Book Club #3: The Hotel Issue
The novel reminded me a lot of Lucy Foley's The Guest List.
On Saturday night we met up with our friends at the Ram’s Head Inn on Shelter Island. If you’re not familiar with Shelter Island, it’s a misshapen circle of land that sits between the north and south fork and is home to a lovely French bakery, an adorable bookshop and the Mediterranean-chic Sunset Beach restaurant.
To get there, you drive your car on to a small ferry that connects the island to the mainland, the crossing taking about 10 minutes. Even if it’s nearby, the island feels worlds away, and getting to the Ram’s Head is just as dramatic. You travel this serene twisty road through marshes and waterways to what feels like the edge of earth. There are osprey perched on towering nests, buoys bob in the water just offshore. The sun ripples across the surface of the sea.
The kids love going to dinner at the Ram’s Head Inn because there is a rolling lawn with old fashioned playthings like a bocce court, a tether ball and a pickle ball court with free rackets. We relax, they dash around.
As the sun set and the sky grew dark that night, we finished dinner and the kids sprinted down the hill to play once more. My friend turned to the other adults at the table and said, “What do you think the kids would do if we just got up and left?” It was an unsettling thought. What would they do? Then I said, “What if the kids turned around from playing and all of the adults in the world had vanished? The inn was alight with string lights and glowing windows, but there were no other adults in sight.”
We posed the question to the kids, and a lively debate began about what they would do. But it made me think of the next book club book, a novel that is set at a beautiful hotel. The hotel is dramatic and stunning, but what happens there is incredibly creepy. Just like the scenario my friend proposed.
And so, let’s discuss Ally Condie’s The Unwedding.
I kept seeing Ally’s book as I toured in the south because we were doing so many events within a week (or sometimes a night) apart. The Unwedding’s cover got my attention: It depicts the famous Bixby Bridge in Big Sur, and when I opened the book and read the description of the fictitious “Resort at Broken Point,” I was sucked in. I kind of wanted a vacation, and I was won over by the idea of a writer turning this incredible resort into something darker. It gave me all the same vibes as Lucy Foley’s The Guest List.
The premise held my attention from the start: On the advice of a trusted friend, a newly-divorced woman goes on the twentieth anniversary trip that she and her husband were supposed to take. When she arrives at the hotel, she discovers that there’s a wedding being held on the premises, an illustrious family and their guests taking over the hotel. She has one fabulous night on the property, and then she finds the groom floating dead in the resort’s pool. When someone else disappears, the mystery deepens, and the book becomes a whodunnit.
The Unwedding is Ally’s first adult novel; she’s written several popular YA books before this. But you could tell she had fun fleshing out the obnoxious guests at the wedding, the self-absorbed bride and even the loyal hotel staff; one or two of the characters felt like caricatures (the mother of the bride comes to mind) but mostly, I enjoyed getting to know more about the narrator, who has a dark past of her own.
I’m not a big suspense/thriller reader, but I love when popular fiction has elements of both. It was perfect to read on a beach vacation, and I just had to know who did it. I also thought I solved the mystery mid-way through, feeling disappointed, only to realize that I got the entire storyline wrong. That made for great reading. I love when books surprise you.
All in all, I loved this one. It’s not literary, historical or rom com (for those of you looking for it) but the book has all of the elements of a great read. Def recommend.
New England Tour: My Life Right Now
I’m on a ferry headed to New London, CT. Then I’m driving to Ink Fish Books in Warren, Rhode Island to do an event tonight. After the book talk, I’m meeting up with one of my best friends from high school. Can’t wait for both!
I have a few stops to make on this swing through New England — with a lot of beach time mixed in. I’ll be at Provincetown Bookshop in Provincetown on the Cape tomorrow afternoon (7/24) at 4pm. Then I’m speaking at the Wequassett Resort on Thursday, July 25th at noon as part of Where the Sidewalk Ends book shop’s literary luncheon series.
When I get to Martha’s Vineyard, author Lynda Cohen Loigman will interview me at the Carnegie, thanks to Edgartown Books, on Wednesday, July 31 at 4pm. Then I’ll be at Mitchell’s Book Corner on the beautiful island of Nantucket on Sunday, August 11th from 10:30am to noon. I’ll be signing books with one of my fave authors Nancy Thayer!