Waiting on a Friend: A Novel

by Natalie Adler

New York City, East Village, 1984. A young woman with the power to see the ghosts of her friends is haunted by the one who refuses to return—a dazzling, big-hearted debut of friendship and community during a time of devastation and defiance.

"A beautiful study of friendship, of how loss unmoors us, and how if we keep turning towards love, anything is possible.”—Ann Napolitano, author of Hello Beautiful

"Fresh and refreshing, both heartbreaking and uplifting. Natalie Adler has given us a gem."—Rabih Alameddine, author of An Unnecessary Woman, finalist for the National Book Award

“A ghost story, a mystery, an ode to New York City . . . A riveting debut by a writer of tremendous compassion and insight.”—Helen Phillips, author of The Need, longlisted for the National Book Award

Renata is a young dyke-about-town who can see ghosts, something she's doing more and more of lately as too many of her friends are dying of a new, terrifying disease. When Renata's best friend Mark dies of complications from AIDS, Renata is devastated by the loss of the person she loved most in the world. And to her disappointment and increasing despair, Mark seems unwilling or unable to return for the proper goodbye they both were denied.

While Renata waits anxiously for Mark, she must stay a mysterious, police-like force has begun ridding their East Village neighborhood of anything abnormal or inexplicable. What first seems like a scam reveals itself to be far more sinister, targeting the soul of Renata's community. With her band of lovably eccentric pals and lovers, Renata is determined to fight back against the erasure of her friends' memories and the sanitizing of her beloved New York. But haunting her every step is Mark, the one ghost who stubbornly refuses to reappear.

Both heartbreaking and healing, tragic and triumphant, Waiting on a Friend is a magical retelling of queer history and a celebration of youth and camaraderie. With pathos and humor, empathy and an edge, Natalie Adler freshly reimagines the past for a new generation, reclaiming the spirit of resistance and determination that would become one of the era's defining legacies.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, LGBT, Queer, Historical, Ghosts, Friendship

279 pages, Kindle Edition

Expected publication May 26, 2026

About the author

I am a writer, teacher, and editor. I have an MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College, a PhD in Comparative Literature from Brown University, and was a Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow at the Center for Fiction. Currently, I am an editor at Lux, a feminist magazine. I am from New Jersey and live in New York City with my wife and our Pomeranian.

Waiting on a Friend is my first novel. Check out the bookshelf "waiting-on-a-friend-research" for everything I read to write it!

Reviews

[Natalie Adler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote this book and I think it's great.

[Meike · Rating 2 out of 5]

"I see dead people"... you might have heard that before, and our lesbian protagonist Renata (Renata / Adler, see what the author did there?) is also afflicted by this condition: She encounters the ghosts of the deceased, and as this is New York in the 1980's and she is moving in queer circles, many of them have succumbed to AIDS, like a former neighbor who died a particularly horrendous death and appears to her screaming in terror. The ghost Renata is waiting and longing for though is Mark, her gay former roommate, friend and lover (sexuality is fluid, people), who for some reason doesn't seem to contact her from the bardo. Will the two meet again before the ghost busters, ähem, a spirit-hunting company named Manhattan Remediation captures him?

The ghost angle is of course very magical realism, very George Saunders (Lincoln in the Bardo, Vigil), very A Christmas Carol, and I'd like to point readers potentially lashing out that a young woman who hasn't lived through the 80's AIDS crisis and isn't well: a gay man should not tell a story like this to Rebecca Makkai's The Great Believers, which is a damn masterpiece. The thing is though: We are blessed with many excellent first-hand accounts of the AIDS crisis, written by the likes of Hervé Guibert, David Wojnarowicz, Colm Tóibín, Larry Kramer, Edmund White, Tony Kushner and other literary icons, which means that a young person now writing about AIDS in the 80's really has to add something to this high-quality first-hand canon, aesthetically or content-wise (which is possible, see Makkai).

And I liked the ghost idea, which propels the story forward as readers and Renata are pondering who appears as a ghost and who doesn't and why, but in the long run, the concept lacks stringency - which is true for the text as a whole: There is Renata's drug-addicted mother, pointing to the heroin crisis. There is violence against gender non-conforming people. There is relationship drama aplenty (partly unrelated to the extreme circumstances, partly illuminating how people deal with the mayhem around them). And then there is the question whether the ghostbuster company isn't a political ploy to drive the poor, the sick, the outcasts out of their flats to push an agenda for gentrification (which echoes the initial governmental and societal refusal to fight AIDS and support victims and their families). And what are these hunters doing with the captured ghosts anyway? All of these ideas make sense individually, it's clear what the author aims to do, but the bits do not come together to form a cohesive whole, and that impression is heightened by the stumbling pacing in the second half, which includes lengthy detours and hence loses steam.

Last week, I finished an almost 400 page Icelandic book about addiction in a day, but I struggled with this much shorter novel for over a week, because I couldn't maintain a sufficient level of interest for the slightly convoluted plot. Still, I'm very curious to read the thoughts of others who get more out of the text than me.

[Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the review copy! This novel releases in May.

Easy 5 stars and will likely end up on my list of favorite books of 2026: Waiting on a Friend is a look at queer life in NYC in 1984–the early years of the AIDS crisis, the fear and agony of dying so young from a new, unfamiliar disease. The stigma of having it. The grief of losing friends and lovers to it. This is a story of punks and outcasts in the night clubs and back alleys and shitty apartments of the Lower East Side. It’s a story of the spiritual residue we leave behind when we die, and the privilege of giving and receiving love while we are alive. This one made me feel all the things.

[cyd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review. Honestly not sure how to feel about this book. I loved the concept and it was honestly pretty heartbreaking but something was just missing for me. This book was definitely more character driven than plot drive but to me the characters weren’t interesting enough to carry a story like this on their own. I liked all the parts about the ghosts and I do think this was a good portrayal of the many facets of grief but i just wanted a little bit more.

[BayouCat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. The book will be published on May 26, 2026.

“And I felt profoundly sad for both of them in that moment, these people who refused to be near anyone else's feelings but also wanted to shut down their own, to make it all clean. […]You can deny the reality of other people only if you refuse to know what it means to be a person, to close your eyes to sickness and death and difference only to end up denying your own.”

This book was a poignant tale about grief, and what it means to be there for the people you love. How to not look away when they need you most.

We follow Renata as she navigates loss, rage, and emptiness surrounding the AIDS crisis in the 1980s. While there are obviously large parts of this story that will bring you to tears, there are also parts that will warm your heart and make you laugh, and parts that will make you think.

This book was unlike the books I typically read, but it drew me in almost instantly, and I finished it in one evening. A book that’s hard to put down, paced well, teaches me something and is gripping enough to bring me to tears deserves 5 stars.

[Sam Malone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Earlier this year I was in Provincetown thrifting for books, and I found my white whale: a beautiful edition of Macho Sluts for all of ten dollars. Pat Califia's leatherd*ke er0tica (apparently you can't say this on Goodreads?) is some of the greatest ever written as far as I'm concerned, but I also wanted it because reading it is like time travel. I was born in the 90s, and I don't personally know anyone who died from AIDS. I have friends who are positive, but they have no detectable viral load--and just like that, it's like they don't have HIV at all. It's easy to take PrEP for granted when I can get it at the clinic and take it as a precaution. The year that I'm writing this review is the first time the US hasn't commemorated World AIDS Day since 1988.

So. Waiting on a Friend. This hit me right where I think it meant to. Since I too am a d*ke about town, I see and recognize so much of myself and my loved ones in Renata and her friends. The novel follows Renata through a long summer in 1984, interspersed with flashbacks and recollections throughout. Renata's best friend is dead, and she's waiting to see his ghost--she can, after all, see other ghosts, other dead people she knows. But Mark is elusive.

Simultaneously, a shady company called Manhattan Remediation is offering the "service" of removing presences--the kind of things that Renata can see outright, and that are causing discomfort for the comfortable (i.e. the yuppie types moving into East Village apartments vacated due to death and poverty and uninhabitable conditions). It's sinister, and it's putting a generation of the already-dead at risk of being entrapped in their afterlife.

Waiting on a Friend follows Renata and her crew of friends, lovers, and beloveds as they grapple with grief, gentrification, illness, drugs, and violence under the long specter of AIDS. It's a story about queer resilience, about how annoying it is to work in a vintage clothing shop, about how to hold your friends when they need it, and about how to learn to care about the living when all you can think about are the dead.

This is one of my favorite things I've read this year. Once it comes out, I suspect that a lot of my fellow leatherd*kes are going to read it and love it, and I will be very proudly bragging that I actually read it last December.

Recommended for: queers of all stripes, everyone who goes to my local cruising spot, anyone craving recent-ish historical novels with a magical realism twist, anyone who's ever been priced out of their lovely apartment.

[Alex]

*Read for work* It’s a Sin meets Ghostbusters in an alternative queer history set in New York during the AIDS crisis. A poignant look at grief, friendship and queerness.

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to Netgalley and Quercus for the advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

Waiting on a Friend is about Renata, a lesbian living in the East Village in 1984 at the height of the AIDs crisis who, as more of her friends die, has the ability to see ghosts. When her best friend Mark dies, Renata assumes she’ll see him again, and the story follows her rage, grief, loss and love as she deals with his loss but in death and after. Alongside this, there’s a mysterious group that are working to capture anything abnormal from the East Village, including trapping ghosts in a prison-like structure, so Renata also has to deal with that and trying to figure out what is going on and how to stop the erasure of her friends and those who have passed but can’t yet move on.

I was very excited to get to read this and ended up enjoying it, it was right up my street. Queer, ghosts, and grief, it’s all a girl needs!

This book is funny and touching, straight to the point but then looks at the idea of erasure and grief in a way that I enjoyed and haven’t read in a while. Renata was both very annoying but lovable, navigating a LOT of baggage and not being able to deal with it very well. I enjoyed the humour but there were also moments where the tone shift threw me and felt odd and misplaced at times.

Overall, I feel like the Remediation part could have been skipped entirely, as it felt like it was something that needed either more pages to explore or to be threaded more throughout. It’s such an interesting device as a way of exploring gentrification and the erasure of abnormalities during the time period, but its conclusion left me wanting more and feeling like I’d rather have not had it at all, which is a shame. The strength of this book for me is in Renata reconciling her grief and losing so many during her life, and the way those who did die whether through AIDS-related complications or drugs were viewed. At its best, this worked as a story of Renata dealing with Mark’s death and so many unanswered questions but realising sometimes we don’t need the answers to move on, and it’s not so best a mixture of plot points that needed more room to work fully, and a larger plot points that didn’t have the payoff this book deserved.

A definite recommend but with the caveat to focus on the grief and Renata. One last thing, I highlighted so many passages throughout this, the writing was both funny but very touching, and the last line in particular sums up the strength of this book perfectly and moved me to tears.

[Ezra Kupor · Rating 5 out of 5]

God this book was good

[Alex Ashmore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Editorial Copy received through local book shop.

Waiting on a Friend is a book I have been recommending to everyone around me since I have picked it up, and one I have been continuing to think about whenever I had to put it down.

Striking a balance between humor, deep introspection on friendship and loss, and deeply grounded supernatural/sci-fi elements, Natalie Adler constructs a story alive through its characters, a world that feels authentic through the experiences of those who live in it, and I personally really engaged with her writing style.

Tackling some truly heavy topics with a level of care, levity, and attention to detail that feels very genuine, Waiting on a Friend has left me with questions around the very fine line between Haunting and Grief, and highlights the importance of friendship and connections even in your darker days.

[Selma Stearns · Rating 5 out of 5]

**farewell goodreads - catch me on storygraph @selma_reads**

Don’t really have the words for this book - I’m not usually a book crier but this had me in tears!!

[Alison FP · Rating 4 out of 5]

New York City, 1984. Renata’s best friend Mark has just died due to complications from AIDS. Also, Renata can see ghosts. She can talk to them, hear their stories, and sometimes help them. But the thing is, she hasn’t been able to find or see Mark.

When I read the blurb about this book I thought, “1980s? NYC? Ghosts? Yes, please!” Renata is a complex character… I found her very likable and well developed, and she is also very matter-of-fact in how she describes all the horror and grief happening around her. I was 11 years old in 1984, so I didn’t understand what it was like to be in the middle of the AIDS epidemic, back when we didn’t understand it. People had all their friends dying terrible deaths all around them. Renata is much more sensible through it all than I would expect. Mark is the closest thing she has ever had to family, and her grief continues as others in her circle also become sick. The author writes Renata as somewhat emotionally detached from the situation around her at times, and maybe that’s how she copes. Even the sexual encounters she has (which are pretty kinky BTW) are described in this way. The ghosts are interesting characters who add to the richness of the story.

I wasn’t able to predict where the story was going, and I appreciated the complexity of a young woman and her friends experiencing the injustice, grief, joy, and pain all around them. I recommend this book as a realistic fictional account of being young and trying to live and love during a crisis this country refused to face.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for this advance reader copy.

[Chelsea Knowles · Rating 5 out of 5]

*Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance reader copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.*

Waiting on a Friend takes place during 1984 in the East Village. Renata is a young queer woman who can see ghosts and she is seeing ghosts constantly as her friends are dying due to AIDS. Her best friend Mark dies of AIDS so she assumes she’ll see his ghost. Renata wants a chance to say goodbye to Mark but his ghost never appears. In the East Village, a police-like-force has been ridding the village of ghosts. At first Renata thinks they are scam artists but soon realises they are really trapping ghosts. She decides to get her friends together to stop these people and release the ghosts and her friends’ memories.

I really liked this book and I found it to be very impactful. I wasn’t born when the AIDS pandemic happened but this book really brought home to me the personal impact the pandemic had. This book shows how much pain this disease caused and the impact it had on queer people. I loved reading about Renata and Mark’s friendship and it broke my heart knowing he died. I feel as if these characters are real people. I found it easy to understand Renata and I just love queer novels like this. I don’t want to label this historical because it’s set in the 80s but it is a queer historical novel and it’s a very good one. I will be recommending this book as I had a great time reading it. 4.5 stars rounded up to a 5.

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley for an e-arc of this book! 

This is one of the best books I've read in a while. I have only good things to say about it, from the narration to the characters to the themes to the humour to the feels. It's one of those rare novels that feels like a true literary work that could become a classic and be taught in universities while also feeling so modern and accessible.

First of all, Renata is an excellent narrator. She's queer, she's more or less an orphan, she can see ghosts, and her best friend has just died of AIDS. He's one of the only ones who hasn't come back to haunt her, and she has understandably complicated feelings about it. She's full of trauma and humour. She's got complicated, fluxuating feelings about friends and relationships and sexuality and sex. She's also far from perfect and heavily driven by her own feelings, and it makes her all the more relatable. She's so human and it's felt the whole way through the book.

It's set in the States in the thick of the AIDS crisis, and both the time and place feel very vivid and truthful. That feeling of the real American, 80s/90s queer scene is a constant, and it's really enjoyable. It's not pushed, just visible in all the minor details. It really feels like you're living in it (or at least walking alongside Renata while she does).

At the same time, this story feels very timeless. The themes the novel deals with are completely reflective of both then and today. It hits extra hard because none of it feels exaggerated. The erasure and the fear and the loneliness and the grief were all true aspects of those early years of the AIDS epidemic and they're painted in such an honest, deeply emotional way.

It feels like a biography. I think the largely reminiscent, reflective storytelling lends to this, but I think it is mostly down to the fact you fully believe Renata's story was one that happened. It gives voice to what it must have been like for so many during those years, specifically queer women who were frequently the most deeply involved when the rest of the world wanted to make distance and pretend it wasn't happening.

But it also gives voice to these themes in the much broader, general way. Big concepts like grief and death are explored so thoughtfully and intimately. The seeing-ghosts element should take away from the raw, literary feel of this novel and make it all seem a bit fantastical, but it doesn't. If you're not too close-minded or maybe if you're religious, you can imagine it's probably true and that a lot of souls or essences can linger after death. If not, you can appreciate all the questions and metaphors it presents as. It's really a way to think about what it's like if someone dies before their time, what it means for someone to be ready to die, and whether or not souls need to have 'unfinished business' or if it's enough to just want more time, especially when you always expected to have it. It's about death being unfair both to the people who die and the people who are left behind. It's about how much worse it can be when that death is painful or violent or just too early. And then it's about learning how to deal with all of that without any real answers.

It's a really, really special book. I think everyone should read it. Whether it's to feel a bit of history and maybe learn something, or to gain more empathy, or to find comfort for your own grief or other hurts. It definitely punches you in the gut, but it also carefully cradles you until you can stand back up again. It's an absolutely masterful debut and I can't wait to see where Adler might go from here.

[Tilly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can’t fault the writing style or the raw, unflinching depictions of grief and loneliness, but ultimately Waiting on a Friend had an intriguing concept that was let down by a half-baked plot. The introduction of the Ghostbusters-esque Manhattan Remediation was jarring (and unnecessary) and didn’t do the introspective prose any favours. 2.5 ⭐️

[Maia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This may be up there in my top 3 reads of the year so far!

I loved the writing style of this book, it was witty and just brilliant. I laughed out loud a surprising amount, considering the dark nature of the book but also having a couple of tearful moments as well.

I thought this was an incredibly well rounded novel and had elements I didn’t expect to enjoy as much as I did.

The volubility throughout is so gripping, I finished this in less than two days. I will 100% be reading whatever Alder might release next 🤞

Reviewed as part of an ARC from NetGalley

[suzannah ♡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley for the arc! I really loved this book. A beautiful story about love and friendship and mourning and ghosts. I couldn’t put this book down and thought about it often when I wasn’t reading.

[Alyssa Haley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book very immersive. The writing is raw and honest. There were times when I was unsure how the story would develop, and the pacing flagged slightly, but I think that is appropriate for a book about grief. Highly recommend for those interested in complicated friendship and grief, as well as anyone curious about fiction set in the 1980's NYC AIDS epidemic.

[A · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5/5 ⭐

Review to come on publish date!

[Char Grell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley, the author and publisher for the advanced readers copy.

Waiting on a Friend is a ghost story and a mystery, blending speculative elements with emotional realism. A tribute to friendship and chosen family, exploring how grief and love shape us. A portrait of a community under siege, capturing the fear, resilience, and defiance of queer life during the AIDS epidemic.

I grew up in the Midwest in the 80s and remember clearly the AIDS crisis and being terrified. Looking back, we were so far removed from the tragedy occurring in places like New York City where people were losing friends and chosen family members one after another to AIDS. This is the first time I've read a book about what it may have been like. I appreciate the story and will likely seek out more books around this topic.

The main charterer, Renata, is not all that likable; she's gritty and hard. But she is loyal and determined to seek acceptance with those that surround her. While I did enjoy that Renata could see ghosts, I mostly connected with her personal relationships and her loyalty. Friends are the family you chose yourself and the people in Renata's life needed each other during a very challenging period of time.

I give very few 5-star reviews and reading is subjective. This book will land as a 5-star for many people. It is well written, and the author has taken us to a place that has been overlooked (in my opinion).

Thanks again to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for this copy!

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an odd but often funny and heartfelt novel about Renata who sees ghosts as her friend, Mark dies. Unsure at first, she's certain she's going crazy but the ghosts don't mean her harm and soon she comes to embrace their presence as they may have answers for the questions she didn't realize she had! It's a sweet and charming book that may have you rethinking your ideas about heaven!
Thanks to NetGalley for this ARC!

[Nicole Clapp · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and RandomHouse for the arc! This was tough for me. I really liked the idea but didn’t connect with Renata or really any of the other characters. I had a hard time understanding what this book is trying to say, which made me end up reading it pretty slowly. The plot confused me and some moments felt disjointed. This novel does a good job of exploring grief and loss which was the best part for me. I wanted to love this but it wasn’t for me.

[rachel x]

"Renata is a young dyke-about-town who happens to have the ability to see ghosts, which has been happening more and more frequently as her friends have started dying of what has recently been named AIDS."

sign me up

[Sandy Goguen-Young · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the characters and the growth of Renata, the main character. The story is in the 80s when AIDs was upfront and people were dying. The unique thing about the story is she also sees ghosts. I felt it was a slow start but the story picked up after a few chapters.

Thanks to GoodReads for the giveaway book.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

This had really good potential & for the most part I still enjoyed the reading experience, there were just a few things that kept this as an average book for me.

The plot of the 'ghost hunters' I couldn't really get behind as much as I wanted to, I could sort of see what the author was intending but for me I would have much preferred this type of story without that element added. I appreciated the commentary of grief & loss & how we come to terms with those, I thought this was mostly done well in the character development of Renata.

I liked the natural, raw writing style, especially in the dialogue between characters. It was a fairly easy read with plenty of vivid imagery in scenes which kept me wanting to read on & though the more supernatural side didn't completely work for me, I still can accept that it's a different form of litfic which I'm sure a lot of readers will appreciate.

This was an okay book for me but it just needed something more to really make it one of my favourites. I'd still recommend to fans of ghost stories, contemporary fics & complicated characters. I'd also be open to reading future work from this author.

Thank you Quercus & Netgalley for my free eARC!

[Amelie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and Quercus Books for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for a review.

Actual rating: 2.5

Oh boy. I do feel bad for not liking this, so I will start out by saying that my rating is just my opinion, and others still might like this.

Waiting on a Friend is set in 1984 and follows Renata, a lesbian who can see ghosts—and ghosts are becoming all the more common as people around her begin to die of AIDS. After the death of her best friend Mark, she is extremely troubled when she cannot see his ghost. Around the same time, she discovers an organisation looking to cleanse the supernatural out of Manhattan. She balances a budding romance with a butch nurse with fighting against the forces seeking to destroy her community.

A major problem I had with this novel was its ambition that it failed to live up to. It takes on a lot of subjects, most of them heavy: AIDS, grief, death, to name a few, but fails in the space it has to make a meaningful point with any of them. The anti-ghost organisation, ‘Manhattan Remediations,’ had the potential to be a metaphor for erasure of queer history with regards to AIDS, but nothing within their representation suggested they were that important. The novel couldn’t quite decide what the focus was going to be: was it Renata’s grief over Mark? Renata’s struggle to love after a loss? Renata and Mark’s history together? Renata’s struggle against the ghostbusters? The suffering of Renata’s friend Star? Unfortunately, this jumping around only made every plot point half-baked. To make matters worse, I didn’t love the writing style: it was extremely referential, which I don’t always mind, but if you’re going to describe something as ‘like X movie,’ describe to me HOW it is similar. Assume that your reader doesn’t know what you’re referring to.

On a personal level, I was bothered by the scenes in which Renata and Mark slept together: yes, experimentation is valid, but it added nothing, and having to read two graphic scenes between them was so off-putting. As they were so platonically close, it also added a slightly incestuous weirdness to their sex that even further grossed me out. And lastly, I think Patrick had every right to be alarmed to learn about this: yes, his focus on homosexual ‘purity’ is wrong, but if I found out my partner was living with someone they’d previously slept with, that would be a boundary crossed for sure.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe the potential was there. I think unfortunately I have read so many excellent AIDS novels that this one just doesn’t feel comparable. It’s a heavy subject, and I admire the author for taking it on, but I think perhaps she wasn’t brave enough in her exploration of grief.

For a lesbian-focused piece of AIDS fiction that I preferred, I recommend Rebecca Brown’s short story “A Good Man.”

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I think that people who are sensitive to presences have a responsibility to them[...]Not just for them. But because refusing to look at the pain of others is denying the same pain in yourself."

This book isn't about ghosts--not really. It's about grief and what happens when you try to push it down or, in this case, lock it away in storage. The "villains" in the story aren't the bad guys (those would be Reagan and those in power who ignored the AIDS crisis and caused countless deaths); they're just Ghostbusters-like figures who want to eradicate the world of discomfort. But you can't lock grief away. Eventually it'll burst free.

[A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you to Random House/Hogarth for the ARC of Waiting on a Friend.

Back in May 2025, I read Jonathan Mahler's The Gods of New York, a great history of New York during 1986-1989 that ended up being a sort of companion to Natalie Adler's Waiting on a Friend. In Gods, Mahler describes the horrible state of New York City during this time, a city plagued by corruption, greed, racial tensions, homelessness, and a government infrastructure incapable of doing much about these issues. In addition to all these "big city" problems, AIDS was a scourge unchecked by the authorities. The initial response to the AIDS epidemic was shamefully callous, and it is in this setting that Waiting on a Friend tells its story of people caught up and dealing with the horrors of AIDS.

The novel is centered on a group of queer friends who begin to lose some of its members to AIDS. The descriptions of the people suffering from the disease are at times brutal, but they serve to distill the horrors of the disease into individuals. We become witnesses to the pain and agony of friends and lovers, not faceless, nameless bodies. Adler succeeds in illustrating the devastation that passed through this community by making you feel the anguish of a few people watching their loved ones die. I couldn't help but think of Angels in America or Philadelphia as I read Adler's novel because it forced you to face the brutality of AIDS without flinching.

The surprising aspect of Waiting on a Friend is the ability of Renata, who tells the story, to see ghosts. I read the book blurb before starting the novel so I knew this going in, but I was interested to see how it would be incorporated into the story. In a way, Renata's ability ends up being the power that blows away the anonymity of those who died from AIDS. Instead of people dying hidden away in anonymous hospital wings, Renata can see them (and show us) as they were when they died, scarred, in agony, almost unrecognizable. Like most super powers, it can be a curse and a blessing.

What pulls the novel back from these horrors are the circle of people, friends and lovers, who are connected to Renata, who are a family by choice. They support one another, help one another, and they are there at the darkest times when no one else steps up. They become stronger together as the worst happens. I can only assume that the novel's title is a reference to the Rolling Stones song of the same name, but I could be wrong. But the song speaks to the value of friendship, a relationship where there is someone "I can cry to" and "someone to protect." Friendship becomes, if not the solution, the source of the energy to fight against the darkness.

Waiting on a Friend is at times tough to read because of its subject matter, but its frankness, honesty, and characters make it a valuable read.

[Benny · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars feels harsh, but I wanted so much from this, and in order to make a worthy contribution to the already very rich canon of AIDS literature a book has to be pretty stellar, so my expectations were high and I was left a little disappointed. That's not to say this book is bad. The blurb on my ARC was lacklustre but I was pleasantly surprised by the way the paranormal elements were incorporated initially. Magical realism when used subtly does so much to enrich and highlight human experience. Things took a turn when the ghostbusters showed up. I just don't think that device was necessary at all. I suppose through the removal of ghosts, we see different peoples' responses to grief, but I don't see why you'd go with ghostbusting when honestly Renata and Mark's extended friend group already display a range of emotions. It turns what might be a tender exploration of grief in a time of extreme injustice into a half-baked gimmicky spec-fic slump.

Waiting On A Friend wants to be literary, but employs these odd sci-fi tropes which require such exposition that it fails to slot sufficiently into either genre, a la Ministry of Time (coming from me that is NOT a compliment). By far my favourite parts are where Renata is just spending time with friends and monologuing about the city, but all too often it diverts to her suspicions about Manhattan Remediation. This split focus results in two clashing narrative styles: one a view of change through passive observation, the other a paranormal detective procedural in which the characters we usually see lounging around and working and partying spontaneously decide to investigate a ghost removal business. The pacing is so bizarre.

The payoff of Renata's final conversation with Patrick was SO fabulous, the potential of this book and author all came into focus for me. The following diversion into yet another heist at Manhattan Remediation came as another stinging blow at what this might have been if the concept had been debloated just a little more. I earnestly think if you just cut out all the ghostbusting this could've been a fantastic 200-page lit fic banger. In my heart of hearts, Renata speaks to Patrick, then goes to Kurt's, and they host the Mucous Membrane gig in the apartment before heading to the parade. (Just now thinking about the fact that if Renata had been at all involved in Kurt's eviction saga, the Manhattan Remediation plotline would have been made completely redundant because that would have covered gentrification plenty. Arghhh)

But then that's all a matter of taste. Still not terrible. Super readable, got through this in a couple of days, so if the premise appeals I reckon many people will get a lot out of this. No hard feels.