Holiday Book Review: The Book Club Hotel

When asked at book club if I would read another book by this author, my answer was “No.” However, reading this Christmas cozy really got me wondering about possible (probable?) authors out there who write cozies but with a good (or great?) writing style. Because to tell you the truth, The Book Club Hotel by Sarah Morgan was fun to read (even with its awful cover). Relaxing for both my brain and my emotions. If it hadn’t been for how repetitive and over-wordy it was, I wouldn’t have minded the cheesy so much. I mean, in most ways it really delivered on its promises: it was crammed full of Christmas, cozy things, gentle things, things we all might only ever dream about. Lack of real drama. Just a gentle read about women’s friendships in an idyllic Vermont hotel at Christmastime. With some manly eye candy and a PG rating.

Hattie moved to Vermont from England with her husband to start a hotel when they were newlyweds, and now that he has died, she’s on her own to raise a child and manage the hotel. But when three middle-aged, college-friend women visit pre-Christmas for their annual book club week away, Hattie’s life is going to tangle with theirs in ways that puts a finger on all their problems. Erica is successful, single, and happy about it, but is she willing to disrupt her contentedness when something better—and more dangerous—comes along? Claudia has lost both her long-term relationship and her job, and doesn’t have a clue where she’s headed, now. Anna has a perfect picture life as a stay-at-home mom that is about to be blown apart by empty nesting. Meanwhile, Hattie has gone and kissed the boy next door and is wondering if she has ruined her one, good friendship.

It’s long. A women’s fiction/romance/cozy seems a little bit much to me at 368 pages. But maybe not? I have a theory that when Morgan wrote this, publishers were still looking for heft. (That trend has now reversed.) I mean, she almost pulls it off by having four POVs/protagonists. But because of the genre she doesn’t have to dig that deep and the plotlines are simplified, so she just ends up writing the same thing over (and over) again. Like whole paragraphs and pages are repeated. Many concepts, personality quirks, and internal thoughts: also repeated. I was like, sigh, I do not need to hear this again, thanks. I actually crossed out a few lines and paragraphs. I couldn’t help myself. It felt either boring or patronizing, and I wondered if it was also a lack of editing. In other words, this book could have been much tighter.

It was, however, very cozy. If you made a list of things that work in a Hallmark movie, especially a Christmas Hallmark movie, Morgan wedged it in here somewhere. The small town. The Christmas décor and traditions. A precocious child. (A little too precocious in my opinion.) A few hunky men who are also very self-aware and emotionally mature. Life-long friendships. Food. Cooking. Books. A library and a bookstore. Snow and snow sports. A dog (instead of the alternative, a cat). Shopping. Dressing up. Family. Like all of it. And with four female POVs, she could have the city-dwelling, globe-trotting executive, the small business owner, the creative (chef), and the stay-at-home mom. There should be something here to relate to anybody. (I teared up a few times during the plotline that applied most to my life at this moment.)

There were some complaints at book club about having to suspend reality. We all accepted that suspending reality is what is expected for Hallmark movies and cozies alike, but some of us kept getting tripped up by just how idyllic most of it was. Even with their struggles (one per person), there was a lack of concern in the areas of finances and immigration status, specifically, that threw some of us off. For me, finances got me more. The way these women spent money was insane and it cost them absolutely nothing in anxiety. But I was expecting unreality. So that’s not what made me conflicted about my reading. As I said before, if it had been edited much tighter, I would have been okay with the adequate writing and the unrealistic cheese.

A few other notes. There are some strange Britishisms, because Morgan lives in London but writes largely about New York and the US (often California). Like “cookery” instead of “cooking.” And a lot of “brilliant”s. Doesn’t matter. I’m just saying. It was also too predictable for me. In a book like this, we should know from the beginning that everything will turn out fine and that the protagonist will find their way to the love interest, etc. But after the first four chapters (the introductory chapters for each POV, so essentially the first chapter), I knew exactly what was going to happen to each of these characters and what their end would be. A few ladies at group were surprised. Most of us were very not shocked by the twists and reveals. And since it took like 400 pages to get there… Speaking of which, the ending could have been more exciting. Maybe that’s not how cozies work? I was hoping for more of a romantic comedy ending where there’s some flash and bang and a small amount of tension that is dealt with ultimately with humor and a sudden interweaving of all the plotlines. This ending was more mellow and drawn out, though one of the characters had her catastrophe and climax within two chapters, so that was strange.

Ultimately, this is a very warm book. If you are into cozies or gentle women’s lit and want a Christmas read, look no further. This would be a nice place to try out Sarah Morgan, who is a prolific and well-selling author (and writes primarily Christmas and summer books). Also, if you don’t normally read this stuff but you want to give your brain a real break for the holidays, this one will take you away from reality for a few days. I did enjoy reading it. But I do think I can do better, next time. It was a little saccharine for me and the writing way too loose and repetitive, but I could see myself trying other books like it, for a break (like how I started my reading a romance on vacation tradition). If you have any well-written cozy suggestions for me, I have already been given the titles Legends and Lattes, The Spellshop, The House in the Cerulean Sea, and Piranesi, and also the authors Jenny Colgen and Mary Kay Anders.

If you find a British version, it’s titled The Christmas Book Club.

“Why is it that men become more attractive as they age and women become invisible?” (p103).

“Which just goes to show we don’t always know what’s good for us, because I can’t remember when I had more fun” (p279).

“She frequently told him that she loved him, but what mattered more was showing it. Making him feel how much she loved him. And it seemed she hadn’t done that” (p319).

“The most important thing is that the two of you are good at resolving problems” (p321).

“…but if life had taught her anything it was that if you shut out risk you also shut out happiness, and she was determined not to do that” (p344).

A BEST-OFS LIST OF COZIES:

Thought I would throw yet another best-ofs list out there. I have no idea if these are really cozies, but I found all the recommendations at various places on the internet, mostly other lists which I vetted and compiled. It seems cozy mysteries outweigh all the other titles. Perhaps because many cozies fit into the romance category? I dunno. Note: Many of these are the first books of series. Do with the list what you want.

(From what I can tell, a book is a cozy if it doesn’t have things that are liable to stress you out or get it an R or even PG-13 rating. Also, the main character is going to be an amateur, especially in mysteries. It has to be light-hearted. And basically, no blood, violence, sex, profanity. Though it seems to me there are plenty of tenets of the genre, as well (like small towns and kind humor and people with high EQs). Or maybe it isn’t a genre. It’s a descriptor that can be applied to a book in any genre.)