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The Heartbreak Hotel
Ellen O’Clover
347 pages
Berkeley Publishing
September 23, 2025
While romance is not typically my genre of choice, the cover attracted my attention. While it was certainly not a bad book by any means, it lacked a little something, even in the romance that I expected from it.
Louisa Walsh, the protagonist, is dumped by her cheating boyfriend, leaving her with a house she cannot continue to afford on her own, being a trained counselor who does not have her license. She proposes to her landlord, who does not live on premises, that she run the house as an inn so that she does not have to leave her home which may be the only stable thing in her life, having had a troubled childhood. This novel had potential to become more than a romance, which I am not disclosing here for the sake of the reader and there is much that lurks under the surface, between Louisa and her sister, who shared the same lousy childhood, Louis and her landlord, who has his own skeletons, Louisa and her friends, and, finally Louisa and the people who stay at the in. However, while the reader gains a little clarity about these relationships, most are not really delved into which could have given us a more significant book than what it was.
In other words, it seems to me like the author perhaps decided this was a romance but it was other relationships that were more interesting and a bit less trite. Indeed, like the house itself, the book had good “bones” but did not have enough substance to become something a bit more.
This was a debut adult romance versus a young adult romance and with some additional “seasoning,” Ms. O’Clover’s work may grow in complexity and I look forward to reading future works to see how it changes.
Thanks to NetGalley and Berkeley Publishing for providing me with an advanced copy of this novel in exchange for my honest opinions.
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