Reviews with content warning for Injury/Injury detail - Pilvilinna

Contemporary YA is not a genre I read often, especially if there's romance involved, but I really enjoyed this one! There's a dash of fantasy or magical realism as well, and a mystery in the second part of the book. I've been in a reading slump for the past couple of weeks and this helped bring me out of it. It was cute, cozy, fun, and a little ridiculous.

It takes place around the last week of Christmas up to the first week of January, but there's not a huge emphasis on the holidays. I would definitely recommend it for a general winter read, or if you're looking for a holiday read that's more subtle.

The romance was a little cringey for me at a few points as an adult reader, but I still thought it was cute and it didn't hinder my enjoyment of the book.

Overall, the audiobook narrator did a great job bringing the characters to life with all the different accents, but I sometimes found the accents she used for the main character and a few of the side characters hard to understand (German or Swiss I think?). I had to listen to most of the book at a reduced speed to understand it. There were also a lot of characters to keep track of, which I find difficult to do when listening to audiobooks.

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annoyedhumanoid's review against another edition

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adventurous hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

let me start with my cover review. all the pieces are there: i love the illustrations, the typeface of the title, the background color. the typeface and color for the author's name aren't my favorite but i don't hate it. my main issue is with the arrangement. like placing the hotel above the title looks wrong. with some repositioning, it could be so good.

and that's also generally how i felt about the actual contents. its plot summary makes for a very good story, but the way it was executed into a 300-page novel was rocky due to an uneven pace. the first 75% is largely uneventful, more slice of life, then the last 25% turns into an intense mystery/thriller. if it's not going to commit to being a slice of life, then i wish it would get to the actual conflict much earlier than three-fourths of the way through. also irritating that the peak climax of the book abruptly ends with "and then i went unconscious" while the day is saved by someone else. all the dissatisfaction of a deus ex machina, compounded by the fact that we don't even get to see it play out in real time, only the recap Sophie gets from others after the fact. and what ever happened with the

chandelier falling

? did it lost its relevance to the plot immediately? then what was the point of all that? talk about "some fake moment of suspense that all gets resolved two pages later"…

this is a reread for me. having some recollection (most of it i forgot) plus this time the ebook made it a lot easier to follow, but there were still a few too many characters for me to remember. like Mara Matthäus and Jaromir—they came up again at the end and i had no idea who they were. on my first read, i liked Tristan better than Ben. this time, i started on Ben's side because Tristan's vibes were a little too close to fuckboy for my liking, but at least he's hot and mysterious and anti-imperialist; Ben just becomes possessive and bitter. go home. also it was a little cringe to hear a character say, "I've fallen in love with you"—i know trauma bonding and all but it's been like a week, dial it back. but i have this issue with so much YA romance so maybe it's just me ??

as others have mentioned, the portrayal of women isn't great. Ella, Gretchen, Hortensia, Camilla, Ava, Ariane ("Whatsername"), Mrs. Smirnov/

Yegorov

, and

Mrs. Ludwig

are all portrayed negatively, with Fräulein Müller somewhere in the middle. like damn. i don't think Sophie herself had an "i'm not like other girls" mindset, but the writing definitely showed that she was not like other girls and therefore better and more worthy of romance.

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kaetheluise_nckl's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

geschrieben am 17. Oktober 2018

Das Wolkenschloss muss ein magischer Ort sein. Die Beschreibungen im Buch lassen das Hotel wirken, wie ein realer Ort, und ich finde, das ist Kerstin Giers Magie.
Sie weiß einfach, was sie tut.
"Wolkenschloss" ist mal wieder eins dieser Bücher, zu denen ich nicht viel sagen kann, denn ich denke, die Reise zum Wolkenschloss muss man selber machen. Es ist also Zeit, die Koffer zu packen.
Ja, es ist etwas langatmig, aber ganz ehrlich, das fällt nur auf, wenn man zu lange darüber nachdenkt.
Ich kann nur sagen, dass das Wolkenschloss Geheimnisse hinter seinen Türen birgt, und dass ich es nur wärmsten empfehlen kann, eine Taschenlampe und Schuhe mit gedämpfter Sohle einzupacken, denn eine dieser Türen wird aufgehen - und dann geht das Abenteuer los!

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