I’ll Be Waiting for You

I’ll Be Waiting for You by Mariko Turk (Allen & Unwin) PB RRP $19.99 ISBN: 9781760526603

Reviewed by Kellie Nissen

“… Maybe that’s how it is after you die. You’re gone, but some part of you, some essence, keeps infusing everything.”

That’s what Imogen believed.

Natalie doesn’t though – even though they are best friends, and both equally obsessed with all things supernatural. Even though neither of them would miss holidays at the very haunted Harlow Hotel and have watched every horror film made.

No, Natalie doesn’t believe in ghosts, even though she is so determined to become a TV ghost hunter on Ghost Chasers that she decides the audition will be the focus of her major senior project – and what better place than Harlow Hotel to do the filming?

And even when Imogen passes away from an undiagnosed heart condition and, a year later, all these unexplained things keep happening that could only be messages from Imogen – Natalie still does not believe.

Or does she?

Questions about ghosts and the potential of there being an afterlife will not be everyone’s cup of tea, but in I’ll Be Waiting for You, author Mariko Turk has taken these big questions and dealt with them in a reflective, quietly amusing and very sensitive way. She has not sought to convince or provide answers, but merely to question and, even more importantly, to acknowledge different views and opinions.

There is a decent dose of scepticism too, at the hands of Leander, an ‘irritating’ truth teller – and Natalie’s archrival – whose main goal when he turns up at Harlow Hotel to do his senior project is to expose the resident psychic as a fraud.

In fact, the ghost angle only serves as an intriguing backdrop for what is essentially a deeper exploration of friendship and loss, and of dealing with grief and learning to trust again. Above all, I’ll Be Waiting for You is a story about what it means to believe in yourself, no matter what.

Mariko Turk has crafted an engaging, heartfelt and humorous story, with two main characters readers will really care about. There is something there for all readers of the YA genre, from ages 12 through to 18, and well beyond. As an adult reader, I absolutely loved it.