Member Reviews
This was a really fun read. The art is great and I liked all the different designs for the characters and scenery. There are a ton of great characters in this story and I liked the focus on family and friend relationships. The different worlds they travel to are interesting as well and I liked how they were all different. Overall a nice blend of fantasy and sci-fi.
This graphic novel is fantastic! I don't even know where to begin, honestly. The story is about adopted siblings, Olive, Darwin, and Charlotte. They are spending the summer with their grandma at her hotel. They think the summer is going to be cleaning all day and being bored but it soon turns into something more. While at the hotel the discover that there are portals to other worlds inside the hotel. They each explore a new amazing world behind one of the doors of the hotel rooms. Thus begins their journey to right wrongs and reunite family members.
I really liked the fact that this book focuses on family. Not just biological family but found family as well. The characters are all nicely fleshed out and all have their own distinct personalities. There are a few different story lines going on throughout the book but I had no problems keeping track of who was who. The artwork is also very, very good and I really enjoyed all the amazing bright colors throughout the book. I would highly recommend this to any fans of graphic novels and I know a few kids at my library that I will definitely be recommending this to!
I really enjoyed this! The story was engaging and entertaining, and the art was really beautiful!
Olive Dare and her two adopted siblings, Darwin and Charlotte, are spending the summer with their grandmother, Mama Lupe (who happens to live in a non-operating hotel). After some unauthorized snooping, the Dare siblings discover an amazing secret - opening certain doors of the hotel will take you to different worlds! Each sibling travels to a different world and inadvertently begins to collect puzzle pieces of information that may explain why Mama Lupe and Olive’s father have a strained relationship. Can they get the answers they’re looking for, or will the lose their lives in the process?
The art in this book is so gorgeous! I love the color palate and the style. I also really loved the story line, and how the author managed to pack so many important things into such a relatively short story: the importance of family (chosen AND biological), blended/interracial families, inclusion of a queer character, family struggles, and showing how characters that are thought of by others as weak end up being strong when someone believes in them and convinced them to believe in themselves. And it all felt so natural and effortless. Just beautiful!
I think my favorite moment, if I had to pick one, would be when Darwin saw a unicorn for the first time. I believe my heart actually melted a little bit.
This book did a great job with world building, and setting up a bigger story. I haven’t seen any mention of a sequel, but I would really love to see this story continued!
*A huge thank you to Boom!, NetGalley, and Book Riot for providing me with a free advance review copy in exchange for a fair and honest review. This review appears on GoodReads, Facebook, and will be published to retail sites once the book is available.*
Creative, colorful, and entertaining. I would gladly share this book with younger (or older) readers.
This was frickin awesome!! Reminded me of Lumberjanes. I loved the artwork, I loved the characters, I loved the story! Can't wait for more!
This Book Contains Multitudes
This book is so jam packed with characters and settings it takes a little bit of effort to keep it all straight. But it's worth it.
Grandmother owns a weird old hotel-ish house. Three grandchildren come to visit and to help restore/clean up the house. We have a mysteriously absent grandfather. Grandma is pretty close mouthed. Father isn't around either. One of the three kids is adopted. Lots of chat about what makes up a family, which is a theme that will be revisited in many ways as the story progresses.
Mild Spoiler, But Not Really, Because it Appears Early and in the Blurbs and Makes the Story Go -- Hotel is loaded with portals operated by a weird artifact. We end up in three different parallel worlds, (one for each kid). Pirate ship, wizard world, fluffy bunny world. All three are connected. We all start to run around in each overlapping world; we make friends; we look for and find other new relatives; we search for more artifact pieces; we fight a variety of villains.
The whole thing is action-packed and sort of breathless. By the end we have a much bigger family - made, found, adopted - and the return of all sorts of prodigals. Half a dozen characters have grown and changed and had epiphanies. And yet somehow almost every loose end gets tied up by the wrap, except for a few threads left hanging for the next volume.
The art is colorful and the characters and action are easy to follow, which is important when you have so much going on. The book occasionally pauses for a bit of preaching about the wonder of made up families, but not to the point that it gets in the way, and the message is a good one anyway. Everyone ends up better off than they started, so it's certainly an upbeat larky adventure.
This ended up as a nice change of pace, and more ambitious, in a way, than your usual superhero sort of graphic novel; it seems to me that it would appeal to a younger reader who likes his adventure mixed in with a little family drama. An interesting find.
(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)
This was really lovely! The art was fun, the characters were likable, and I thought the world was remarkably well-developed for such a short story. I especially loved how effortlessly diverse the cast was, with the Dares being Latinx, the oldest sibling being a queer girl, and the awesome themes revolving around adoption and recognizing that family is what you make of it. Oh, and Sunny? I need a Sunny in my life. ♥
Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!
This was a very enjoyable and beautifully illustrated graphic novel. It is about a group of kids that go visit their grandmother at her hotel in Mexico. Charlotte is adopted, and does not feel like part of the family yet. Hotel Dare is not as ordinary as it looks. The kids quickly find out some hidden secrets while they are cleaning and go on a thrilling adventure, The book does end on a cliffhanger, so I’m sure there will be more to come!
This was very cute - the story of an adoptive family who discovers that their grandmother's house contains doorways to a variety of different worlds, which are threatening to collapse in on each other -- unless the family can find a way to stop it!
ARC Copy...other then beautiful illustrations, I liken the multiple worlds of various different genres + cultures and how they all inter -connect with each as the narrative goes just like the themes of "bonds" rampant through the narrative too.
*thank you to Netgalley and BOOM! Studios for granting my wish for this book in exchange for an honest review*
4 stars.
I really find myself enjoying this author's work and the illustrations are so well done as well. There are 3 separate stories going on here and I'm having a hard time figuring out which is my favourite. I absolutely love stories where there are alternative worlds/magical portals present, so I found that once this story got going, (which I admit was in the first couple of pages) I was hooked. All 3 stories came together at the end and did not disappoint at all. There was just the right amount of creepiness and fantasy mixture as well which I thought might be an issue but it wasn't. Definitely recommend if your in the mood for a story like this one.
Thank you NetGalley and Publisher for this early copy!
I was pleasantly surprised how great this graphic novel was! I'm hoping that this becomes a series. It was well-written with great characters and artwork.
Full review to come closer to release date!
Really really enjoyed this one. Olive and her adoptive siblings Charlotte and Darwin go to stay with their mysterious grandmother in the hotel where she lives in Mexico. But not all is as it seems-- not the family's relationships, not the artifacts she's hiding in her office, and definitely not the glowing portals that open in the guest rooms when the kids help with cleaning!
I loved the diversity of the cast and the variety of worlds that seemed to fit each sibling. I also liked the family dynamics and the way each character approached blood relations versus found family. The sci-fi/fantasy elements weren't always explained very well, and the ability to choose where to open a portal was explained in contradicting terms in two back-to-back scenes, but none of this really ruined the flow of the story for me. A great addition to a graphic novel collection for tweens and teens.
I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review. I was fortunate to read Terry's other graphic novel, Dead Weight: Murder at Camp Bloom through this site and thoroughly enjoyed it. This book was no exception, I enjoyed this one as well, the art is beautiful and you will enjoy the colourful cast of characters and what they will do for family. Terry if you're reading this, off topic, I so hope there is a second half to Dead Weight!
Loved the message in this graphic novel. The art wok was good and the story was fun and heart-warming. A great bit of fantasy and and adventure. I was kind of hoping for some more scares, but this was a great surprise.
Deals with mixed families and being different. Great read for teens.
I give HOTEL DARE 4 stars!
Thanks to NetGalley for the opportunity to review.