ARC REVIEW: The Hotel – by Louise Mumford

Title: The Hotel
Author: Louise Mumford
Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense
First published: June 22nd 2023
Publisher: HQ Digital
Finished reading: June 8th 2023
Pages: 327

“The dead freeze in our memories, doomed to only move when they repeat the same steps over and over in snatches of film and in brutally short videos on phones.”

*** A copy of this book was kindly provided to me by Netgalley and HQ Digital in exchange for an honest review. Thank you! ***

REVIEW

There was just something about the blurb of The Hotel that caught my attention immediately. I love a good remote and creepy setting, and the abandoned hotel on top of the steep Welsh cliffs sounded like a perfect backdrop for an atmospheric story. Add a missing person and strange things happening before the disappearance, and I was very excited indeed to be picking up The Hotel. I fully expected to have a great time with this story, but unfortunately I ended up feeling mostly underwhelmed instead.

First of all, I have to say that I still love the setting. The descriptions of the abandoned hotel and its surroundings near the Welsh coast are both vivid and thorough, and it gave the story that gothic, creepy and atmospheric vibe. It was the perfect backdrop for this story, and the plot itself had so much potential. I think it was the hotel, its descriptions and the strange (possibly paranormal) things happening that kept me reading… Because I don’t think the actual execution of the plot was what I thought it would be.

What do I mean with this? Well, I have to say that I can’t ignore just how incredibly slow the pace is. The Hotel is the slowest of slow burns, and it took SO long for things to finally pick up… I found myself putting down my kindle to do other things multiple times, and that is never a good sign. The story somehow wasn’t able to keep my attention, and I caught myself skimreading more than once just to make it to the final page. It’s such a shame about the pace, because the premise itself has a lot of potential, and the setting should have been a goldmine.

I wasn’t a fan of the characters either. There was just something about them that felt a bit flat, and I wasn’t able to relate or warm up to any of them. As a result, I wasn’t as invested in the things that happened to them, and I mostly kept reading just to know the ending so that I could move on to the next book. Sadly, the ending wasn’t really satisfying either; after such a build up the final reveals were quite underwhelming to be honest (and I guessed most of it early on).

All in all The Hotel has a lot of potential and the setting itself is both vivid and atmospheric, but between the slow pace, lack of connection to the characters and lackluster ending I ended up having mostly mixed thoughts instead.