Review By Gabrielle
Whether you are a Hitchcock fan or not, The Hitchcock Hotel is a fun read.
Favourite Quote:
“Odd to regard a place with equal parts love and hate. I thought long and hard before buying this house. How it would feel to live within sight of the school, to risk encounters with people I knew in town, to face daily the place where my so-called friends betrayed me? Did I want an everpresent reminder of what had happened? Any normal person would struggle to put the past behind them when it was right in front of them. Wounds don’t always heal. Sometimes they fester and chafe.”
Goodreads Synopsis:
Alfred Smettle is not your average Hitchcock fan. He is the founder, owner, and manager of The Hitchcock Hotel, a sprawling Victorian house in the White Mountains dedicated to the Master of Suspense. There, Alfred offers his guests round-the-clock film screenings, movie props and memorabilia in every room, plus an aviary with fifty crows.
To celebrate the hotel’s first anniversary, he invites his former best friends from his college Film Club for a reunion. He hasn’t spoken to any of them in sixteen years, not after what happened.
But who better than them to appreciate Alfred’s creation? And to help him finish it.
After all, no Hitchcock set is complete without a body.
I was immediately intrigued by the premise of this book. Although I’m no super fan of Hitchcock by any means, I am a fan. It’s hard not to be. He created some of the most iconic movies of all time. Plus, fandom, in general, interests me. How obsessed people can get with a particular celebrity or fictional world. While I am a super fan of books in general, I can’t say I’ve experienced fandom on that same level, and it fascinates me.
Just like the synopsis says, Alfred is not your average Hitchcock fan. He is a walking encyclopedia of Hitchcock knowledge and has amassed an impressive collection of memorabilia for his hotel. Golly, I would like to stay in his hotel. It just sounds so cool!
Right from the start, we get the creepy vibes. The first chapter is told from the point of view of a crow, and it’s perfect. In chapter two, we meet Alfred. Alfred is a weird dude to say the least. As the story opens, we see him preparing for his guests to arrive with obsessive attention to detail. He’s invited all his former best friends from college to stay for the weekend. He’s told them it’s to celebrate the hotel’s anniversary, but it becomes obvious quickly he has another agenda; we just don’t know what that is. The friends haven’t seen each other in a very long time. Something happened back in college, but again, we don’t know what.
We meet each of the characters as they arrive. Chapters from their point of view help us get to know each of them better. One after another, we come to realize each of them has their own reason for attending the reunion and all of them have secrets they’d like to keep. I loved all the Hitchcock quotes and passages from things written about Hitchcock sprinkled throughout the book; they were such fun inclusions. If you are a Hitchcock fan, you will love it.
The pace was so great. Details are revealed slowly, keeping the suspense going for the reader. There are lots of twists and turns that keep the story moving along while building the tension up and up. I read it quickly because I had to keep turning the pages to find out what would happen next!
Overall, it is a super fun and quirky read.
Thank you, Simon & Schuster, for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
