Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by scenesfrommyshelves
Hotel Portofino by J.P. O'Connell
3.0
In theory, this book is tailor-made for my interests. Set in the 1920s in Portofino, Italy, it's the story of a hotel owned by a British aristocrat and the intersecting lives of her family, their guests, and the people in the village around them. It's very much along the lines of dramas like Downton Abbey or The Halycon, with the lives of different social classes overlapping, sometimes in scandalous ways. There's forbidden romance, an art heist, shocking secrets, philandering spouses, and plenty of snooping, but there's a little more heft to it, since it's all set against the backdrop of the slow rise of fascism in Italy.
So why am I only giving this three stars? Part of it is that, simply, the sheer number of characters makes it hard to really get absorbed into their individual stories; as soon as you get tuned in, it switches perspectives again. There are definitely a few characters who are more compelling than the rest (the women in the story are particularly intriguing), but others never transcend their archetypes and just don't get enough space to develop.
Above all else, however, my problem with this book is its ending. The story is set to become a TV series soon, with PBS broadcasting it in the US. I'm not clear which came first, the TV version or this novel, but it very much feels like a novelization of a season of TV rather than a complete story that stands on its own. Almost every storyline is left up in the air by the end of the book, giving it the feel of a TV season that's betting on a season two. It's hard to come away from the book feeling satisfied when it's so obvious that the story is incomplete, but if there's more to come, I'm definitely intrigued enough to return!
Thank you to Blackstone Publishing and SparkPoint Studio for this ARC!
So why am I only giving this three stars? Part of it is that, simply, the sheer number of characters makes it hard to really get absorbed into their individual stories; as soon as you get tuned in, it switches perspectives again. There are definitely a few characters who are more compelling than the rest (the women in the story are particularly intriguing), but others never transcend their archetypes and just don't get enough space to develop.
Above all else, however, my problem with this book is its ending. The story is set to become a TV series soon, with PBS broadcasting it in the US. I'm not clear which came first, the TV version or this novel, but it very much feels like a novelization of a season of TV rather than a complete story that stands on its own. Almost every storyline is left up in the air by the end of the book, giving it the feel of a TV season that's betting on a season two. It's hard to come away from the book feeling satisfied when it's so obvious that the story is incomplete, but if there's more to come, I'm definitely intrigued enough to return!
Thank you to Blackstone Publishing and SparkPoint Studio for this ARC!