This week’s reviews include Jessica Anthony’s multi-perspective retro relationship novel “The Most” and Stephanie Wrobel’s Alfred Hitchcock themed thriller “The Hitchcock Hotel.”
THE MOST
by Jessica Anthony
Published by Doubleday (January 8, 2024)
Paperback $16.99
Audiobook $14.99
Reviewed by Tammy Byram
I grabbed Jessica Anthony’s novella, The Most, because 1) I was intrigued by the title (what does it mean) and the cover (cool and retro-ish) and 2) it is short.
Since I’m back in school, I spend a great deal of my reading time in the company of Young Adult (YA) books; picking up the occasional adult title during the school year makes me feel a little rebellious!
The story takes place during an unseasonably warm day in November 1957. Kathleen Lovelace Beckett, former collegiate tennis star and current apathetic housewife and mother, stays home from church because she’s not feeling well. She is drawn to the pool in her apartment complex and there she stays all day — to the chagrin of her husband, Virgil, and the interest of her elderly neighbors.
Intrigued, we follow along as Kathleen and Virgil alternate views on how they came to be married with two kids, living in a run-down apartment in Delaware, and harboring secrets and disappointments.
Two early morning phone calls — one from Virgil’s antagonistic father and the other from a mystery woman — are what prompt Kathleen to spend time contemplating these things in the pool. Virgil examines his choices on the golf course and at the pool (trying to get his wife to go back upstairs).
Kathleen comes to the conclusion that today is the day of reckoning; but in the meantime, the pool offers a respite, a weightlessness, and time to think.
Oh yes, it will all go down today. She will use one of her unique tennis moves to draw Virgil in, giving him an opportunity to unburden his secrets. And then she will confess hers.
Though I was reading The Most, my mind began to turn it into a play. The fact that it is pretty much set in a pool could be problematic in play form, but theater techs are amazing; I know they can make it happen. Nineteen-fifties America has always felt so “staged” to me, and I think Kathleen and Virgil feel the same. The story, however, shows everything that is “backstage,” all the cracks and props in that facade.
It called to mind a quote I remembered seeing once by actress Rosemary Clooney: “I felt trapped and fabricated in the fifties, living up to other people’s expectations.” That’s Kathleen and Virgil in a nutshell, wrestling with choices and expectations and trying to make sense of the journey that has led them to this moment.
This is a cool little read, worth the few hours it will take to make it through so you can discover the title’s mysterious meaning for yourself!
Tammy Byram is a high school librarian who spends too much time on her back porch reading, looking for inspirational quotes, and scheming ways to get to the beach!
THE HITCHCOCK HOTEL
By Stephanie Wrobel
Published by Berkley (September 24, 2024)
Hardcover $26.10
Audiobook $14.99
Reviewed by Ashley Riggleson
If you are a seasoned reader of book reviews, you will know that there are certain stock phrases reviewers use all the time. A good thriller, for instance, may be “unputdownable” or “compulsively readable.” And although I am guilty of using these phrases myself, I have learned to treat them with a healthy amount of skepticism. That is, until I read Stephanie Wrobel’s new novel The Hitchcock Hotel, a book that epitomizes the phrase “fiendishly clever” to the last page.
The Hitchcock Hotel follows a group of college friends who are reluctantly reuniting. They converge at the titular Hitchcock Hotel, a place that is the brainchild of Alfred Smettle, one of the group’s members. And, as expected, things quickly get sinister. Readers soon discover that Alfred has a wicked plan in mind, and of course, someone ends up dead. But who? And why?
The answer is not what you think, and there are many twists in store. This clever and creepy book is, in my opinion, among the best contemporary contributions to the genre.
Plot-wise The Hitchcock Hotel reminded me a lot of Donna Tartt’s novel, The Secret History, a book that is beloved among readers of a certain set. Like The Secret History, for instance, The Hitchcock Hotel is partly a dark campus novel. So, people looking for a pacier novel with a similar but not identical set-up should take note.
That said, The Hitchcock Hotel is its own novel, and Wrobel excels as a writer in her right. She shows enormous skill, for example, in crafting setting and atmosphere. The Hitchcock Hotel is Alfred’s homage to a famous but problematic director, and it is also a hotel I would never want to visit. Additionally, she skillfully inserts red herrings that distract the reader in brilliant but compelling ways, and the structure of the novel is on point.
As such, The Hitchcock Hotel constantly switches perspectives, and the reveals come with a light hand. Wrobel perfectly toes the line, unveiling enough to keep us reading but not so much that we figure out the whole puzzle too early. Which is to say, that even if readers figure out small pieces of this compelling mystery, I can almost guarantee that they will not have the complete picture until the final page is turned.
What’s more, there is quite a lot in The Hitchcock Hotel to please the intellect, and readers unfamiliar with Hitchcock and his work may find themselves learning more about him than they ever expected. Wrobel uses this movie trivia not only to enhance the novel’s atmosphere and provide context but also to discuss gender politics in accessible and interesting ways.
All of which is to say, without hyperbole, that The Hitchcock Hotel is one of the best thrillers I have read in a long time. It’s also scary season, so I hope many readers will turn to The Hitchcock Hotel for their next creepy read.
Ashley Riggleson is a free-lance book reviewer from Rappahannock County. When she is not reading or writing book reviews, she can usually be found playing with her pets, listening to podcasts, or watching television with friends and family.
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