avnaerrdy's review
4.0
Really enjoyed reading it. The end did leave me a tiny bit unsatisfied though.
jasmineting's review
3.25
An objectively well-written book, I feel like this would absolutely hit if you were in the right mood, which unfortunately I was not for most of this (but still enjoyed the writing regardless)
strawberrysky's review
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
emily1602's review
Liked a lot of things is this book. Long scenes in airplanes and stumbling upon odd happenings in old city streets. Street names in Spanish. Low budget horror movies. Unreality. People coming back from the dead. A protagonist with an inexplicable desire to eat inedible things (a stranger's clipped fingernail, a hotel mural). All the things I liked in this book were in the first half. Its not as if the book changed half way through but for some reason I stopped finding things I liked.
ashley__reads's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
The Third Hotel follows Clare, a woman who travels to Havana in order to attend the Festival of New Latin Cinema in place of her husband, Richard, who suddenly passed away a week prior. When Clare spots her deceased husband outside of a museum, she’s completely dumbfounded and decides to follow this man, who may or may not be her deceased husband, in order to get answers.
This was absolutely a grief horror/literary fiction story with small sprinkles of supernatural. You find that Clare doesn’t really know who she is after the death of her husband, and she runs across quite the cast of characters on her journeys around Havana in order to figure out what exactly is going on. This story was magnificently eerie and haunting and the writing is so beautiful and the words blur what is fantasy and what’s reality in this short novel. I wanted to jump into the pages and take this adventure with our main character.
This was absolutely a grief horror/literary fiction story with small sprinkles of supernatural. You find that Clare doesn’t really know who she is after the death of her husband, and she runs across quite the cast of characters on her journeys around Havana in order to figure out what exactly is going on. This story was magnificently eerie and haunting and the writing is so beautiful and the words blur what is fantasy and what’s reality in this short novel. I wanted to jump into the pages and take this adventure with our main character.
kristinana's review
3.0
This novel is beautifully written; the sentences are crisp and lovely to read. There were a lot of very interesting and unusual ideas and scenes -- some of my favorites include Somehow I didn't feel it all completely held together, and I also kept getting lost/forgetting what I had read the night before, but ultimately it was an intriguing book that I enjoyed reading.
Spoiler
the professor who has taught a seminar for a decade that no one comes to, the tour guide who mistakes Clare for one of her tourists and Clare just plays along, and the emergence and re-emergence of the missing actress from Revolution Zombi.claireandrewz's review
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.0
badritual's review
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
Dreamy, atmospheric, surreal, and almost frustratingly vague, The Third Hotel leaves you with more questions than answers and won't be for everybody. If you need concrete answers, this might not work. If you enjoy being led on a journey with no set endpoint, you might enjoy immersing yourself in the strangeness.