It's an interesting premise, but I kept thinking it would work better as an indie movie than as a novel. The picaresque nature of it would lend itself to film, and really not enough happens for a whole book. I was not wowed by the writing in this one, either. But I did like the main character, and her father. ( )

It's an interesting premise, but I kept thinking it would work better as an indie movie than as a novel. The picaresque nature of it would lend itself to film, and really not enough happens for a whole book. I was not wowed by the writing in this one, either. But I did like the main character, and her father. ( )

Lily is dead. Lily’s daughter (I can find no other name for her) knows little about her mother. She sneaks into the pink hotel her mother ran for her mother’s wake. Impulsively, she steals her mother’s red suitcase. And thus begins the adventure, the noir mystery that is this book.

Mystery is a solid one-word summary of this story. Lily’s daughter doesn’t know much about her mother. Lily’s daughter’s dad doesn’t know much about Lily’s daughter. Lily’s daughter doesn’t know much about herself. She wanders around the pink hotel and the other places important to her mother and gets to know a little about the mother she never knew and the people her mother loved and even a little about herself.

I liked this book very much. ( )

The Pink Hotel by the young author Anna Stothard is just one rung up from a YA novel. A young woman arrives from London to attend the funeral of her mother whom she has hardly known, and begins a search for her father and people who can tell her more about her mother. This search, and the structure of the story, is conveniently facilitated by her theft of a suitcase which contains some of her mothers' personal belongings and letters. Each item or letter is the peg for another adventure. The setting of the story, and the backdrop of her search is the wild, lawless scene of Los Angeles of the US, as the story unfolds beginning with a sex-and-drugs lecherous party in her mother's the private apartment at the Pink Hotel.

The novel has all the characteristics of a badly written, style and thoughtless bravura by an adolescent author discovered by an editor who needs to score with a talent-in-the-bud. It is a stir-fry of sex, drugs, expletives and brainless story. ( )

I was sent an uncorrected Digital Galley of The Pink Hotel, by Anna Stothard by NetGalley.com in return for my thoughts and feedback. The novel started off well and captured my attention from the first page. The narrator of the story was a seventeen year old British girl who when the story opens was attending a drug and alcohol fueled party in California at the Pink Hotel given in honor of the memory of her mother who abandoned the girl when she was three years old. Her mother died in a motorcycle accident. The Pink Hotel was owned by her mother, and though no one attending the party knew who she was, the girl circulated the party trying to get clues to learn about her mother. The girl stumbled upon her mother's upstairs apartment where she found a suitcase filled with mementos, photos, letters, and personal papers. The daughter stole the suitcase with the intention of getting to know her mother and glean a glimpse into her life.

The narrator is nameless, and this was part of the problem. The reader didn't feel a real connection to any of the characters. I wish the items from the suitcase would have provided more insight, but there were neither enough clues nor enough people that truly knew the mother to make the journey a success. At some point the story took a turn and became more about the daughter than the search to find out about her mother.

Although the premise of the story was a good one, I needed more than this story offered. ( )