Reading one book can often set my brain off on immediately compiling all sorts of related books. I can definitely not remember all the books I read (especially picture books) but a niche enough topic can often have my brain scrambling to remember anything related to the topic at hand. In this case, it was books behind the scenes of running a hotel.
One of the many great things about reading is that I get to experience a taste of a life I'll never live. I have no desire to ever work at a hotel BUT I do like staying in them from time to time (just booked an upcoming stay!) so it's interesting to read a bit behind of the scenes or running or working at one. People are interesting and jobs are interesting and the workings of something most of us probably take for granted is interesting!
It's a fairly niche topic, I haven't read a bunch of books on it but enough that it felt worthwhile to compare them side by side!
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The Maid by Nita Prose
This is the one that made me start thinking about this list! And one that was all over the internet this spring so you may be familiar with it, even if you haven't read it. Molly is not quite like everyone else, has trouble understanding social cues and misinterprets intentions of others. She's a maid at a hotel and things are going ok, after the death of her beloved Grandmother a few months earlier, when she enters a room to clean it and find a dead man. This leads to a whole hosts of problems for Molly and she finds friends she didn't even knew she had to help clear her name. You really root for Molly and I loved her rag tag group of friends that really came together for her. There were also a few characters that were well written to be horrible and it was hard to see Molly making bad choices with them. But still, cleaning at a hotel! Didn't expect it to be so exciting!
The Suite Spot by Trish Doller
This was a new release this spring that I was really looking forward to after so enjoying the author's Float Plan last summer. This follows the sister of that book's protagonist as she gets fired from her job working the front desk at a fancy Miami Beach hotel (for something she didn't do) and then has to take the best job she can get, which happens to be a on a small island in Lake Erie, in Ohio. Well, she thinks it's a hotel front desk job but it turns out it's a "help create this hotel from basically nothing" job. I appreciated every time Cedar Point was referenced, having been there a handful of times in my teen-ish years (Matt & I went every summer we were dating and then got engaged and haven't been back.). Turns out, it takes a lot of time to build a boutique hotel in the middle of nowhere!
The Front Desk series by Kelly Yang
This is a middle grade series about a 10 year old girl, Mia, who lives at a motel that is run by her parents, near Disneyland in California. They are recent immigrants and while they had better jobs before, managing this motel is now the best they can find. Mia doesn't want her friends at school to know that she's living at a motel AND the she helps run the front desk when she's not at school. And A LOT of people can't know they let other immigrants hide if needed. The author based the story on her own experience, living at a motel with her parents when they immigrated in the late 80s-early 90s. It's middle grade and the kids are a bit precocious (and somehow manage to save the day, as if the adults aren't great at thinking) but they are still pretty sweet and you have to admire their tenacity and get it done attitude.
The Bluebell Inn series by Denise Hunter
I've been reading Denise Hunter's books for over 5 years and they are reliably, somewhat cheesy, Christian romance, light on the religion, heavier on the (chaste) romance. Like a lightly Christian Nicholas Sparks. This trilogy is about a group of siblings, 1 boy, 2 girls, whose parents have died, leaving them a B&B in a small North Carolina town to be fixed up and then sold. The kids (the youngest starts the series a senior in high school) all have dreams that involve being anywhere but in this town but then, over the course of the series, each find romance and most of them find a reason to stay. I've enjoyed every B&B we've ever stayed at (never with kids) and it was fun reading the behind the scenes of managing one. Just getting up to manage breakfast sounds like such a chore!
The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel
This one might only have a hotel setting in the beginning but it's the only fiction on this list with "hotel" in the title so I had to keep it in. Like all of Emily St. John Mandel's books that I've read, this one has a twisty plot that is hard to explain but mostly makes sense while you are reading it. Vincent (female) is a bartender at a 5 star hotel on the tip of Vancouver Island. She meets a man the same night a mysterious person writes a message on the hotel's glass wall. And then it turns out the (mysterious but not the one that did the writing) man is running a Ponzi scheme after Vincent gets a bit wrapped up in his life. And there is also a container ship, disappearance, underground electronica clubs, and more. I very much remember reading this on my phone on Easter 2020 when we were home all day besides a walk around the neighborhood. It was a delight to escape whatever was happening in the world then (and when my kids were consumed with their Easter basket goodies anyways).
The Shark Club by Ann Kidd Taylor
I read this book in the summer of 2017 and enjoyed it so much I wrote a post about it! Maeve was raised at a hotel in Florida and when she was a kid there two extraordinary things happened the same day. She was bitten by a shark AND kissed by the boy of her dreams. All grown up 18 years later, she returns to the hotel as a marine biologist studying sharks and is trying to make some decisions in her life when she befriends a young girl on the beach who reminds her of her own kid self on that beach many years ago. This book just really felt like summer with it's beach setting and finding what almost feels like a copy of yourself (those weird adult time warps always seem to happen more in the summer). I have been waiting for this author to write another book ever since!
The Beach Club by Elin Hilderbrand
This is one that immediately sprung to mind when I was thinking about this list. It is Elin Hilderbrand's very first book (although not the first of hers that I read). It, of course, it set on Nantucket and at the fictitious Nantucket Beach Club. A small hotel right on the beach that is also known for having a "beach club" where members pay to use the beach (and get umbrella service) for the summer. Mack is the manager of the hotel and is having a complicated summer. His boss, the owner, has new demands, Mack's girlfriend is pressuring him to get married, there is a new front desk employee, and then there is a hurricane. This is very much the restaurant version of my beloved Blue Bistro, in that it is also fast paced and shows what it's like to run a luxury hotel (instead of a luxury restaurant). It's fun and makes you glad you aren't (probably) working at a hotel!
Heads in Beds: A Reckless Memoir of Hotels, Hustles, and So-Called Hospitality by Jacob Tomsky
This book will made you reconsider if you ever want to stay at a hotel again, so read with caution. I very much remember reading this one in the NICU, next to a sleeping tiny Luke, just after becoming his parent (and staying in a hotel in NYC). The author worked in nearly every aspect of hotels over a decade and shares many of the secrets and jobs he's experienced along the way. There are also tips for getting the most of your stay and the most for your money so it's not just a tell all but there is still a lot of gross stories (from how I remember it) shared. I used to think hotels were clean. Less so after reading this book.
Happy hotel reading!
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