Hotel Magnifique

4/5 stars, a magical and interesting story

Thank you to Penguin Teen for the arc through netgalley in exchange for an honest review!

Everyone who is saying that this gives Night Circus and Caraval vibes, they are absolutely correct. In my experience, I felt that this was more Caraval, because of the sisters and working with the hotel and etc. The premise of the story is that Jani has had a terrible life, longing to go elsewhere, taking care of her younger sister Zosa for her whole life. That is until the Hotel Magnifique arrives in town. The hotel is legendary for its magic and ability to travel across the world in a single night. The sisters have been whisked away when Zosa is chosen as one of the singers, and Jani is taken on as one of the maids. Jani soon discovers that there are dark secrets lying under the magic and ink of their contracts, and she must unravel the mystery before it is too late for them.

I think the premise sounded fun and I was so looking forward to this, I had a fun time reading it but there were definitely parts that threw me off a bit. One of those is that while the magic and most things within the hotel felt whimsical and wonderfully dark, there wasn’t much worldbuilding. There were simply location names thrown at the reader that I definitely don’t remember now, and I just wish there had been a bit more substance. I know this is about the hotel, but it didn’t help that I had no idea about where it traveled. There were also times when I felt that the plot dragged its feet a little, I can really enjoy slow-paced stories but this just felt a little off from the plot that had been established.

Throughout this book, there were many characters introduced, and all of them had a different part to play in the hotel and the story. Jani was the main character of the story, but there was nothing very surprising about her. She felt sort of like a typical young adult heroine, which there is nothing wrong with, I just wish she had made different decisions sometimes. The plot twists that surround her story as well were also not surprising, I was able to guess them from very early on in the book. Her sister Zosa doesn’t get much page time, but I really loved her. She was kind and courageous even when she wasn’t able to help as much as she wanted to. Bel was the other main-ish character and I found him quite interesting as well. He didn’t have the biggest plot twists either, but it was still fun to read him.

The romance was going to be something hard to weave into a story like this, and at least in my opinion doesn’t always need to be present. However, the romance in this story was quite intriguing, I think it just came on a bit too fast. I didn’t see that much chemistry between Bel and Jani, especially because they didn’t spend much time together. I enjoyed the interactions we did see, I would’ve just liked it if they had a bit more interactions to really sell the romance.

I think the only other thing that sort of bothered me was the ending, I saw part of the twist coming but the rest was just like conjured out of thin air. Not in a good way. It just felt sort of disjointed from the story and while there was a solid ending for some characters, I just didn’t love it overall. I don’t think it was necessarily bad, just left me wishing for a little more surprise or change in the ending.

Overall, the negatives I have about this book didn’t largely outweigh the positives. It was still a very unique and interesting story to follow, just felt a little bit mediocre at some parts. I do highly recommend it to fans of Caraval or The Night Circus, or anyone who loves traveling hotels and magic. This is one that took me a while but that might’ve just been the situation I was in at the time.

[TW: eye mutilation, death of a loved one, grief, bodily mutilation, blood and gore, loss of memory]