4.75 stars / This review will be posted on goodreads.com today.


Sci-fi mystery at its finest.

January Cole is the lead detective for The Paradox Hotel. Formerly a member of the Time Enforcement Agency, she is now tasked with making sure that people don’t break rules when time traveling. Located next to the Einstein Timeport, the Paradox usually houses people with lots of money who want to visit events in the past. Building of the pyramids, the wild west. Sometimes, though, rules are broken and people bring back artifacts, or try to change the past to affect the future.

Changes to the timeline will cause ripples and could break time forever. So when strange events start occurring in the hotel, it is January’s job to find out what’s happening. Only now January is having problems keeping time straight. But is it just her affliction or is time really breaking?

Gotta say this one is riveting. I mean riveting. January is a generally difficult human, sarcastic, anarchistic even. But she knows her stuff and knows she’s got to be the one to solve this. Hart is a master of this genre. I was immediately absorbed and taken to a place in the future. The mystery of The Paradox is awesome. The concept of bending time and time traveling has been done over and over but not in this way.

My first Rob Hart novel. Definitely not my last. LOVED it.

Thank you to Random-House - Ballantine for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

The Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart is a sci-fi mystery that will have you breathlessly turning the pages. The story revolves around January, the head of security at the titular Paradox Hotel. This is a hotel where people wait for "flights" to different time periods. You can find dinosaur eggs just as easily as regular luggage. One day, January experiences a time/space anomaly when she sees a corpse in a hotel room. Unfortunately, she's the only one who can see it. Is January going crazy, or is the corpse a part of a sinister conspiracy?

Here is a chilling excerpt from the opening chapter, titled "Quantum Entrapment":

"Droplets of blood pat the blue carpet, turning from red to black as they soak into the fibers. The drops come slow at first, before turning to a trickle as the bones of my skull squeeze like a hand around my brain. My body yearns to release the tension in my shoulders, to let the pressure off my knees, to lay down and go to sleep.
Except it won’t be sleep.
It won’t really be death either. Something more in-between.
A permanent vacancy.
...
Footsteps.
Maybe I can fight this. A handful of Retronim. A cherry lollipop. What if I scream? I open my mouth. Nothing comes out but blood.
The footsteps get closer."

Overall, The Paradox Hotel is a sci-fi mystery that will appeal to fans of the Matrix or Magic for Liars. I think it would appeal to fans of The Matrix because of the sci-fi elements, including the very cool time travel plot element. I think it would appeal to fans of Magic for Liars, even though it's not a fantasy book, because both books open up with a murder in an unfamiliar fantastical environment, and we're put in the shoes of a detective trying to solve the crime. If I had to complain about 1 thing, I would say that I personally am not a fan of time travel books. I'm sure many sci-fi fans will enjoy this one though. If you're intrigued by the excerpt above, or if you're a fan of sci-fi mysteries, I highly recommend that you check out this book when it comes out in February!

A fantastical, memorable journey with more than a few twists to keep readers engaged. You’ll be thinking about The Paradox Hotel long after you check out… a wonderful sci-fi journey into the importance of identity and memory, of love and loss. If you’ve ever wanted a hint of Phillip K Dick in your Grand Budapest Hotel, then The Paradox Hotel might be the book for you.

This was a mind bending sci-fi thriller that had me feeling excited, confused, frustrated, and sad. The Paradox Hotel was a fun read that at times reminded me of reading a Blake Crouch novel. The Paradox Hotel is a hotel where mega wealthy people are given the opportunity to time travel, and January Cole is head of security. January is what they call “Unstuck;” she has spent enough time in the timestream that she now has slips where she experiences the past and future in flashes. When she discovers a dead body only she can see, things get crazier and she sets about to discover the mystery. Other strange things start happening.. lights flickering, the clocks malfunctioning, the sun setting earlier than it was supposed to, dinosaurs getting loose… it gets wild!

There’s really no nice way to put it, January is pretty much a b****. She’s sarcastic, blunt, harsh, has an attitude, and doesn’t dance around the point. But I loved reading about her. I appreciated the diverse set of characters this book has. There were times when this book was hard to follow and got a bit confusing, and times where I thought I was crazy and re-reading an earlier passage. But I feel like that added to the feel of the book since January is not always experiencing things in a linear fashion, and we are seeing things through her eyes. I also expected some confusion in a novel dealing with time travel.

The mystery of the “ghosts,” the secret room, the dead body and someone possibly changing things in the timeline had me hooked. I loved the feel of this and had fun reading it. This won’t be for everyone, but if you’re a fan of sci-fi and the premise of time travel I would recommend checking it out!

Special thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks Netgalley for allowing me to read this book. A body is found at the hotel that January works stvib the security department. Guests at the hotel are interested in time travel. Guests have ben known to travel back ib time to the past.

What a ride it was through this time travel novel! Prepare yourself for the unexpected. Very well written.
Many thanks to Random House Publishing and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

I really enjoyed this book. Character development was good. The plot was very interesting. Not a lot of typos.

3.5 stars
This is murder-mystery set in a dystopian world at a hotel for time-travelers. We are following January, the head of security who is Unstuck. She is displaced from time; slipping through past, present & future. This made her confusing to follow, sometimes. But I like her; she is cynical, sarcastic & hurting. This fast-paced & action-packed but can be very disorienting. I think I would have enjoyed this more if I'd read this in another time.

After reading Rob Hart’s first book I added him to my list now authors to watch for. Had to snatch this one up as soon as I could. The Paradox Hotel was a lot harder for me to connect with. It is hard to know if it is because the ideas of time travel are always fraught with consistency issues. It may have been purposeful on the part of the author. But I often found myself wondering if time was linear in this book. There was a lot of running around but not a lot actually happening. It took more than half of the book for me to get into the plot at all. The last 40% or so kept me interested and really started rolling. It just took a while to get to that point.

A locked-room mystery in a hotel for time travelers? Yes, please! I loved the plot and was really engrossed by the story. Hard as I tried, I had no idea what was going on or how it was going to end. That said, it seems like the author was trying too hard to be inclusive. OK, it’s set in the future, so maybe by then we’ll all be born genderless, but it’s like a checklist of progressive tropes. Personally, all I cared about was the plot but each time I saw what I now know to be the “singular they”, my brain screeched. January, the hotel detective who’s trying to solve a murder that only she can see, seems to be obsessed with the skin color of even secondary characters and extras. Sorry to sound like a troglodyte, but in this case it seems like the author went out of his way to make a political statement and it didn’t work for me. That said, even if I wasn’t crazy about January, I liked the humor and the dialogues, especially the dynamic with her AI drone. The baddie was a little too predictable and the ending felt rushed. The time travel part was convoluted and some parts were not completely explained but, as a big fan of Lost and Doctor Who, this doesn’t bother me. And speaking of the Doctor, I wonder if naming a character Osgood was an easter egg for followers.
I chose to read this book and all opinions in this review are my own and completely unbiased. Thank you, NetGalley/#Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine!

If The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy met Jurassic Park and A Sound of Thunder you'd get The Paradox Hotel. Yes, it's really that good. It's a pitch perfect blend of poignancy and whimsy. Rob Hart has created an especially engrossing and entertaining read. It features the delightful detective January Cole and a colorful cast of characters in a magical mystery centered around both time travel and love lost. I'm so glad this gem was recommended to me. I loved it. You will too! Thank you to Random House, Ballantine Books, and NetGalley for the advanced reading copy. #TheParadoxHotel #NetGalley.

The Paradox Hotel is the second book that I read by Rob Hart (The Warehouse was the first). I received this book via Netgalley.com for an honest review. Because I really liked The Warehouse, I was glad to get the chance to read and review The Paradox Hotel.

Rob Hart did it again. He focused on a timely topic that is near future and, if it actually occurs, can be utopian or dystopian, depending on how it is approached. So watch out humanity!

The characters were all well developed and drew empathy from each other and, in my case, the reader. I especially liked how the characters were incidentally diverse (meaning we knew they were diverse, but it didn't define who they were).

Lots of tension. Lots of quirks. Lots of drama. Isn't that what a thriller should entail?

Pick this up for a quick read, a beach read, a fun read.

This is a clever, smartly written book that takes place 50+ years in the future. The main character, January Cole, runs security at Paradox Hotel, a place for trillionaire time travelers to stay. The plot is complex, with a large cast of interesting characters. Recommended!

I rarely ding a book down a star just because I didn't love it. There's an audience for every book and sometimes I'm not it. Given how much I absolutely loved The Warehouse by Rob Hart, I thought I would the same about The Paradox Hotel. I liked it, but didn't love it. There's also a perhaps unfair thing that happens in marketing: after a super performing piece with tons of praise, a lot of hype goes into the next project hoping it's even better.

I loved certain things about The Paradox Hotel, in particular the main character January and her ghostly girlfriend Mena. They're opposites in personality and in tangibility. Mena is stuck in a forever plane of afterlife and chooses to hang out the hotel where she worked, loved January, and lost her life. January is gruff, trusts no one, always angry, kick-ass, and also "Unstuck" in time. Due to her job as a security officer for the TEA (time police), she's traveled through the timelines so much that she is mentally compromised, a condition with various degrees of extremity called Unstuck. January, Mena, and a secondary character Myabe the chef (which my brain always read as "maybe" but I know it's wrong) are the beautifully intricate characters of Paradox that made this book special. Oh, there is one more lovable character, the AI companion Ruby who is always at January's side. If you find strong connections to the droids in Star Wars, Ruby will feel familiar.

Where I had comprehension trouble was following the huge cast of characters mostly. There are four trillionaires who are bidding on the hotel; a corrupt senator; entourages everywhere; hotel workers, bosses, and a ton of visitors; plus three adorable though vicious dinosaurs - well they start out adorable and grow up fast.

January's condition of being Unstuck and the actual timeline crumbling made for some clunky adjustments too. There's a room where she finds a dead body. Only she can see it. Not even Ruby detects its presence. But they saw the person alive at one point so they know he is/was in the hotel. The mystery of finding out who he is and why he's dead is more like a B plot rather than the main plot as the summary describes.

In my reading experience of Paradox, the main plot is January coming to terms with Mena's death and her evolution from a bitter, angry soul to a person who learns a lot of Mena's Buddhist lessons on compassion, forgiveness, kindness, and the afterlife. In that regard, this felt like two completely different books which also explains why it felt so long.

I had the same reading experience when I tackled Chuck Wendig's Wanderers which I loved, but had multiple stories that could have been separated into related books, or as I said in that review, ditched completely (I dread that sequel which has been announced.) Some readers are pulled in by those epics whereas, I'm more of a series with short installments type of reader (hence my love of cozy mysteries).

Rating: I give it 4.5 stars of 5 but some systems don't allow for halves so it'll look like 4 or 5.

4.5 stars. I'm not even going to attempt to describe the plot of this novel, because it's complex, and I don't want to ruin it. Just READ THIS BOOK!!!! Time travel, a mystery, and the most amazing protagonist - January Cole. I love her character, and the arc she travels through the novel.

"A locked-room murder mystery set at a hotel for time travelers—in which a detective must solve an impossible crime even as her own sanity crumbles—from the author of The Warehouse.

For someone with January Cole’s background, running security at a fancy hotel shouldn’t be much of a challenge.

Except the Paradox is no ordinary hotel. Here, the ultra-wealthy guests are costumed for a dozen different time periods, all anxiously waiting to catch their “flights” to the past. And proximity to the timeport makes for an interesting stay. The clocks run backwards on occasion—and, rumor has it, ghosts stroll the halls.

Now, January’s job is about to get a whole lot harder. Because the U.S. government is getting ready to privatize time-travel technology—and a handful of trillionaires have just arrived to put down their bids.

Meanwhile there’s a blizzard rolling in, and the timestream’s acting strange. Which means nobody’s leaving until further notice.

And there’s a murderer on the loose.

Or at least, that’s what January suspects. Except the corpse in question is one that somehow only she can see. And the accidents stalking their prestigious guests…well, the only way a killer could engineer those is by operating invisibly and in plain sight, all at once. Which is surely impossible.

There’s a reason January can glimpse what others can’t. But her ability is also destroying her grip on reality—and forcing her to confront secrets of her own.

Because here at the Paradox Hotel, the past is waiting around every corner.

At once a dazzlingly time-twisting murder mystery and a story about grief, memory, and what it means to—literally—come face to face with our ghosts, The Paradox Hotel is another unforgettable speculative thrill-ride from acclaimed author Rob Hart."

Thanks to NetGalley for the free ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I feel like Hart really got into January's character this time and worked to make her someone we'd really root for despite her flaws. Ruby was fantastic.

Wow. I was so deeply impressed with this book. I tend to love all time-centric books, and this one really blew me away. We follow January Cole, who runs security for the Paradox Hotel, around the night before a big summit where bidders can attempt to purchase the hotel along with all it's time travel technology next door. That's right. You stay in the Paradox Hotel at night, and then the next day can go visit your favorite time period. See some dinosaurs. Run amok in a speakeasy. Of course, there's the Time Enforcement Agency or TEA to make sure people don't mess with history too much. This is clearly highly coveted stuff, but everything keeps falling apart and it's seeming to look more and more intentional.

This book probably could've gotten away with being good just by its thrills and mysteries. As with most time-centric books, it poses some solid philosophical point to ponder. However, what makes this book great is that it plunges so much deeper than all of that. The exploration into the human psyche and grief and unprocessed trauma was incredible. I really loved the arc of January's growth and watching how her past still affects everything around her. It was just so well done. There was also some bits of Buddhism entwined in the story, and I especially loved the koans that were shared. I was definitely not expecting such depth and gentleness and poignancy in a sci-fi novel.

I did mention loving January's character development/growth arc but the bone I have to pick with that is she was super abrasive and yet still beloved. I could totally relate to her and how she came across, but it was like she was surrounded by completely perfect saints at all times. Everyone understood her and tried to love her and were just endlessly forgiving and patient. There was no real friction in her relationships and that was the main thing I disliked about this book. People would tell her if she kept pushing the hands trying to help her away, eventually they would stop trying, but no one ever did or stayed mad at her or anything. That aspect of it didn't sit right with me, but not enough to retract from how much I loved this book.

I'm a bit torn on how I feel about the Paradox Hotel, so I'm breaking this review down into two parts.
First, what I liked:

The concept. It's 50+ years into the future, and time travel to the past is possible. It has become a vacation destination, of sorts, for those who can afford it, which felt authentic. The Paradox Hotel is where time travelers stay as they prepare for their journeys at the connecting timestream transport location, named "Einstein." January Cole is a security agent for time travel and our heroine. Her job is to prevent visitors to the timestream from making major changes that could impact the future. Now, some of this is murky. Who determines when the actions are problematic? How do they know? As with many books that deal with time travel, details are fuzzy and the author expects you to just go with it. Fine.

The heroine. January is an old man curmudgeon's stereotype in a young woman's body. She is mean to just about everyone, rude, and, of course, a solitary loner. She is mourning the death of her sweetheart, Mena. She is also "unstuck" which means she has been in the timestream too many times, and it is now breaking down her mind and body. She slips into the past without warning, and she remains at the Paradox, hiding the severity of her condition, so that she can revisit moments in the past with Mena, the only person she ever really loved.

January is tough to root for at times.. But I liked her anyway. The story moves quickly, it becomes clear that there are problems with the timestream, and January tries to figure out how to solve puzzles that show up (think locked room mystery), hide her increasingly poor health, and continue to see Mena.

All of this works. I also liked the ending. And the velociraptors.

What I did not like:
There are too many minor characters who are impossible to tell apart. They are all men, and they are written as if they have little personality. At times the author will even go back and forth between using a minor character's first and last names to identify them. This makes it even more confusing.

The other problem was with the writing. The author attempts to add social commentary to this book. This works, to a limited degree, in the context of juxtaposing the rich time travelers against the people who work at the hotel. The haves and have-nots is a timeless struggle. But the book tries to highlight multiple current social issues, and that felt inauthentic at times. It's far in the future. It was almost anachronistic - I kept thinking, why am I reading about current hot button issues in a book that is set 50 years in the future? All of this tells me that the addition of some of the issues just wasn't well done. It would have felt more natural and relevant to the story if it was incorporated with skill.

Part of the problem is that stereotypes abound. All the rich people are horrible selfish egomaniacs, and all the old white men are very racist. All the working class people at the hotel are just the best people ever who try over and over to embrace January, despite her being a total bitch to all of them. There are too many caricatures rather than characters.

The author, at times, works so hard to incorporate diverse characters and address hot button social issues that he hits the reader over the head with it. He needs to give his readers some credit. The addition of a non-binary character is great. But don't write as if your readers are too dumb to understand... "That non-binary drink of water over there..." Eye roll. The character, Cameo, already was referred to as "they" so it was clear they were non-binary.

The beauty of writers who give voice to diverse characters is that they normalize these characters, and they do not focus on whatever makes them different as their entire character story. Rob Hart can do this. He does it well with January, a lesbian character whose character has zero to do with her being a lesbian. Her love story with Mena is written well - it's a love story. It just happens to be between two women. That's incidental. Bravo.

Most of the clumsy writing happened within the first part of the book, which is too bad, as initially I thought "wow this is really poorly written." It's not. It's poorly edited. The author is clearly good at creating a great story and creating complex characters. At times he falters, and a good editor could have brought him back on track.

This is a worthwhile read despite what I didn't like, and the more I read, the more I enjoyed it.

This book is one wild ride! January Cole is the head of security at the Paradox Hotel. It's a hotel that rich fancy people stay at while waiting for their time travel vacation. Up until now the government has owned the technology, but they are about to sell it to the highest bidder. January also has a tiny problem of being "unstuck" which means she sometimes flashes through time in her mind and isn't sure where she is. She may be seeing a dead body that nobody else can see. Is it real? Should she investigate? She also has to deal with the upcoming summit for the sale of the hotel. Oh and there's a snowstorm coming. All these things converge on a thrilling murder mystery. I totally loved every minute of this book. I sped through it and didn't want it to end. I loved January even if she was prickly and mean. I can't wait to read Rob Hart's earlier book and hope it's just as good.

Honestly, this pretty much had it all. It was exciting, action-packed, suspenseful, touching, romantic, culturally relevant, and had a mystery that was really fun to work out. It was also pretty complex, so when adapting it for the screen I think a series would be preferable to a movie—just a hot tip for potential producers out there, who should definitely take a look at this one.

Some of the timing of things was puzzling—I'm still really unclear on how many days passed between the start and end of the main narrative of the book—but I thought that might have been on purpose, just to emphasize how little one could trust time in this world (and particularly the main character's experience of time). I enjoyed that the novel had absolutely no explanation for how time travel works, but a whole heck of a lot of thought put into its scientific and societal ramifications, very much on the level of the treatment of things like faster-than-light travel in Star Trek.