I’ll Be Waiting

I’ll Be Waiting (St. Martin’s Press) by Kelley Armstrong is problematic. Like many other novels I’ve recently read, it rivets in its first half. Then comes the inevitable letdown. Labored twists and turns of plot. Characters whose actions become contrived. A protagonist, who veers from appearing shrewdly analytical and self-aware, to being a possibly unreliable first-person narrator whose evolving paranoia may have merit. Sigh.

To accentuate the positives, the protagonist has a warped sense of humor that most horror readers will find accessible. Nicola Laughton is a 38-year-old survivor. She’s lived beyond the predicted lifespan of someone who was diagnosed at a young age with cystic fibrosis. She had adapted to the limitations of her illness as a teenager and maintained a relatively normal teenaged life, complete with the peer pressure that comes from being 16. Two girlfriends roped her into séances in the woods. The final ritual ended in chaos and a death. While not emotionally unscathed by the experience, she fared better than the other girls. The flashback sequences of that period are nicely interspersed throughout the narrative.

Nicola is cognizant that being a survivor comes with baggage, but she gets an added jolt when she survives a car crash that kills her husband. Never expecting to marry due to the cruel realities of cystic fibrosis, she nonetheless finds curtailed years of joy with a man from her past. They had briefly attended the same high school where they had an awkward adolescent flirtation. Roughly a couple of decades later, he initiates a reunion and ardently commits to a relationship despite the pitfalls of her precarious health. The ease they seem to have had with one another is revealed through well-conceived banter. That makes the sudden loss more poignant. Again, flashback sequences are deftly applied to vary the trajectory of the storyline.

The spouse’s untimely death plunges Nicola into a series of meetings with mediums to find closure. She’s wise enough to acknowledge that she’s an easy mark for fraudsters but can’t stop herself from continuing with the charade: “I’m like a junkie sneaking away for her fix, and I am ashamed.” A family intervention ensues. The idea is that they will find a reputable parapsychologist who might be able to contact the deceased, and if it doesn’t work then there are no further attempts. Nicola agrees. Among those participating is her brother’s husband, with whom she has warm rapport. Some of the best dialogue in the story comes from their repartee.

Now to address the negatives. The plot becomes increasingly convoluted. There are points while reading when one is compelled to turn back pages to reference a character who previously may have been only briefly discussed. What begins as an atmospheric haunted house yarn caves in to graphic violence. And there are way too many red herrings and poorly constructed character pivots.

Do the pros outweigh the cons? To reiterate, I’ve been down this literary road too often of late. And I’m rather annoyed with being here again. Like the protagonist of I’ll Be Waiting who states frustration with herself “Because I keep falling for the con artists. Because I am smarter than this, stronger than this, wiser than this. Or I should be.” As a reviewer, I keep hoping for better: for a novel that excites me from the outset and doesn’t deflate in its second half. But I know that disillusionment comes with the territory.