Horror Hotel is a short YA tale with a spooky punch. It is very bingeable – you may just devour this in an afternoon.

We follow a group of teenage Youtube-famous ghost hunters (clearly inspired by the Scooby Doo gang). They’re trying to make it big and reach one million followers, so they decide to sneak away and spend a night in the most haunted hotel in LA, capturing footage that is bound to make them go viral. But while they’re searching for the already-dead … they stumble into an active serial killer’s territory.

Here’s what I enjoyed:

→ The exploration of a teenage medium was pretty unique.

→ The hotel was vivid and immersive; I could picture every inch of the distressing environment.

→ The pacing was an absolute whirlwind, which was fun!

→ The storytelling felt film-inspired: with jump scares and paranormal eeriness and peculiar side characters.

→ We alternate between four POVs and they do split up to solve the mystery, so if you have a short attention span you get really quick chapters (usually ending on cliffhangers) that slowly combine.

→ It’s light & breezy enough for young audiences while still incorporating darker themes.

→ There are two (very light & cheesy) romances, one of which is sapphic.

Here are the parts that feel flat for me:

→ The killer was painfully obvious (I think partially because the book was too short – there simply weren’t enough characters introduced to have red herrings).

→ The narrative voices blended together; they had different traits and different crushes, but sounded quite similar.

→ Some of their decisions made me really uncomfortable – why on earth are they trampling over crime scenes and hiding bodies? There was a character who quipped about putting the film (of the person’s body) on YOUTUBE. What?!?

→ Along the same lines, the book begins with their code. They immediately break it. Why bother to have a code at all?

→ Because this was inspired by the Hotel Cecil and a real case, it felt like it flickered into the realm of disrespect a few times. 

Overall though, Horror Hotel is over the top and certainly entertaining. You simply can’t look away.

CW: murder, death, blood, violence, injury, panic attacks, vomit, stalking, animal cruelty, mental illness, physical abuse, sexual assault, suicide, torture, toxic relationship, car accident, death of parent

(I received a free review copy of this book; this is my honest review.)