Demonic trouble lurks in Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery in Lauren Willig's fetchingly adventurous, historically informed paranormal romance set in 21st-century New York City. When Jess, an unmoored 37-year-old woman who is single and childless, reluctantly accompanies her best friend, a well-known author who's married with four children, on an evening cemetery tour, dark mischief ensues. Jess ends up on the gothic doorstep of the cemetery's arborist, Adam, a 40-year-old, good-natured, attractive, widowed father of two. Adam lives in a historic mansion on the cemetery grounds and is more fascinated by trees than the surrounding statuary. Former start-up CFO Jess may live in "a swanky modern high-rise," but is soon contending with a Gilded Age curse that connects her ancestry with that of Adam's wife, who was from an old Dutch New York family. Jess and Adam team up to rid themselves of a havoc-causing, murderous demon while romantic friction brews.
What Happens at Nightfall is a slight departure from Willig's usual historical fiction, with its spiritual turns, but Willig's signature warmhearted humor and cleverly incorporated research are happily still present. For instance, the demon is drawn from a Niccolò Machiavelli short story, but here it possesses a Cookie Monster stuffie (among other objects and people) and occasionally helps out with Latin homework. Willig (Band of Sisters; The Girl from Greenwich Street) plays with gendered assumptions, upending them to wonderful effect. --Nina Semczuk, writer, editor, and illustrator