She Treads Softly: The Hotel

Wednesday, June 14, 2023

The Hotel

The Hotel by Louise Mumford
6/22/23; 336 pages
HarperCollins

The Hotel by Louise Mumford is a highly recommended thriller.

Ten years ago four eighteen-year-old students travel to Ravencliffe, an abandoned hotel rumored to be haunted on the Welsh coast, but only three returned. Bex, Leo, Richard, and Oscar go to the hotel and film themselves exploring the spooky setting. Something happens and Leo disappears, never to be seen again. The footage they filmed goes on to become a cult horror movie with a large fan following and an annual convention for fans, RavenCon.

Since her life-long friend Leo disappeared, Bix has hidden herself away and wants nothing openly to do with fans. However, she does attend the RavenCons just to see what is going on with the fans. It is there, on the tenth anniversary, she learns that Oscar, Richard, and, apparently, herself are going back to Ravencliffe and filming again. She doesn't want to, but a package she receives in the mail guilts her into participating and returning to the setting of her nightmares.

The narrative covers what happened ten years previously during the filming of the original Ravencliffe film that went viral and the current time period during the re-visiting of the movie sight. Mumford does an excellent job capturing the chilling terror in the original cult movie and the behavior of rabid fans, which creates the tension in the anticipation of what may happen in the re-boot. The creepy, apprehensive atmosphere will pull you into the story.

Bix is a sympathetic character and readers will like her. The pace is slow, especially at the start. It eventually picks up, but it does slow down the appreciation of the plot. Keep at it and the mystery is solved, but the writing could have been tightened up a bit the keep a faster pace. I did like the alternating between decades in the narrative to tell the story of the films in both time periods.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins via NetGalley.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.