Review: The White Octopus Hotel

The White Octopus Hotel by Alexandra Bell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Its 2015, Eve Shaw lives a lonely existence, she is haunted by the death of her younger sister Bella at only two years of age, a death for which she feels responsible. She is nicknamed the Black Widow by her colleagues at the Auction House where she works because of her propensity for wearing black clothing at all times, usually a polo-neck jumper, little do they know it is to hide her octopus tattoo which has an unusual habit of crawling around her body and sometimes peeking over her clothing.

Then a mysterious old man, who happens to share the name of her favourite composer Max Everly, who died decades ago, visits her at the auction house, presses a gift of a ceramic octopus into her hand, makes some cryptic remarks and later dies on the steps of the building.

After purchasing an antique tea-set with an octopus motif at a flea market, Eve shows it to a colleague who hazards a guess that it may have come from the fabled White Octopus Hotel in Switzerland, which closed suddenly in 1935. Owned by the reclusive painter Victor Roth, the hotel was claimed to contain numerous magical items, including writing paper which would allow the writer to send a letter to the past.

When Eve enters the derelict hotel a magical key whisks her back to 1935, when the hotel was in its art deco heyday, where she meets a young Max Everly who had convalesced at the hotel in 1918 after developing a septic wound. Whilst staying at the hotel he fell in love with a young British nurse called ... Eve Shaw.

This book took me on a wonderful, fantastical journey, from 2015 to 1935 and 1918, a doomed cross time romance, historical traumas that can't be undone, a scavenger hunt, and a magical hotel with hidden rooms.

I loved it and I could totally see it as a film.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley.


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