What Happens at Nightfall: A Novel by Lauren Willig
Tracy’s Rating: 4.5 of 5 stars
Series: Standalone
Release Date: October 6, 2026
When Jacinta “Jess” Waters agrees to meet her best friend Kimmy for a cemetery tour in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, she couldn’t even begin to imagine how much her life was about to change. For the last year Jess’s life has been a mess, first she got what she believed to be her dream job, but soon the dream became a nightmare when she discovered her bosses were using the company to launder money, she turned them in, but they turned the tables on her and ruined her credibility and her had her blackballed in the financial community. So, the outing with Kimmy seemed like just the thing to take her mind off things but is regretting that decision when she gets knocked into by some boys and gets separated from the group. As she is picking up her things, she hears someone crying and investigates, she finds a young boy huddled under a bush and tries to help him when something strange happens, which has them running for their lives.
The cemetery’s resident arborist, Adam Chervinsky is a widower and the father of a teenage daughter and a tween son. When he hears a knock at his door, he thinks it is another lost tour participant who needs him to unlock the gate for them, so imagine his shock when he opens the door to find his son, who he thought was in his room with a lovely stranger. He is stunned to learn that his son was at his late wife’s family mausoleum, and somehow this pretty woman was caught in the middle. When Jess reveals that her phone is dead and she has lost her Metro card, he offers to escort her to the subway and pay her fare, but first they need to lock up the mausoleum. Simple right? What they find at the tomb will pull them both into things that neither of them even thought was real and hopefully, they will survive…
This was a well-written, nicely paced story with wonderful characters, which totally sucked me in and kept me flipping pages way past my bedtime (completely worth the lost sleep!). The book has ghosts, demons, slow burn romance, ride or die friends, mystery, great secondary characters, frogs, some witty dialogue, family drama, secrets, moving statues, and a very satisfying ending complete with an epilogue. As much as I enjoyed this book, I wasn’t really sold on the romance, I felt like Adam still had issues with his late wife to deal with and his mistrust for Jess made it hard to believe that he fell in love with her so quickly. Overall, this was a great read, it was spooky but not scary, and very unputdownable. If you are looking for a fun, spooky read with a bit of romance, you need to read this book!
*I am voluntarily leaving a review for a DRC that I requested and was provided to me by the publisher/author. All opinions in this review are my own. *
