Title: Hotel of Secrets
Author: Diana Biller
Series: n/a
Loose ends but overall great
Much thanks to Diana Biller, St. Martin’s Press, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This was a great book! I liked it better than Brightest Star in Paris. Just a few small issues with it:
1. It got long and could have been slimmed and trimmed (e.g., their sex scene was waaaay too long, I skipped it), but, strangely, the pace never suffered; it maintained a quick clip, the story just seemed to go on….and on….and on….
2. It didn’t feel all that historical aside from the obvious—current events, lack of technology, etc. The characters spoke in modern (American?) speech patterns and didn’t behave with the stiff formality one would expect of 19th century society. Though maybe Austrians weren’t as stodgy as the British, I don’t know. But I mean, Maria was hopping up to sit on kitchen countertops and wasn’t at all abashed about taking lovers. Eli invited her to have a drink in his room alone with him, which I would have thought was a no-no—not that she had much reputation to save, since it seemed to be common knowledge that she often took lovers. I got the sense that her grandmother’s female lover of 50+ years was the worst kept secret in Vienna. Things like that.
3. The story ended rather abruptly. To my memory, only a few plot threads were adequately concluded. Apparently we can just assume that Eli went back to America and got those rich sons of Bs charged with their crimes, because we sure weren’t shown him kicking bureaucratic ass. We can also assume that Hotel Wallner really did become a success again, because we weren’t shown that, either. We weren’t told what happened to the wedding; I assume it fell through and didn’t happen? What happened with Mac? Did he remain living at Hotel Wallner or did he move home? Did he find something to do that he found fulfilling? Did anything happen between him and Hannah? What happened to Heimrich and his debts, his crimes?
And wtf with Claude the spy? Just—wtf? He had absolutely no purpose in the story. I kept waiting for it to be revealed that he was involved in something but as far as I can tell, he was just utterly irrelevant comic relief. And he had to be the most obvious spy I’ve ever witnessed. Everyone knew he was a spy, he openly called himself such and admitted snooping from time to time. Yet he didn’t have anything to do with anything. *shakes head in bafflement* What was he even doing in Vienna?
A last chapter or even just an epilogue would have been appreciated. It was almost like Biller realized the script was getting long and just decided to end it as soon as the ball and central mystery was over, which left me a bit unsatisfied.
Aside from those issues, though, I enjoyed this tale overall. Maria and Eli were wonderful, sympathetic protagonists and had great emotional arcs. I didn’t expect the sex to become so graphic and explicit, but that was easy enough to skim and skip. And Josephine! Easily my favorite character, despite my being scared of her.
