First off I want to say huge thank you to the publisher Lake Union Publishing, the author Wendy Webb, and to NetGalley for letting me request this book as well as letting me read and review it.What the perfect read for any time you want to just cozy up under a blanket and read, its not scary at all, the perfect mixture of the Paranormal and romance as well as a mystery .

I've never read anything by this author before, but the description intrigued me and it was set locally. When I read some comments about it being paranormal, I almost changed my mind about trading it, because that really isn't my thing.

I'm so glad I did go ahead and read it. Yes, there are some paranormal elements, but they are *almost* believable. I loved how this story came together and things finally made sense right at the end, in a very beautiful way.

* Thanks to NetGalley and the author for providing me with a free ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC of The Haunting of Brynn Wilder by Wendy Webb.

I normally don't love books with a supernatural/ghosty theme, but sometimes you can strike the perfect balance between spooky, and real life. I love a good story that's rich with humanity, love, and relationships, so even though this was about a haunting, it was still very easy to gobble up.

Brynn Wilder has escaped to a boarding house in Wharton, by Lake Superior to rest and recoup from her messy life. Of course, sharing close quarters (and bathrooms) gives her no choice but to quickly meet her fellow boarders, and she's pleasantly surprised to be quickly enveloped by the town. It also doesn't hurt that there resides a gorgeous, and mysterious tattooed man.

But not everything is perfect in Wharton. Mysterious noises haunt her at night, and one resident in particular sheds some all-too-clear light on Brynn's life. Too close for comfort.

Like I said, some haunting. However, the ending was...I can't give anything away, but, what da heck. I didn't hate it, but it also didn't quite flow.

Beautiful, haunting, and so well written. I became completely immersed in this story. I laughed and I cried. I spent an entire day reading this story, I could not put it down. I loved Daughters Of The Lake and I really enjoyed seeing those characters back. The ending of this story is perfect and will stay with me for a long time.

I enjoyed this one. Was it perfect, no. There were a lot of loose ends, and things that needed to be fleshed out more. However, it kept me turning the pages. I liked the characters and the setting, so overall it was a decent read for me.

"The Haunting of Brynn Wilder" by Wendy Webb was a book that caught my interest with its blurb & gorgeous cover.
What I expected going in:
mystery, ghosts, romance
Yet in retrospect the book pretty much lacked all three.

The Plot: Brynn needs some healing after losing her mother, her dog, questioning her career path & ending a relationship of 20 years all at once, so she decides to spend the summer in a town, where her best friend Kate found love & a new beginning.
For her summer in Wharton Brynn decides to stay at LuAnn's inn where she meets all the secondary characters.
As luck would have it, she chose to rent a room in the most haunted place in town, but don't worry, the ghost don't show up much at all or put her in any danger. Hardly an inconvenience, really.

My problems with the book/writing:
- I didn't like Brynn as a storyteller, the book itself basically consisted of 10000 long, wordy descriptions of rooms, outfits & food with some ghost "encounters" sprinkled inbetween.
So many times we got to hear how Brynn takes her coffee in detail (the same everytime, mind you), I simply don't undestand why the author made it a point to repeat it time after time. Or why we need so much information on what they're eating, how it's all plated and what does culinary have to do with ghosts?

I truly love descriptions that immerse you into the story, the ones in THOBW sadly were anything but that. Readers don't need one thing repeated 19829 times in a roll like they have Dory's memory.

The Prologue itself pretty much ruined the "twist" of this book/the big mystery of LuAnn's (who is the dead lady in room 5 & why can only Brynn see her). Nothing revealed really surprised me.
Also, after the revelations from the last chapter, most of what happened doesn't even make sense:
(For example:) The lady from room 5 was old Brynn, years later. Somehow she was able to show herself to her young self & leave clues for her so she falls in love with Dominic. Yet, LuAnn discovered her dead body in the past. So Brynn was young and also old/dead all at once?! How and why would a dead body be teleported back in time? Was it all not real? They couldn't have all been ghosts, so wtf happened?
Dominic basically turned out to be an "angel"/reaper of souls/(Death himself maybe?) yet for some reason he had a corporeal form & was able to get Brynn pregnant. We never get to hear how they originally ended up together and why they get to be "reborn"/meet again & again and fall in love.
Also, did he get to live as a human while also reaping souls of old ladies or what? I have questions about how this whole arrangement works.

When it came down to the relationship, Brynn jumped into it so fast for a responsible adult. Most of their "romance" was so rushed, the chemistry non-existend (if you're going in expecting anything spicy or intimate, you won't be getting anything like that here).
Any relationship bonding that took place felt artificial, at the end of the book Brynn hardly knew anything about Dominic. So many times she refused to ask him questions or keep pushing for answers when her own friend (and her cop husband) was worried Dominic was dangerous, a potential ex-con that murders ladies around town .
What's even worse: I felt no connection to Dominic, so when his "dramatic death" came, I wasn't really impacted by it. I just don't see them as the soulmates the book claimed they are.

- How it was never cleared up how old Brynn really is:
I'm assuming she's almost 40 if not older, considering she's a college professor and just got out of a relationship that lasted 20 years.
The fact we have no information of her age makes it super hard to determine if she's acting her age when she reacts to stuff or not. At times she felt like she's 20 years old at most, for the fact how dismissive she was of things and how she didn't want to question anything/refused to listen to reason and see why her friend might be worried about her getting close with a stranger.
The hypocrisy was real with Brynn, she kept insisting she "knows" Dominic (all because of her gut feeling & some visions of their past life) yet when Kate asked her what she knows about him, she literally refused to answer the question.

- The amount of times Brynn called Dominic's tattoos illustrations. Always "illustrations", almost never tattoos. *cringe*

- The amount of times Brynn kept asking THE READER (not really herself, since it wasn't in cursive as her other thoughts to herself) rhetorical questions about something that occured.
"Didn't I see..?"
"I hadn't seen those before, had I? Maybe I had missed them."
"He had said he had a busy day ahead... hadn't he?"
"Nightstand? Dominic’s bedroom didn’t have a nightstand. Did it?"
"I wasn’t sure about the time difference between where I was and Cornwall , England. Six hours earlier? Six hours later? *calls her brother anyway without checking in Internet or something*" (You asking me? Do you know how to use Google, Brynn?)
"Did Nick just roll his eyes? Or did I imagine it?"

- Last, but not least, some quotes that speak for themselves:
“It’s about time you came on home, mister ,” I teased him, my voice , like Dominic’s, was my own, but not my own.

"It’s okay, Brynn, the lake seemed to be saying to me. It’s okay. She’s at peace now. She’s where she wanted to be. There, with the lake whispering my name as it lapped at the shore, I began to feel that maybe we’d never know who she was and why she was there."
(THE LAKE TALKS NOW?)

"Sure, it was still daytime , but movie watching required movie-watching attire."
(I don't know about you, but I always watch my k-dramas in a dress worthy of the Oscars.)

“He’s been in prison, Brynn. He has a record a mile long. Assault, grand theft. Juvenile stuff.”
All at once, I wanted to shake her . A violent anger bubbled up inside me.
“How dare you violate his privacy like that,” I hissed at her. “And mine! Who does Nick think he is?”
She gave a strangled laugh. “The chief of police.”
“For your information, Dominic grew up in very rough circumstances. I’m not surprised he ended up on the wrong side of the law when he was younger. It’s what he dedicates his life to now, if you must know, helping people transform their own lives, to rise above the cards they were dealt.”
“That’s what he told you,” she pressed on. “But what if it’s not true ? What proof do you have of it? What if Nick’s right? What if Dominic is the common denominator in all of those deaths?”
“Are you saying your husband thinks Dominic is a serial killer?” Kate reached over and took my hand. I pulled it away. “I’m not saying that,” she said, her voice soft, pleading. “But he is watching him. Be careful, Brynn. Please.”
“I think you should leave,” I said.

(Why listen to your best friend that's clearly concerned for you & makes sense? Dominic is hot with all his "illustrations", it's all that matters.)


"The Haunting of Brynn Wilder" by Wendy Webb was a book with a premise that had potential, but thanks to the writing it all fell flat. The story has more talk about food & places than ghosts or romance. The twists at the end are predictable, not offering any kind of explanation that actually makes sense when put together with the rest of the book. The ending raises more questions than the "answers" it gives us.

I read this book in 2 sittings which was a huge shock to me. I found myself unable to put it down, despite several issues I had with the dialogue.

I loved the characters and the small Minnesota town (as a Minnesota girl, myself, I may be biased). The unclear nature of the haunting was intriguing to me, as well as how the author was able to incorporate Alzheimer’s as a mechanism for revealing truth.

What I didn’t like was that the romance felt a bit forced. It happened so quickly. Halfway through the book characters ages were hinted at, making them much older than I had thought for the first half. Also, I expected more danger, more thrills from a book about a haunting, so by the end, the payoff was a little bit of a letdown. It was an interesting concept, though.

All in all, this was a good, light read, and It kept me glued to the page, but don’t expect a scary thriller.

An absolutely wonderful book. Very well.written and I just could not put this down. Lone it. Highly recommended xx

Omygoodness, what a story! It took me completely by surprise!

First, it isn't scary, but it sure is very atmospheric. There's an element of mystery and the supernatural that's ever-present but it actually doesn't go where I thought it was going. I actually cried at the end, it was so beautiful!

Brynn comes to Wharton on a sabbatical from her teaching position at a university, trying to recover some semblance of normal after her father's death. The boarding house where she settles for the summer is full of interesting characters who become true friends to her. The town is small and nosy, but people mean well.

When she meets Dominic, there's incredible chemistry between them and they're drawn to each other. Despite the mystery surrounding Dominic, Brynn follows her heart, but more and more there are unexpected things happening that she can't explain, that no one can.

As I mentioned, the ending was beautiful and I cried happy tears, which I can't remember the last time it happened.

This was the first time I read this author and already downloaded the previous book, the one about Brynn's friend.

I received a copy from the publisher through NetGalley and this is my honest opinion.

Brynn Wilder has had to deal with several devastating things recently and is taking the summer off before going back to her teaching job, to try to regroup. She rents a room at an inn in Wharton, on Lake Superior. She begins settling in and making friends, and automatically gravitates towards the other summer resident, Dominic. When she discovers that one of the rooms is closed for the summer because someone died in there, she is disturbed to realize she keeps being drawn to that room and having visions of an old woman in a rocking chair sitting in front of the fire in there. It is even more disturbing that she is the only one that seems to see her.
This was like a mash-up of a romance and ghost story, heavy on the romance. It was a really good story though, and kept me captivated through the entire book, wanting to see how it was all going to play out. I will say, when I got to the last chapter, maybe I am just dense but I really didn't fully get it. It was like I couldn't quite wrap my head around what she was trying to say. All-in-all it was an enjoyable read and I think you will enjoy it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for this copy of The Haunting of Brynn Wilder by Wendy Webb.

Having seen this title on a list of Fall thrillers to read I was very excited to dive in and see what this book had in store for me. I was not disappointed! I found myself sneaking chapters at work and going to bed early so that I could finish it. I couldn't wait to finish the story of Brynn, who has decided to spend a summer in Wharton, recharging after a hard couple of years. Brynn meets and befriends many interesting characters in Wharton, some of whom are guests in the same place and some of whom are residents. Odd things begin happening to Brynn almost immediately. Is she losing her mind or is something otherworldly happening? You'll have to read to find out because I'm not giving anything away!!

For fans of ghost stories and thrillers, this one's for you! Is it a perfect read? Of course not. Suspend your need for everything to make sense and enjoy the ride that is The Haunting of Brynn Wilder.

So I was expecting a little more coming into this book!
I guess a little more thrill.
It was a good book! I enjoyed the setting. The characters. But it just slacked in some ways.
The ending could have been more....

Overall not bad!

What a beautiful and poignant book . it's surprising how different this storyline is from what I was expecting. It's so much more than a ghost story and incredibly thoughtful and thought provoking.
Brynn was a lovely character and very easy to empathise and relate to/ with. Dominic is a mystery waiting to unravel fThere were an array of wonderful and colourful characters and the haunting in the title is more emotive than sinister, but with an eeriness that is very palpable.
The plot twists and turns throughout were cleverly interwoven into the storyline as the mystery unfolds. You never quite know where the author is taking you , it's very immersive reading and I was emotionally invested in the lives of the people involved.
The ending ties up all the loose ends in a way that makes sense. It felt right and was so moving to read , it literally brought me to tears , it was sad , happy and hopeful all bound together. It broke my heart and put it back together again.
Once you start this book you won't want to put it down.. I devoured it in a few hours. It was a definite emotional rollercoaster so make sure to keep tissues at the ready, ultimately, it's a life affirming read that's characters stay with you even after you've read the last page. I can't wait to read the authors previous book now , as it's set in the same place and sounds really interesting .

After losing her mother, Brynn Wilder, escapes town to Lake Superior. The Victorian is the boardinghouse she is staying at. People say the Victorian is haunted, Brynn hears whispers in the dark. This book was a good thriller. The characters at the boardinghouse were very interesting.

Okay, this one truly surprised me a lot! After seeing the name of the book and eerie, heart pounding cover I thought some thrilling and chilling ghost story will give me nightmares and haunt me down! But it started like soft chic lit and gave me Debbie Macomber meets Nicholas Sparks novels taste.

This is a paranormal, bittersweet story with a twist that I cannot blurt out and that emotional ending made my poor heart felt like stabbed by small glass pieces but overall the deeply layered, well crafted characters are so lovely. Their back stories are also sad and heartbreaking. Even though i was expecting something different which a little confused my mind, I still enjoyed my reading!

It is not about get haunted by ghosts! It’s about to be haunted by loss, grief, mistakes! This is more about tormented souls who are exhausted by carrying burdens of the life put in their shoulders, struggling, trying to make peace of the past and move on.

If you like sad, heart wrenching, powerful stories, this is a good fit for your needs!

Special thanks to NetGalley and Lake Union Publishing for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange my honest thoughts.

I realized only after I requested this book that I’d already read and loved it as my free amazon book for the month.
Brynn Wilder decides to spend the summer in Wharton, a tourist town on Lake Superior. Staying at a local boardinghouse she quickly forms good friendships with its occupants, especially Dominic, whom she feels like she’s always known. One of the guest rooms is locked because a woman broke into the empty inn in the middle of winter and died in the room. Brynn keeps dreaming of the room and the woman. She finds herself in the room, looking at the woman, knowing things about her she shouldn’t.
Part mystery, part suspense, part ghost story. Well written and fun to read.

Brynn Wilder after a very long traumatic experience decides to spend her summer on a Sabbatical in Wharton. She meets some amazing people who became friends while there & her soul mate. While there she starts having "dreams' that freak her out but intrigue her at the same time.

In my opinion this was very unlike the previous Wendy Webb books I've read. It was more of a spiritual yet Gothic tale of love & friendship. I did enjoy it very much though. Thank you to Netgalley and Lake Union Publishing for my honest review.

I love everything Wendy Webb has written and this book only adds on to my list! I love the subtle ghost story, but this book is a little different because it adds in a few other aspects that just make the story even better! The characters are well-written, highly likable, and not forgettable and the story itself is one that will stick with you for a while after you read it.