A review by readingwithkelsey
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel

4.0

 I am so surprised with how much I enjoyed this. Primarily, Mandel's writing is phenomenal - which I had already known having read Station Eleven but I found it to be a bit more impactful in this one. Perhaps it is due to the more melancholy feel of the atmosphere, but her prose really shined. Readers are pulled back and forth over the course of 20 years, and while it can seem confusing at first, once you start to put the pieces together, the novel really comes together. There is a lot of discussions on loss, grief and opportunity and I feel like Mendel did a great job at demonstrating how each character experiences these things at different opportunities. The novel does have an underlying "mystery" and, while the "why" of it is explained at the end (which made me gasp), the characters' reactions to this event are kind of up to the readers interpretation. For me, the main theme of the novel touches on mental health and depression in particular (which is why Mendel's melancholic writing bodes well) and how it affects these really grandiose characters. The novel sets out to connect you with these complicated characters, so fair warning for plot driven readers. Even though the ponzi scheme forefront plot is interesting in and of itself, it is really the time spent with the characters that I enjoyed the most. 
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