A review by ashley__reads
The Third Hotel by Laura van den Berg
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.