Several summers ago, writer Rachel Syme hosted an online film club featuring a full syllabus of hotel movies. I’ll follow almost anything Rachel Syme writes, reviews, or hosts, but my ears especially perked up at the mention of the hotel setting. Of course, I love movies and all, but my mind immediately went to books.
As I considered, I realized I’d read and loved many books set in hotels. Since then have sought them out, whatever the genre—contemporary fiction, historical fiction, memoir, classics, even middle grade—because the setting appeals to the armchair wanderer in me.
Something about the glamour of a character who appears in a hotel lobby draws me in—what are they doing there? Are they alone? Are they running to something or away from something? But it’s not the setting alone. Hotels are where characters go to make memories, or become anonymous, or escape their lives. Either the character is checking in alone (intrigue!) or with relations they know well enough to share close quarters (a potential flash point for conflict!). And it’s usually for a short, defined period of time, unless it’s for the rest of your life, like one character on this list. All the ingredients for a great story.
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I’ll admit I came to this book through the classic 1985 Merchant Ivory film, but I first discovered the film through the Gilmore Girls episode “Say Goodbye to Daisy Miller.” “South rooms, with a view and close together, instead of which she has given us North rooms without a view and a long way apart.” So begins the trip for wealthy, buttoned-up Lucy, traveling with her overbearing cousin and chaperone Charlotte. They’re disappointed by their hotel rooms, but when two other gracious hotel guests offer to switch with them, it sets off a love story, and a complication for betrothed Lucy navigating young adulthood in the Edwardian era. This set off one of my other reading obsessions: novels about the Grand Tour. More info →
I read this more than a decade ago, and it’s one of those rare books where I still think about the characters and wonder how they are. While Pat and Linda might be the ones I remember, for most readers that’s probably Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. They’re on set at a lush Italian resort to film Cleopatra. We follow the lives of the actresses, musicians, and innkeepers from the coastline in Italy to Hollywood studios over the course of their intersecting lives. More info →
This might have the distinction of being the only novel on this book list set exclusively in a hotel. Well, save the first few pages where our gentleman, the Count Rostov is sentenced to house arrest in Moscow’s Metropol Hotel. The rest of the story takes place as he creates a life lived within the four walls of the luxurious and storied Metropol, even if he’s banished to the attic rooms. His circumstances don’t prevent him from building a life that makes room for a charming cast of friends, a meaningful purpose, and even a romance. More info →
I came to this second installment of Helene Hanff’s continuing true story, started in 84, Charing Cross Road, expecting her signature wit and voice to shine on the page, and to be joined by the friends she’s sure to pick up along the way. She didn’t disappoint, but what I didn’t expect was her hotel on Bloomsbury Street to be such a character. Helene is a confirmed introvert, so this home away from home becomes her respite in the midst of a busy, and long longed-for pilgrimage to London as a result of her famous correspondence. I won’t spoil it for you, but her last diary entry is the perfect description for the end of every vacation. More info →
The hotel in this novel is really just the backdrop for the action. In fact, it’s a point of controversy when son Nicholas brings his girlfriend home to Singapore and doesn’t stay at the family home, but a hotel instead. But those dashed hopes are the least of their worries. What he hasn’t told his girlfriend is that he’s rich rich, and heir to the family fortune. While they’re there, he and Rachel have to navigate familial expectations, career prospects, and prior relationships as the golden boy turned black sheep. There’s messy family drama, but it’s gilded with jewels, couture, private planes, and personal chefs. More info →
In the middle of devastating World War II, a married couple meet in a hotel room in Manhattan. But this isn’t just any married couple—this is Greek goddess Aphrodite and her husband Hephaestus. Oh, and to complicate matters, her lover Ares shows up too. They weave a tale of jealousy and love and war, flashing back and forth between their own love story spilled out in that hotel room, along with flashbacks to lovers Hazel and James and Colette and Aubrey during World War I. This is one of those stories that you’re not quite sure how it works with all these pieces—Greek gods and goddesses, glitzy hotels and battlefields, music halls and hospital halls—but boy does it work. More info →
This middle grade novel is on my TBR list for this summer. I love reading middle grade in the summer months because it gives me those school summer vacation vibes. This story is about a young girl whose family works in a motel: her parents clean rooms; she works the front desk. Her parents are keeping secrets from their boss about what goes on in the rooms, and she’s keeping secrets about her dreams. I’ve been told that despite the heavy themes of secrets and family expectations, this one goes down light and easy. More info →
This is the quintessential hotel book, not only for the setting, but for the way it gives all the summer vacation vibes in true Elin Hilderbrand fashion. It almost functions like a Nantucket getaway guide to the scenic beaches, restaurants, shops, and goods. Along with the glossy setting, the characters are just as swanky swanning around the latest Gilded Age property to open up off Cape Cod: a new manager hoping to put a shine on her own career by catching the attention of the hottest new Instagram influencer who is visiting the property and can make or break their season. Oh, and there’s also a Roaring Twenties ghost (which is much more fun than spooky, I promise). More info →
This was my first Elyssa Friedland novel, but it won’t be my last. She writes these great ensemble casts that you fall in love with. This family drama combines two families, with all their interpersonal mess and secrets at a hotel in the Borscht Belt. The resort is past its heyday, and the family needs to decide what to do next—and of course everyone has a different opinion about what that should be. Friedland includes food, fashion, games, and fireworks so you feel like you’re summering along with the Goldmans and Weingolds. More info →
I’m not sure how a book that starts out this sad can be this much fun, but it was. Phoebe arrives at a Newport hotel heartbroken and with a tragic plan that certainly does not involve being conscripted by a desperate bride into her wedding party. Phoebe upends her own life in the process, and more than a few of the guests’ lives in the best possible ways. More info →
Do you have any favorite books set in hotels? Please share in the comments.
Ginger Horton is our Book Club Community Manager here at MMD. Her go-to genres are literary fiction and classics. You can find Ginger on Instagram at @gthorton or the MMD Book Club account @MMDBookClub.
