A Literary Apothecary

This review contains spoilers for Where They Wait by Scott Carson

I really enjoyed The Chill by Scott Carson. It had to be one of the best books I’ve read so far this year, even though I’m not typically the audience for ghost stories. I find them to be a bit repetitive at times, but Carson built a world around his ghosts that was so intriguing, I had to pick up another of his books. So, when Where They Wait won our book club’s poll, I was thrilled to pick it up. Unfortunately, Where They Wait did not meet my lofty expectations, and I ended up a bit disappointed.

Nick Bishop isn’t a dreamer, not figuratively or literally. He’s never had a dream before that he can remember, and he’s definitely never had a nightmare. When Nick finds himself out of work after his last gig as a war correspondent, he receives an offer from an old friend that sounds like easy money. An alumnus from his hometown’s university has created a mindfulness app called Clarity, and Nick is hired to write a puff profile to boost the app and please the alumni donors.

The app seems like nothing special, until Nick discovers the Sleep Songs. Somehow, the voice seems to put him to sleep almost instantly, despite the somewhat creepy lyrics, but following his use of the app, Nick begins to have terrifying nightmares for the first time in his life. A woman lurks in his dreams and whispers cryptic warnings in his ear, but what do these warnings mean? As Nick uncovers more about the app and the people behind it, he discovers that everything he’s been told is a lie. Nick is somehow the key to Clarity, and the people behind it aren’t about to let him go.

Characters & Writing

Most of the characters in this book are likable and well-written. Nick is a journalist, and as such has a bit of a realist personality. I liked that he was a steady, thoughtful character who makes intelligent decisions, for the most part. As soon as he thinks Clarity might be dangerous, he treats it with the gravity required and dives in to find out more. His skills as a journalist help him often in investigative work and interviews. Nick knows how to talk to people and how to follow lines of questioning to get what he needs.

The conspiracy surrounding Nick, his mother, and his past was interesting, but probably not as interesting as the author hoped it would be. After a while, I got it, and it was still granularly explained. The thing about the loons and grackles never really seemed to come back, despite the implication that it would be important in the climax, though I did like where his relationship with his mom ended up.

Renee is Nick’s childhood friend who works at Clarity. She is a really central part of the mysteries of both the past and the present, but her relationship with Nick didn’t feel overly expositional or transactional. I thought they had decent chemistry and acted in line with what I would expect for a childhood-crush-to-adult-crush relationship. Despite Renee being very involved in the mystery, I didn’t end up caring for her very much. I don’t think her personality was very strong; I’d mostly describe her as stressed and helpful, but not much beyond that. Her ending in the story was also both ridiculous and disappointing.

Other characters don’t receive too much focus, and that’s fine. Bryce is the billionaire owner of Clarity, and while I liked how he differed from the typical “billionaire CEO” stereotype, I do think his motivations were a bit strange. His connection to the history of the main mystery is almost unbelievable, though his goals do ultimately make sense. I’m being a bit vague here, but I’m not really trying to spoil too much! Nick’s mom is another character who fills in a lot of the past, and Paul, Nick’s friend who offered him the job, plays an important role in the mystery too. They’re given just enough characterization to not be cardboard cutouts. Each character is necessary, but the story is primarily, and almost exclusively, about Nick and Renee.

The atmosphere is definitely one of the best parts of Where They Wait. Carson dives deeply into the imagery and really brings it to life. I’m thinking specifically about the creeping fog that begins to follow Nick, the overlap of the spiritual world with the real world. The sequences of people listening to the song and the horror aspects of what follows are very creepy, and I really appreciated these moments.

There were some instances of more poetically written prose, but the writing was more focused on telling the story. As far as I’m aware, Scott Carson is actually a journalist of some kind, and that really comes through in the writing style, as well as the characterization of Nick in this book in particular.

Plot & Pacing

The pacing of the story is very slow at the beginning. I didn’t really mind it that much because I found Nick to be an interesting enough character, but there is a lot of dead air. It helped to build the atmosphere to describe everything about where Nick is living now, but most of the haunting is very slow. I’m a relatively patient reader, but I can imagine someone with less tolerance for waiting for a story to get good DNFing this.

The horror elements are interesting. I think that the way those are paced out makes the story feel longer than it actually is. There will be long stretches where nothing is really happening. Nick is investigating, interviewing people, thinking about his childhood, things of that nature, then there will be sudden spikes of horror. It makes a lot of the horror elements feel more shocking; for example, the events surrounding Paul, but it also makes the rest of the book feel a bit more boring. I understand that it can’t be high tension all the time, but writing this review about a month after I finished the book, I’m having trouble recalling what exactly was happening for most of the middle of the book outside of these spikes in tension.

Once the climax approaches, I do think the story is able to maintain tension a bit better. The history surrounding the song’s origins was really fascinating, but I do think the very long, campfire-story-like monologue was a bit of a boring way to drop information. It was a bit odd that the story is also two ghost stories in one. As far as I understood, there’s the origin of the song that comes from the journal entry, and the origin of the “other dimension” which came from the tale being told. This feels a bit unnecessarily complicated. It might have worked if one of the stories was explained earlier in the novel. That way, the new information can recontextualize what the reader already knows. As is, I was several pages into a long monologue about a ghost story/local history that wasn’t related to the song at all.

That’s not to say it wasn’t interesting. I’d never heard of the Acadian genocide before. I did a bit of research, and it turns out that this was a very real part of history. Also called the Expulsion of the Acadians, the British forcefully displaced over eleven thousand people from their homes from 1755 through 1763. Over forty percent of those displaced died due to disease, starvation, and shipwrecks. The British did this because the Acadians refused to swear unconditional allegiance to the British in armed conflicts between the British and French. It’s crazy that I’ve never heard of this before, and I’m really appreciative of this book for introducing me to this lost part of history.

The other story is probably true as well, though I can’t remember the details well enough to look it up. I always find shipwrecks interesting, and the intersection of these two stories could have been really good. The idea of the island, forever trapped in the middle of a raging storm, is a fantastic portrayal of eternal torment. Everything about the idea of the song and its role in the story was such a novel concept. I saw some other reviews complaining about how the idea of being “sung to death” isn’t very scary, but I think conceptually this really works. I’m just not entirely sold on the execution.

There is something I want to note, and I can’t really find a good place to put it in this review, but I need to talk about the sex scene. Slight spoilers here.

The scene itself is fine; Nick is having sex with a woman and the lights are off. As he is having sex with this woman, he is able to feel that it isn’t actually her he’s having sex with; it’s the ghost that’s been haunting him. Yes, that’s frightening, and it’s a decent moment of horror, but i just genuinely don’t understand why it’s in the story. This ghost isn’t exactly an evil entity. It’s kind of supposed to be on the side of the good guys. The ghost even has a positive relationship with the woman that Nick wanted to hook up with. It’s not like she knew him in life and always wanted him, so on and so forth. She doesn’t show any other romantic or sexual interest in him. So, why have this ghost rape Nick? It’s so weird and out of place that I had to comment on it.

Ending (Spoilers!)

I try not to spoil endings of books as much as possible, but sometimes there are parts of a book that I have to discuss in a way that requires spoilers. I think that to fully convey my main issues with Where They Wait, I have to spoil some plot points. If you’d like to avoid spoilers, you can skip ahead to the next section.

There’s something very wrong with the pacing of the climax, and I can’t quite put my finger on what it is. I keep wanting to say that everything happens far too quickly, but that’s not entirely true. There’s a slow build-up where Renee and Nick are being held hostage at gunpoint by the villain of the story. The antagonist wants to force Nick to listen to the last sleep song, which will give him power over the living and the dead if he is able to survive it. He does so and is changed from who he is into being The Singer.

The song is a very powerful thing. It’s shown throughout the rest of the story to be able to influence all who hear it, specifically influencing them to enter the realm of the dead. It’s useful to ease those who are passing on, but using it on a person who is not near death will cause them to attempt suicide. So, when Nick becomes the new Singer, he turns on the villain and begins to sing the song. I thought, “Obviously, this will cause the antagonist to end their own life in a moment of karmic justice for all the people he has previously used this technology on.” It made sense thematically and through what we know of the song.

There’s also a point where he goes to the “other dimension” and invites a ghost to leave the island. I thought that this ghost would have some relevance to the finale, but she doesn’t. She just walks right out of the story. I thought at the very least, she would provide a momentary distraction to help Nick in the climax because the reader has seen that these ghosts can be seen and affect the world of the living.

Apparently, I was wrong.

Instead of the antagonist killing themself, Nick simply uses the song to unbalance them, then steals their gun and shoots them with it, but not before the villain shoots Renee. This is all happening around sunset because something about the song’s magic primarily works at sunset. Instead of seeking medical attention for Renee, Nick sings the song to her until dawn, and she dies. If it took her all night to die, maybe a medical professional could’ve saved her? I’m just saying.

All that happened so incredibly fast that I thought I missed something. The song is ultimately irrelevant to the climax. Nick could’ve thrown a brick at the guy and it would’ve ended the same way. Why would the author put this supernatural element in the story that has the capability to kill people and then undercut that by making the protagonist use a gun? It would be like if a story was all about the quest for a magical sword, but in the climax, the protagonist just strangled the guy. Why was there all that build-up?

The epilogue or conclusion, whatever you want to call it, works well for the transformation that Nick goes through, but I can’t get over how truly awful that climax was. It left me mad for the last few pages of the story.

Recommendation

There was nothing inherently “wrong” with Where They Wait. It wasn’t badly written, and it didn’t have any bad messaging. My critiques here are a matter of taste, so I would still recommend picking up this book if you feel intrigued by it. Carson’s writing style is strong and the main character is well-fleshed out. The supernatural aspects are interesting and bring something new to the idea of a ghost story. I just can’t get past my disappointment with the ending.

Trigger warnings:

Alcohol, blood, cannibalism (mention), car accident, death, gaslighting, genocide (mention), gun violence, hallucinations, PTSD, rape, sexual assault, suicide, violence.