate and a snowy road had other plans: After a car crash, her husband Anton dies in her arms, telling her with his last breath that he’ll be waiting for her on the other side. After months of failed seances with fraudulent spiritualists, Nic’s friends and family find a reputable medium and convince her to make one last-ditch effort to contact Anton. In a lake-front estate once owned by Anton’s family, Nic hopes to finally reach her lost love from beyond the veil. But as frightening things start happening in the house, and as Nic’s past seems more present than ever, she begins to wonder if something else – something more malevolent – wants to make contact instead.

I’ll Be Waiting has a lot going for it: an isolated lakeside setting, a diverse cast of characters, and a plot full of paranormal thrills and things that go bump in the night. Kelley Armstrong integrates the past and present timelines seamlessly, and there are plenty of shiver-inducing moments. I loved Armstrong’s decision to write the book from the perspective of a character with a chronic, often terminal, illness; this aspect gave Nic a unique worldview that was engaging, thought-provoking, and educational for people like me, who don't have a lot of familiarity with CF. There’s lots of nuance and texture in the plot, and the interactions among the characters felt authentic.

I’ll Be Waiting did, however, lose its way for me a bit at the end. I saw the twist coming, but even aside from that, the plot devolved into a gore-fest that felt out of sync with the rest of the book. Armstrong set up a traditional haunting in the first two-thirds of the book, but went in a different, more chaotic direction at the end that didn’t quite satisfy me.

That said, though, I think most readers of paranormal fiction will enjoy I’ll Be Waiting, and it’s definitely a perfect read for Spooky Season. Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for the early reading opportunity.