An amazing memoir. This is a story of abuse, pain, trauma, resilience, healing, and moving through. Foo's parents abused her and then abandoned her. This was not normal behavior and it isn't until she's an adult that she realizes what was done to her and that she has Complex PTSD. There's a surprisingly low level of anger here, largely because she's sought out and welcomed help. And more importantly, she found new pathways. Her journey into her family history and look at immigrant families is fascinating and distinguishes this from other memoirs with this underlying theme. Foo is a terrific writer with a way of making difficult concepts and issues accessible and relatable. Thanks to netgalley for the ARC. This is difficult to read in parts but it's also fascinating, informative, and I expect, will be of great help to others.

The Paradox is part of a time travel resort. January is their Security Chief, and a bitter, hard-nosed "tough guy" only she is female. Her partner, Mena, died in a kitchen explosion earlier. January is becoming unclosed, a condition that causes her to time travel at any time with no controls. The Paradox is currently housing a meeting of some of the richest individuals in the world and hosted by a female Senator who is a power grabber. Things begin to go wrong from the onset and deteriorate rapidly. I won't go any further because of spoilers, but will say I found the plot to be more convoluted than complex and spent much more time than normal making myself finish it. Thanks of Net Galley and Ballentine Books for an ARC for an honest review.

January Cole is a Time Enforcement Agent, assigned to the building that gives this sci-fi thriller novel its title. The Paradox is a luxury hotel built to accommodate the wealthy thrillseekers traveling through the Einstein Timeport adjacent to it, making it essentially the world’s fanciest airport accommodations. Via the Einstein, tourists may sightsee their way through past epochs, so long as they keep one guideline in mind: look but don’t touch. Time Enforcement Agents are tasked with ensuring this maxim is abided by, and January is one of the agency's finest.

Or was one of their finest. Her exposure to the radiation necessary for time-travel has caused her to become Unstuck, a syndrome that she explains to new security recruit, Nik Moreau:

QUOTE
“You remember the idiot’s guide to time travel from the academy,” I tell him. “Time conforms to the block universe model–everything that has happened or will ever happen already exists in a three-dimensional cube. We perceive events as linear because we travel through the cube on a straight line.”

“Arrow of time,” Nik says.

“Arrow of time. So when you’re Unstuck, your arrow gets a little less straight. It zigs and zags, putting you in contact with past and future moments. It feels a bit like déjà vu. You see something that you feel like you’ve seen before. Then it’s gone. The flashes only last for a couple of seconds. Sometimes up to a minute. It’s not so bad. You get used to it.”
END QUOTE

Nik has been hired on because the Paradox is about to host a summit of extremely important and wealthy investors. The Einstein and, by association, the Paradox have been bleeding money, and require private investment in order to continue functioning. Senator Danica Drucker is overseeing the conference, and getting on January’s last nerve in the process with her often overbearing demands. And that’s even before time seems to start malfunctioning within the Paradox.

At first, January thinks that the strange things she’s seeing are just a side effect of her own progressively worsening symptoms. If no one else, human or AI, can see the dead body in room 526, perhaps she’s only hallucinating it. But as January’s visions start coming true with more and more rapidity, she realizes that someone is actively sabotaging both her and the hotel, and that someone is trying to get away with murder.

With the safety of some of the world’s most rich and powerful in her hands, and the future of her beloved hotel at stake, January must not only solve the mystery of who is behind all this and why, but use her agency training to get out of several truly life-threatening circumstances, such as this attack by a wild predator that should definitely not be in the hotel:

QUOTE
It lunges, and my mind goes blank. My body takes over. I manage to twist myself to the right and bring my foot up at the same time, planting it on the animal’s sternum, serving to both push it away and push myself back.

The problem is I do too good a job, because then I’m airborne. I tuck my chin to my chest and with my free hand slap the floor as I land, dispersing some of the impact. Then I bring my legs up hard over my head, doing a combat roll into a standing position. My abdomen screams. The muscle memory is there, but it’s more memory than muscle.
END QUOTE

Cinematic and heady, The Paradox Hotel is a work of speculative crime fiction that features a wise-cracking, wounded heroine and, perhaps surprisingly, one of the most touching romances I’ve ever read in this genre. January’s love for the Paradox is wrapped up in her feelings for her dead girlfriend Mena, a love she fears may be clouding her judgment as she seeks to protect the summit-goers – no matter how irritatingly privileged – as well as the other denizens of the hotel. The action is brisk and the events engrossing as January gets to the bottom of what’s happening, while also confronting her past and trying to adjust for what this all means for her future. The way that the time travel aspects are intertwined with musings on Buddhist philosophy make both topics feel more accessible to the layperson, while building a smart, exciting read for any fan of mysteries or thrillers, science-fiction or otherwise..

I love the title - The Paradox Hotel - because it brings up so many possibilities for the setting. And the premise is very intriguing, catching my interest very quickly. Reading it, though, began immersive and compelling and then became a bit confusing with all the back and forth in the timeline, foreign concepts I had to wrap my head around, and a preponderance of characters. The story is told through January Cole’s eyes. I did not find her particularly likable, but I did empathize with her situation. She suffers from Unstuck, a disease brought on by the radiation required for time travel. She has trouble discerning between reality and future possibilities that look as real to her as if they were happening here and now. The reader shares in her confusion, which, while that creates an immersive atmosphere, also unbalanced me, much like January is unbalanced. This futuristic story has plenty of sexual diversity, which adds so much to this time travel tale. I did love the mystery with all its twists and turns; the thrills, like the dinosaurs running loose, made the pages flip faster and faster; and the ending, which was just perfect. Overall, I found The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart to be a complex premise and a compelling, immersive story but a bit too impacted by Unstuck for me to five-star enjoy it.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Ballantine Books for this eARC. I already know this is one of my favorites of the year.

This book tells the story of the Paradox Hotel: a place where the ultra-wealthy tourists “arrive costumed for a dozen different time periods, all eagerly waiting to catch their "flights" to the past.” January, our MC, is head of security at the hotel and can see the past, present, and future thanks to her constant exposure to time travel. And soon, four billionaires start looking to buy the hotel and strange things begin happening…

January is a wonderfully flawed character. (And GAY?!!! Love to see it) She is a deeply pessimistic security agent that holds everyone at a distance. Her experiences with grief and constant self-sabotage are frustrating yet familiar. I saw myself a lot in her character and enjoyed seeing the development of her story.

Overall, I just love a good sci-fi murder-mystery book. It makes me so happy when the elements of technology and futurism that I enjoy are blended seamlessly with a thrilling mystery. Rob Hart has done a great job here! It’s giving Blake Crouch meets Riley Sager.

I really wanted to love this book but it just wasn’t for me. I did love that there was a murder mystery, dinosaurs, and I really enjoyed January’s sarcastic tone and verbiage through out the story. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine Books for the ARC of The Paradox Hotel.

Rob Hart was new to me but I'd seen this book listed on a "books we're waiting for" type list so I thought I'd give it a try. I'm glad I did. The book presents a traditional mystery/whodunit in a not so traditional environment. As you're introduced to January Cole's world I feel like it would be easy to get bogged down in both the environment and the story but, take your time to pick through and you'll find a really rewarding result. I actually waited a few days after finishing the book to let it roll round in my head a bit because I was still absorbing it. What seems like a complex mystery ends up, at the climax, to be just a simple love story. With dinosaurs.

Thanks to Netgalley for allowing me to access this title in exchange for an honest review.

January Cole runs security at the Paradox Hotel, where the rich arrive in costume and await trips to different time periods. The timeport nearby wreaks havoc on clocks in the hotel, and there's a body in one of the rooms that only she can see. Government officials are arriving in the hotel in advance of time travel being privatized, and accidents are now happening to those bidding on the technology. January is the only one able to catch a killer that's there yet not, and that ability is making her lose her grip on reality and time.

Jan is the acerbic security chief, and also Unstuck - she sometimes sees the past or future happening around her, and it only looks like she zones out for a moment. She works at the Paradox despite the fact that it makes her condition worse so she can catch glimpses of her dead girlfriend, which is heartbreaking. I like the friendships she has with her coworkers, which shows moments of softness in her otherwise harsh exterior. As badly as she acts around them, she cares for them, too.

From the start, there were hints at a much larger issue, and then the bidders and the Senator arrive in the midst of time flights gone awry and security problems. She sees fragments of her past, possible pieces of the future, and around the hotel are signs that time is slipping as well. She has a conference and extremely wealthy people to protect, staff to take care of, the Senator to deal with, and the killer to figure out while keeping a grip on her sanity. It's a tough balance and one that puts her at odds with everyone in the hotel. She appears out of control and dangerous, and she doesn't trust anyone to help figure out what happened. She can't solve it alone, however, and help comes from someone I never expected. It was wonderfully done, with surprises in the final third of the novel that had me racing to the finish. I thoroughly enjoyed how mind-bending this was, as every good time travel book is, and loved the conclusion. I think you will, too.

A unique and appealing take on time travel and how humans would interact with it.

At it's core, it is a whodunnit mystery, but it becomes a when/how/whodunnit that can be frustrating at times, but wholly satisfying overall.

Fifty years from now, if you’re a one-percenter, you can check in at the Paradox Hotel while you wait for your shuttle to the Einstein center for your time-travel trip to the past. As any reader of time-travel fiction knows, if a time traveler changes history that’s supposed to be about as bad as crossing the streams in Ghostbusters. And that’s is why, in this book, the government’s time-travel version of the FBI polices the voyagers.

Protagonist January Cole was one of the feds doing that work, but it eventually caught up with her. Too much time spent in the “timestream” can cause a mental problem called becoming “unstuck.” January had to quit riding the timestream when she hit stage one, and now she is the head of security at the Paradox. To say she is cranky is putting it mildly. There are her time-perception glitches that seem to be getting worse, a love-life tragedy, and the fact that despite her condition she really misses the timestream.

It’s an especially challenging time at the Paradox. The government has decided to privatize the money-losing Einstein and the Paradox, and several one-tenth-of-one-percenters have arrived for the bidding war. They are every bit as charming as you can imagine—and January’s boss is tearing his hair out at January’s insistence of letting them know exactly how much of a waste of space she finds them. But of course things can always get worse. Let’s throw in a monster blizzard, too many guests for too few rooms, someone sneaking in a trio of velociraptor babies, and January’s unstuck glitch that causes her to foresee murder among her least-favorite guests.

I enjoy time travel books, and the fact that our protagonist, January Cole, is nonstop sarcastic is a big plus for me. This is the kind of dystopian novel I like: you definitely wouldn’t want to be there, but it sure is fun hearing January’s take on it.

Thank you to Netgalley, Rob, and Ballantine Books for an advance copy of The Paradox Hotel.

January is the prickly head of security at the Paradox Hotel, the hub for the richest people to take the ultimate trip – to the past. Her job has never been simple, but when several trillionaires descend onto the property to place bids on the sale of the hotel at the same time that the clocks start to act a little funny, AND January is the only person who can see a corpse in one of the guest rooms, WHILE also seeing the ghost of her ex-girlfriend, things really start to get out of hand. On top of all of this, January’s grip on reality is slipping – a side effect of long-term involvement in time travel.

If this sounds confusing, you’re not alone. There are a ton of moving parts to Rob Hart’s newest sci-fi murder mystery. However, as I say with every time travel book I’ve ever read…confusion is all part of the fun.

We meet a good amount of characters, but January is definitely the star of our show. She is wildly unlikable yet everyone likes her anyway. Refusing to face her demons and cope with a monumental loss, she copes by blocking everyone out. This makes for a very interesting dynamic and a great character arc. I really enjoyed several of the side characters as well; Mbaye the hotel chef and Cameo the front desk manager(? I believe they were the manager of the front desk/head of the guest relations type of role). The cast of characters is diverse as well.

As for the story, there was just SO much. It was hard to appreciate each of the pieces because it was so chaotic. I wouldn’t be surprised if the chaos was intentional to give a sense of being there in the Paradox Hotel with our characters, but as someone who reads multiple books at once, it was tough at times to keep up with all of the plot points. I wish we had gotten to see some actual time travel that the hotel offers, rather than a story that is really only set on the peripheral’s of time travel, but it was an interesting take on the genre as a whole.

The only thing that I really did not care for was the jabs at anything going on in current/recent events that in no way related to the plot. As someone who reads to escape (especially when I’m reading sci-fi or fantasy), I just really do not like coming across anything that is a direct comment at the current world’s politics. It’s just a turnoff for me as a reader and it brings me completely out of the story.

This sci-fi isolated murder mystery follows January Cole - security officer at the Paradox Hotel. The Paradox is located a few miles away from the time travel portal (timeport) that takes the ultra-wealthy to different times and places in the past. Being this close to the timeport has some strange effects on the hotel including occasionally making the clocks run backwards and allowing ghosts to roam the halls (if the rumors are to be believed). January is no stranger to the oddities of time travel but the corpse in room 526 that is frozen in time and only able to be seen by her is odd, even by January's standards. A mysterious dead guest would be trouble enough but the US Government has decided to privatize time travel technology and they just moved up the bidding date. And to top it all off, a snow storm traps the guests, weathly bidders, and a murderer all in the Paradox. January is uniquely qualified to investigate this crime but when she can slip so easily between past, present, and future, it isn't always simple to keep the investigation on a straight path.

TW/CW: grief, terminal illness

This book was pretty close to perfect for me. I absolutely loved the setting, characters, and how Hart was able to blend the sci-fi/mystery/thriller elements together. That being said, I think like most genre-mix books that it doesn't really go far enough into either genre for real hard-line fans to be satisfied. So if you're looking for a super technical and detailed sci-fi read or a super twisty murder mystery, this won't really hit those ends of the spectrum. I've been explaining this as sort of a David Tennant-era Doctor Who vibe. It starts out a little campy and funny but as the story progresses it gets slowly darker and darker which I absolutely loved.

So I'd categorize this as a 'soft sci-fi' read. Time travel is a central topic but the story takes place inside the Paradox Hotel so it felt more grounded in reality. We don't really get an explanation of how, exactly, the time travel works and we never directly see anyone time traveling. We do get an explanation of how the scientific community pictures the concept of time (past/present/future) and how travel works inside that model. I found the description very brief but straightforward and then I just accepted it and moved on with the story. I also thought the story stayed within those pre-defined boundaries of how time travel works in this world. I don't read a ton of sci-fi so maybe someone with more experience reading time travel books would have a laundry list of questions but I personally didn't. This book is set in 2072 so pretty near future and I think that time period worked really well for the atmosphere and setting Hart built. We do see some technological advancements such as these little personal assistant floating robots (who I pictured as looking like Eve from Wall-E but with a sarcastic attitude).

I absolutely loved January as a protagonist but she's going to fall into the 'unlikeable' category for some readers. She's super sarcastic, irreverent, and has a huge chip on her shoulder. We find out in the first chapter that she's suffering from a degenerative disorder from traveling through time so often in her previous position as, basically, a time cop. This disorder is causing her to not stay grounded in the present and her mind slips suddenly to past or future moments where she feels like she's actually in that moment but her body is in the present. The disorder can be managed with medication but is eventually fatal and January has just been slipped to the next stage of this disorder. On top of this, she is also struggling to mourn a death of someone close to her that happened recently. She does come across as pretty harsh and even mean at times but I think she has a really great character arc throughout this story. I think she's a wonderfully crafted, complex character. She is a really great twist on the typical no-nonsense female detective we see in a lot of mystery stories. The surrounding cast of characters were slightly less developed than I would have liked but I think they each had a really strong voice and place in the story.

The narrative style, from what I saw from other reviews, is a sticking point for a lot of people and I agree it is probably the most divisive part of the book. I absolutely loved it and felt like it worked so well as a plot mechanic as well as allowing the reader to connect more directly with what January is going through. We get to see, directly, these time slips that January experiences and they are simultaneously jarring but also immersive. January will have these slips where she'll suddenly be in a past or future moment and they happen pretty suddenly and without much more warning than a ringing in her ears. In a similar way, Hart incorporates these slips into the narrative pretty suddenly and they are confusing the first few times they happen. It almost feels like a whole new scene was copied and pasted into the wrong spot, which is sort of exactly what is happening. These happen with increasing frequency as the story progresses and January's condition worsens. I can completely see how some readers would find this too distracting and these narrative choices could take them out of the story completely. For me, this was such as visceral and immersive way to really get across what these time slips that January experiences are really like and how serious her condition truly is.

I do think the murder mystery aspect is the weakest aspect of the book but I still found it interesting. There aren't really any big or unexpected twists like you might have in a straight-up mystery. Also, I think the whole aspect of the hotel being snowed in was really underplayed. Isolated mysteries are one of my favorite tropes because of the tension constantly flowing under the narrative that someone in the hotel is a killer. In this case, I don't think that tension was really built at all and, in fact, there were complete stretches where I forgot the hotel was snowed in until some character would mention checking the coffee rations or something like that. The investigation does get pretty tense since January is the only one who can see this dead body and when the severity of her condition is revealed, many of the other characters are quick to dismiss her as being confused by the time skips she's experiencing. The actual solution to the murder mystery was both really interesting and really basic at the same time. On one hand, I was a bit disappointed because I do love a good twisty mystery reveal but on the other hand, it was great because it goes to show that even with all this great technological advancement, you just can't always change some base human natures.

Overall, this was pretty much everything I could have wanted from a sci-fi murder mystery with great characters and an intriguing plot. I do think some readers may have a hard time with the genre-mixing and narrative choices but they really worked for me.

Thanks NetGalley and Ballantine Books for the ARC

Expected publication date is February 22, 2022

I didn’t really enjoy this one. The premise was super interesting. Humans have figured out how to time travel to the past and there is a timeport (like an airport for time travel) that all trips happen out of and a hotel that is connected to it that time travelers often stay before their trips. The main character is January, who is head of security for the hotel. But something is happening with time, right when some of the richest people in the world are at the hotel to buy the timeport (it is being privitized). January has to figure out what is happening before reality implodes. So super interesting premise, but January is a terrible character. I’m all about imperfect characters, but January has no likable traits whatsoever. I enjoyed the time travel and exploration of what time even means, but the characters really dragged it down.

I really tried, but I got so lost with this. I think the premise sounds really interesting, and maybe if I had been into it a little more, I could have followed it. Sorry. Not for me.

I really enjoyed Rob Hart's previous novel, The Warehouse, with it's Amazon-esque mega corporation controlling America. The Paradox Hotel, Hart's newest science-fiction thriller, speculates on what would happen if time travel were found to be possible. Would the ultra-wealthy take time travel vacations to, say, 1776 Philadelphia to watch the signing of the Declaration of Independence ? Would they try to manipulate the past to gain even more power? Both seem likely.

This novel is full of the fun aspects of how time travel would work, and (of course) of all the potential pitfalls. It is also a wonderful character study of a person experiencing grief. Add to that a timey-wimey mystery, and you have yourself a highly entertaining novel. I loved it!

What I Liked:

Time Travel (The Good, The Bad, and the Timey-Wimey):

The novel takes place sometime in the distant future where time travel has been invented, and monetized by the U.S. government. The Paradox Hotel is a launching off point for time travel "vacations" by those who can afford it. There are people traveling to ancient Egypt, the Aztec period of Mexico, and all sorts of other destinations! But how will that work? I won't spoil it, but I'll just say that the author has had fun fleshing out all the details.



via GIPHY

January Cole works as the head of security at the hotel. But she has also traveled back in time to stop people from trying to change the future. Too much time travel leads a person to become Unstuck. There are different stages of being Unstuck, from small moments of déjà vu in the first stage, to all out madness in stage three. January is in denial, but she is nearly at stage three, which makes it hard for her to be taken seriously when she starts to see the future deaths of some of the guests.

Characters:

January, the main character, is not immediately likable. Since the hotel is it's own little universe, everyone who works there has become part of a found family. But January, always rude and sarcastic, has never felt close to her co-workers. This changes when she falls in love with Mina, another employee at the hotel. Mina draws her in, and helps her learn to be part of the life of their little community. When Mina tragically dies (before the start of the novel), January reverts back to her introverted ways. But others now know she is actually a smart, fierce friend. They try mightily to keep her connected with the group.

January's grief is a huge part of the book. How do you deal with the death of a loved one if that was the only person who you felt really got you? January actually has lots of other people cheering her on. But her grief is so deep that she can't see it.

Mystery:

This was another entertaining aspect of the book. The U.S. government, hard up for cash, is taking bids from Billionaires to take over the hotel and time-travel tourism. There are ego's in abundance as entitled mega-rich guys (yes, all guys), come to the hotel for a conference. But January sees parts of a future where several people wind up dead. Who is trying to stop the conference? Is it one of the groups opposed to time travel? Or could it be someone who is trying to get rid of their competition? And, who let the dinosaurs loose in the hotel lobby? It's all connected. This is a complex mystery, but it keeps the story moving forward.

This is really entertaining, and establishes Rob Hart as right up there with Andy Weir as one of the best science fiction writers around now. Read this book!

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for giving me a copy of this eARC in exchange for my honest review!

Have you ever wished you could pay a visit to a place that would let you take a vacation back in time to any number of notable historical destinations, such as the Battle of Gettysburg, the world premiere of Hamlet, or the Cretaceous Period? That’s the focus of The Paradox Hotel, the new sci-fi thriller novel by Rob Hart (The Warehouse). The eponymous establishment, which caters to the one-percent, has been sending them off on “flights” with nary a hitch, even as its closeness to the Einstein Intercentury Timeport has caused time to briefly run backwards and sparked speculation over ghosts that are allegedly haunting the grounds. But the situation is much more grim for Time Enforcement Agency agent and head of hotel security January Cole, who has become “Unstuck”: a progressive illness triggered by the rigors of her profession that temporally displaces her enough for her to perceive flashes of her life from the past, present, and future. On top of the poor prognosis that predicts she’ll eventually become comatose, no matter how many doses of a medication called Retronim that she takes to delay her disease, she keeps seeing visions all over the Paradox of her departed girlfriend Mena. During a summit made up of super-wealthy bidders who are all vying to acquire the Paradox from the government, which is aiming to privatize the venture after having failed to rake in any financial gain from it, the stakes heighten even further when January has to untangle increasingly inexplicable occurrences, including a body that nobody but her can see in a hotel room and the mystery of whether or not an elusive enemy is attempting to kill the bidders.

**Trigger Warning** Readers, please beware this book’s depiction of terminal illness, grief, mental health, drug use, murder; a quick portrayal of a suicide attempt; and brief mentions of self-harm, suicidal ideation, homophobia, and transphobia.

I’ve seen plenty of readers liken The Paradox Hotel to Blake Crouch’s sci-fi work. Considering Hart’s twisty approach to the flow of time is quite reminiscent of Crouch’s affinity for mind-bending physics, this isn’t an unfair comparison at all. The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch, which was marketed as a cross between Inception and True Detective, also handles its science in a similarly intricate manner. Now, The Paradox Hotel isn’t as tightly written as the books I just cited. The plot is susceptible to getting distracted at certain points, like the time that January has to spend capturing a trio of runaway utahraptors, dinosaurs that are essentially the velociraptors from Jurassic Park. In addition, I found most of the supporting characters to be thinly developed, so much so that when the novel divulges what should be startling reveals for a couple of them, they fell flat for me because I never became invested in those characters in the first place. But I was still drawn into the exhilarating story as it unfolded at a swift pace within a near-future environment that felt like it could be right at our fingertips. Not only is this in regard to the sci-fi mechanisms, but also to the casual queer representation in the cast and the frighteningly plausible ignorance with which the Paradox’s ultrawealthy clientele cushion themselves on their time trips, e.g. the guests who slather their skin in bronzer for a jaunt to Ancient Egypt.

As someone who’s always up for narratives led by unlikable women protagonists to balance out the oodles of unlikable male leads in our media, I very much appreciate the character design of January. A TEA operative who’s gone on scores of missions to prevent people from rescuing Hitler, warning the passengers of the Titanic about the iceberg in their path, running dinosaur-trafficking schemes, or executing any other number of ways to screw with the past, January has seen it all. Combined with the anguish she feels over Mena and the inevitable fate she’s inching towards due to her Unstuck state, all of it contributes to her sardonic outlook on life and her sarcastic treatment of her friends and colleagues. I definitely felt intense WandaVision vibes from the novel’s empathetic commentary on the grief we bear for our loved ones and the lingering presence they have in our lives. What is grief if not love persevering, am I right? That’s what encouraged me relate to January through all the caustic comments she hurls at everyone in her vicinity. It helps that Ruby, the hotel’s deliciously cheeky AI, is usually right alongside her in the form of a drone whose lenses are decorated with googly eyes courtesy of January. Oh, I could not get enough of Ruby, whose impudence injects some lightheartedness into what’s otherwise a brooding blend of a murder mystery and a bereavement tale.

All in all, The Paradox Hotel, which will be published on February 21, 2022, should be suitable for audiences who lean towards SF thrillers that propel their mettlesome protagonists into serpentine journeys through space and time. Even with its shortcomings, it’s a generally gripping novel that left me satisfied with its poignant conclusion.

A twisted science fiction that comprises mystery and murder. January Cole is a security officer in a hotel that controls time. The story is well told with characters that are both human and non human. There are many characters to keep track of and to remember what role they play in the ensuing drama. January is the character the guides the reader through the story and allows them to make sense of everything. She is able to solve the mystery and find the bad guys.

In 2072, time travel options are affordable to only the rich when they stay at the Paradox Hotel. This sci-fi thriller's themes of family, love, and grief are interchanged.

At the heart of the novel is January Cole, head of security, tasked to protect guests, an unscrupulous senator, and trillionaires bidding to own the hotel. Her job becomes impossible due to roaming dinosaurs, the loss of her girlfriend Mena, a dead body, and ghosts of the past. January has trouble navigating through the timestream while being "Unstuck" (between past and future events). And she encounters her dead lover as she deals with the takeover of the hotel and evil forces that want to control time. But January is ruthless, complex, and relentless in fighting to protect the hotel, its guests, and the staff that she considers her family.

I found this novel fascinating but challenging to follow, probably because of January's state of mind. In addition, the reader can get lost following many characters and twisty subplots. Thanks to Random House and NetGalley for allowing me to read and review The Paradox Hotel. #The Paradox Hotel #NetGalley

3.25 time travel stars

I don’t read much science fiction, but occasionally I venture in with an intriguing premise. In this case, we have the hotel where ultra-wealthy guests stay before they go on a time travel adventure. Sometimes the guests arrive in period costume, but right now they are all mad because trips are canceled, and some very odd events are happening at the hotel.

We meet January, she’s the head of security at the hotel, and she used to be a Travel Enforcement Agent, making sure that these travelers to the past didn’t change anything. I honestly found myself wanting to read the book of January’s life then because now she is Unstuck – a condition that happens with too much time spent time traveling. There are some pills to slow down the effects, but it’s basically a death sentence. She gets these glimpses into her past and often looks like she is daydreaming, not the best for a security agent meant to be on her toes!

There’s an important Summit happening at the hotel any day now and top bidders are arriving to buy the hotel. However, security is a mess and January wants to postpone the Summit. January keeps seeing bad things happening and races to prevent them.

January has a cool drone sidekick, and I liked that character a lot! There are also a lot of characters that work at the hotel that are like a family. There are also some ghosts that haunt the hotel.

I didn’t always understand the references and koans (a paradoxical anecdote or riddle, used in Zen Buddhism to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning and to provoke enlightenment) in this book.

This was a good departure read for me, but complex and somewhat difficult to follow the storyline. Maybe that’s the case for time travel books though!

Things to Know:

Sci-Fi/Thriller
Time Travel
Strong Female Lead
LGBTQ+

Rating: 4.5 Stars (Rounded up to 5 stars on Goodreads)

Review:

I could not put The Paradox Hotel down. From the very first page I was hooked. The idea of traveling to different times and actually getting to experience historical events first hand is amazing. But follow the number one rule, look don’t touch! Even small changes to the timestream can be detrimental.

January is a great main character. She is flawed, and an asshole, but this is what drew me to her. She says many things out loud that I wouldn’t have ever dared even if that was the strongest thought in my mind at the time.

I will be picking up other books by Rob Hart. I really enjoyed his writing style, and his creativity. Thank you NetGalley and Ballantine Books for early access to this title!