Review: Queenie Malone's Paradise Hotel by Ruth Hogan

Ruth Hogan is one of my favourite authors. I adore her offbeat, quirky characters and fabulous writing, so I was thrilled to receive an early copy of this book. 

Queenie Malone's Paradise Hotel is told from two points of view. Tilly is a mischievous, cheeky, boundary-pushing six-year-old, who likes playing with matches and talking to the dead. She loves her charming father but feels fairly ambivalent about her mother, who is 'not like the mummy in the soap powder adverts'. After her father dies, her mother takes a job at Queenie Malone's Paradise Hotel in Brighton, a refuge for people who feel they don't fit in with the rest of the world. Tilly loves her new home and all her new friends, including Queenie's glamorous mother, who is a different film star each day of the week. Forty years later and Tilly is now Tilda, an obsessive-compulsive with a ghost dog, and hates meeting new people, but she returns to The Paradise Hotel after her mother's death to try to find out where everything went wrong.

Ruth Hogan brilliantly captures what it feels like to be a child and the way adults seem to speak in a strange code. I loved the way Tilly confused Bermondsey with Purgatory, and all her mis-heard words to hymns. I loved the sweet romance, the fabulous Joseph Geronimo, and I wish I could adopt Eli the dog. At the end of the book the jaw-dropping revelations come thick and fast, including one epic twist I felt incredibly stupid for not spotting but I was enjoying the story far too much to play my usual game of 'I bet I know what's going to happen next'. And the ending is so sweet and touching and poignant I actually cried. And I never cry! Ever!

I can see this appealing to anyone who loves cleverly written stories with lovable, quirky characters, and for fans of authors such as Joanna Cannon (Three Things About Elsie) and Gail Honeyman (Eleanor Oliphant). 

Queenie Malone's Paradise Hotel is one of my favourite books this year, probably ever. I really wish I could visit. I'm sure I would fit in just fine...

I was lucky enough to receive an advance copy of this book, which will be published on 7th February 2019.

Thank you to Ruth Hogan and Two Roads for my copy of this book, which I requested from NetGalley and reviewed voluntarily.