A review by shitbookreviews
Queenie Malone's Paradise Hotel by Ruth Hogan

5.0

Original review on shitbookreviews.com

Holy shit. Have you read this book yet? If not, you absolutely should. Queenie Malone’s Paradise Hotel is a captivating and beautifully written book which will have you going ‘hannnng on a minute’ multiple times whilst filling you full of joy and happiness. Cheesy, I know.

This book will have you grinning like an absolute nutcase, have you smirking on the bus whilst the person perched next to you gives you a dirty side-eye and bring you crashing back down to reality when the sad bits kick in.

Right, so you’ve got Tilly and you’ve got Tilda. Both the same person, but this is a book that focuses on both the past and the present along with the clusterfuck that’s family politics and the death of her much loved father.

Tilly (aged 7) was a curious child (who’d lost her dad at an early age), eager to learn everything and anything in the best way a child could possibly to; with pure and delightful innocence. This kid comes out with some crackin’ stuff that’ll have you wanting to wrap up your niece, nephew, best friend’s tiny human, your own spawn in cotton wool/bubble wrap to protect them from the nasty and pretty shit world we call real life.

Then you’ve got Tilda. At 46, she had never forgiven her mother for dragging her kicking and screaming from Queenie’s beloved hotel and dumped into a soulless boarding school. After Gracie’s death, Tilda returns back to her childhood home next to the seaside to clear our her mother’s things. There she finds the diaries – deliberately left for her to find – where the gaps in her life finally get filled.

The teeniest, tiniest thing I wish I had a little more of? I wish I got to know more about her dad, but I’ll get over it.

You need to add this to your Goodreads list, like, right now.