On the way to spend a summer with her grandmother after the sudden death of her mother, seventeen-year-old Audrey, her older brother Daniel, and their father happen upon the Hotel Ruby, a luxurious place filled with unusual guests and little chance of ever leaving.
Another YA with a long dull beginning. Needed to be way shorter, making it snappy with tension and suspense. As it is, it's a party girl being emo stuck on repeat while staggering around a luxury hotel for a couple days before things get interesting. For the reader it's so obvious from the beginning something is off, paranormal and ghostly, so it needs to hit the ground running. Instead Audrey drunkenly stumbles around in denial for 150 pages. Do people think teens are that slow-witted to not realize it or did someone just need the extra pennies per word?
Making it this long stretches the content too thin, shows how little substance there is to the background characters and the insta-connections. Audrey can just do the right thing without insta-love, or a friend group, or hell, even a family connection since it's the right goddamn thing. That's kinda the fucking point!
And what is with calling the grandma a DNA matched stranger when it wasn't a hunt to find someone to take them, like sometimes happens to literal orphans. They've met this grandma before, she's a known entity. Maybe a strange stranger one, but calling her a DNA matched stranger gives off different vibes I'm not okay with using in this case
Reading updates
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Started reading
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4 October, 2019:
Reviewed