I had an extremely hard time getting into this book. I loved Practical Magic, so I had high hopes for this book but I was disappointed. ( )

This book has a select audience. Most of us were unimpressed with the writing style.

I found this book a little hard to follow, but the writing was good and it did keep me reading. ( )

A haunted London hotel is the setting of 3 tragic tales. In the first story a young woman falls in love with a man doomed to die. The second involves a woman who tries to save a drug addict. The third is about how the hotel became haunted in the first place. This story is complex and beautiful. I enjoyed the way Hoffman tied the 3 stories together. Alice HOffman is one of my favorite writers; her stories never disappoint. ( )

This latest offering by Ms. Hoffman is a generational piece whose roots are in the 1950s. The backdrop for most of the story is the Lion Park hotel in London, a second-rate hotel that is haunted.

Our first encounter with sisters Maddie and Allie uncovers a betrayal by the younger sister who lives a care-free existence based on the fact that she believes that she was an unloved child. Allie, the older sister, has pretty much done what was expected of her because she has always been the caretaker; first when her mother had cancer and later when her fiance suffers from the same disease. She realizes only too late that she truly loves her fiance and moves swiftly to makes things right only to lose him too.

Freida, the fiance's mother, takes up the middle of the book. Her story is set in the 1960s and brought back for this reader 'the look' that was so popular then in London: overly made-up eyes, short mini-skirts, high boots, swingy music, free love, etc. Hoping to escape from the dreariness of a rural youth she makes her way to the Lion Park hotel where she works as a maid. Soon, though, she becomes the muse for a rock-star wanna-be who is hooked on drugs and has a very Paris Hilton-like girlfriend. In the end, Freida puts all of the very trendy and drug-filled life behind her and returns to her rural home where she marries the boyfriend who had gone on to college. She goes on to nursing school herself and lives a very fulfilling life in spite of the ghostly happenings that populated her time working at the Lion Park.

The thread that sews it all together is Lucy Green. Lucy is the mother of the two young women we first met at the outset of the story. Inadvertently she is the one who caused the problems that have brought about the haunting of the Lion Park's seventh floor. Having witnessed the deaths of the people involved she withdraws to a secret place inside herself just as she did when her own mother passed away. It takes love in all its simple complexities to bring Lucy into her own once more.

This book is a very easy read despite the complexities of the characters we meet. I read it in two sittings and would have accomplished it in one had I not fallen asleep at nearly two in the morning.

I give this story four stars simply because I've enjoyed some of Ms. Hoffman's other offerings more.

Note: you're bound to fall in love with Millie.

Recommended: Practical Magic, The Probable Future ( )