The Big Dreams Beach Hotel

November 6, 2017
There are plenty of sweet moments in this romantic comedy by Bartlett (aka Michele Gorman), author of the Carlton Square series. Twenty-eight-year-old Rosie MacDonald is a flawed and keenly likable protagonist who navigates her love life and big dreams for running a resort town hotel. The narrative moves smoothly between Rosie’s life working in a New York hotel three years earlier and her present life as the manager of a hotel in Scarborough, England. It’s unclear at first how the two stories will connect, and the switching between them adds tension and humor to the story. The descriptions of the hotel and its eccentric live-in guests are less satisfying; Bartlett never really captures the seaside town or the disruption caused by the transfer of the English hotel into American hands. That said, the simple and happy plot is charming, especially for those who swoon at the use of Britishisms, and the accounts of Rosie’s hapless romances with Americans are very entertaining.