Hey there, book lovers!
I have got a YA horror treat to review for you today. If you were a lover of The Blair Witch Project and similar found-footage horrors back in the day, ‘Horror Hotel’ by Faith McClaren and Victoria Fulton will be right up your street!
What is ‘Horror Hotel’ about?
The clue’s in the name with this one to be honest! Four teenage friends who run a ghost-hunting podcast decide to head to a notoriously haunted hotel in LA. Chrissy, the medium of the group, feels the overwhelming presence of spooky spirits as soon as she walks in the door, while her protective admirer Chase, skeptic Emma and super cool scaredy-cat Kiki try to come up with an action plan to explore the creepy hotel.
However, discovering the truth behind the mysterious disappearances related to this hotel isn’t going to be easy. The owner and her son give the group a suspiciously cold welcome, and while Chrissy suffers from increasingly gruesome visions around the hotel, solo traveller and fellow psychic Bram arrives and distracts Chrissy from the mission.
Should you read ‘Horror Hotel’?
The premise of this book is great – a classic gruesome horror for modern teenagers with an intriguing mystery at its heart. If you’re here for the scares, then you’re in the right place with plenty of jumps, creepy ghosts and gore galore!
However, a lot of these gory moments felt like they’d been thrown in with little relation to the overarching story. The story itself, in fact, was a little bit all over the place and I found myself forgetting at times what the main mystery was!
This wasn’t helped by the multiple points of view unfortunately. The story is told through the eyes of all four of our ghost-hunting characters, but sadly, their voices aren’t unique enough to tell which is which all the time. They each had unique qualities, which did help, but I felt it was a bit of an ambitious structural device that didn’t always work well with the fast pace of this story.
Final thoughts
All in all, a fast-paced gruesome horror with classic haunting tropes, but not the strongest of storylines.
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Back soon!
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