THE PINK HOTEL.

THE PINK HOTEL by ANNA STOTHARD.

A seventeen-year-old London girl flies to Los Angeles for the funeral of her mother Lily, from whom she was separated in her childhood. After stealing a suitcase of letters, clothes and photographs from her mum's bedroom at the top of a hotel on Venice Beach, the girl spends her summer travelling around Los Angeles in a bid to track down the men who knew her mother. As she discovers more about Lily's past and tries to re-enact her life, she comes to question the foundations of her own personality.
....... Outer back cover.

FIRST SENTENCE (Chapter 1): Her bedroom reeked of cigarette ash and stale perfume.

MEMORABLE MOMENT (Page 148): He was aware that we lived neat Thai town, but only because of the speed with which greasy chili-and-coconut polystyrene would arrive at his front door.

KEEP IT OR NOT?: I'm afraid this isn't a book I'll be keeping.

An ARC (Advance Reading Copy)I'm not too sure just how much, if at all, the eventual published copy will differ.

The cover I like, quite 1950ish, don't you think? The story I found so-so, nothing to get too excited about but readable enough and I was surprised that it being an ARC that there weren't any truly awful spelling mistakes etc.

On the whole not quite what I was expecting, the blurb on the back I felt slightly misleading in that I didn't get any real sense of, of, of - do you know I don't think we ever got to know Lily's daughters name, though this being an ARC perhaps the author hadn't decided herself - the seventeen-year-old London girl in question trying to re-enact her dead mother's life.

A family (albeit a dysfunctional one)saga come mystery come romance, I found the characters, if not exactly riveting, interesting - Lily's daughter I found particularly realistic, obviously an adolescent on the brink of adulthood, I loved her world-wise yet quite innocent out-look on life. If only the male characters had come out of it so well, bullying and controlling at best, abusive at worst, I couldn't warm to a single one of them.

The 88th book read in my 100+ reading Challenge, The Pink Hotel is the second novel of a very young author, I believe she was only 18 when she wrote her first,Isabel and Rocco, I shall certainly keep an eye out for any future books.