Daisy Johnson, Vintage Books, (160p) ISBN: 9781787335264. Horror, read 23/03/25, Hardback ★★★★☆

The Hotel

Once more Daisy returns to the Fens, a land of ghosts and big skies, decay and life. Another great collection of short tales all themed around a single point of malevolence.

I’d been looking forward to this for a while but needed an uninterrupted day to relax into the read as Fen and Sisters were dark, intricate, and weaving threads of story from all over the book into each other and you are never sure what’s going to end up where.

The Hotel is a dark spot on the landscape that draws people to it and has been from even before it was a hotel, there is a hunger to the spot that needs something, though we are never really sure what that something is.

Families and bloodlines are intricately linked to the spot and there are foldings of time and space that see these all come together in another wonderfully constructed mythology with woman at the core of it, echoes of misogyny, echoes of maternity, but always echoes that draw the protagonists toward an almost certain doom.

Once more Daisy Johnson weaves tales throughout each other taking you further down a dark path where everything is uncertain, almost lyrical, always hypnotic, I couldn’t put this down until I had finished it and immediately wanted to start it again to explore the dark depths within the corridors of The Hotel.

I’m now going to have to download the radio version on Radio 4 to listen to on my commute.

Another stunning work to go along with her other mythologies, really recommend this one to all who like a dark tale.

I received this from Vintage Books in exchange for an honest review.