Harrowing yet hopeful. Fantastical yet deeply grounded in historical reality. This strange and wonderful story kept me entranced to the very end. The prose was absolutely gorgeous. Both the characters and the setting felt like they were jumping off of the page. There were so many tiny details that made the setting and the characters feel so real. 

 

The Avalon felt like such a real and vivid and magical (in more ways than one) place. I felt so immersed in the world of luxury hotels and the 1940s hospitality industry. The whole novel felt very well researched, from the luxury hotel setting to the relationships between the foreign diplomats and US government employees, to the daily lives of Appalachians during WWII. 

 

The use of the sweetwater as a fantastical element personifying the attitudes and feelings of the guests of the Avalon was very clever. The metaphor of June giving her own liveliness and joy to remove all of the negative emotions of the wealthy hotel guests was simultaneously very subtle and very overt. I enjoyed reading about June’s love for the Avalon but also felt very empowered when she decided to prioritize her own values to leave the Avalon for good. 

 

The character of Hannelore and her relationship with her parents was so interesting to me. There was so much nuance in the fact that her parents were proud Nazi sympathizers, yet their love for their neurodivergent daughter colored all most all of their actions. 

 

I loved the relationship between June and Tucker. It was somewhat of a slow burn, but I think that the romance made sense for both of their characters, as it allowed them to confront different aspects of their lives that they had been avoiding. For Tucker, this was confronting his past and the actions that caused him to leave West Virginia. For June, this was confronting her present and the fact that despite her love for the Avalon and for Edgar Gilfoyle, both were taking more from her than they were giving back. Most of all, I loved Tucker’s declaration of love to June: 

 

 

Other assorted elements that I loved: the dachshunds that popped up around the Avalon, covert operative Sandy Gilfoyle (which I guessed almost immediately and felt very satisfied about during the reveal), Hannelore’s perspective on the world as a neurodivergent child, Pennybacker’s character development, the quiet dignity of the Avalon staff, the lack of an overt antagonist allowing all of the characters to act as individuals with plenty of good intentions but limited good options, the way that everything kind of worked out in the end.