Hotel for the Lost

October 12, 2015
Young's (The Remedy) unsubtle paranormal novel follows 17-year-old Audrey and what remains of her family after her mother's sudden death a few months earlier. Staying with her brother and father at the luxurious Hotel Ruby, en route to live with her grandmother, Audrey falls for charming fellow guest Elias and feels happiness for the first time in months. However, the hotel is rumored to be haunted, and the hostile concierge seems overly concerned with Audrey's every move. In a shocking climax, Audrey makes an irrevocable choice, and the narrative ignores conventional definitions of happy and unhappy endings. Audrey's unresolved guilt for her behavior toward her boyfriend Ryan, with whom she has fallen out of love while lacking the courage to break up with him, is handled well, but her first-person narrative is sometimes marred by on-the-nose descriptions of characters' motivations and emotional states ("My brother straightens in his chair, knocked sideways by the fact that our father would criticize him now"). A promising story that falls short. Ages 14âup. Agent: Jim McCarthy, Dystel & Goderich Literary Management.