Sometimes I put off reading books for a long while and then become super irate once I finally read them. Why is this? Because it’s pretty much always those books that become some of my favorites.
The Paradox Hotel follows January, the head of security for The Paradox Hotel, and she’s also unstuck in time. What does this mean exactly? She doesn't live linearly due to constant interactions with different timelines. She can relive the past and present and sometimes see the future. The hotel allows people of greater wealth to travel back to pretty much any period in time to experience (but not alter) life in a different way. Then let’s add in the fact that this is a government-owned thing, and I’ll let you draw your conclusions as to how that might work out for folks.
This book is a lot, and some of it is kind of weird, but I honestly adored it. You can’t write a book about time travel/paradoxical things and not expect some weirdness. It’s honestly what initially drew me to this story. So it's four stars from me because I didn't want to put this book down (damn you, responsibilities!). Definitely going to hand sell this bad boy to anyone who wants to listen to me blather on about things :)

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about this book bc science fiction isn't my go to genre. However, I like to change it up once in a while, and I'm glad I did.

Though I was a little confused at times while reading bc there was always so much going on at once, I really enjoyed this story.

The main character, January, is a real jerk to those who love and care about her, but you can't help but feel sympathy for her bc there are reasons she is the way she is. I actually really liked her, bc as mean as she could be, she tried hard to always do the right thing to help others.

January is head of security for the TEA, Time Enforcement Agency. Time travel has been invented and the TEA makes sure people don't try to change history in any way, otherwise there can be dire consequences. She's fighting to keep her place while she's ill, and those around her try to help her as well bc they know they need her, but her illness starts to take over.

I really liked this book, even the ending, which I thought was perfect.

Ooof this book was so heavy and tedious I couldn't really get past the first few chapters. I wanted so much for this book to be riveting and fantastical and it just failed.

This was SUCH an interesting, funny and irreverent ride. January Cole is among my favorite fictional characters after reading this. The rest of the cast is well-fleshed-out, funny and diverse.

The story draws you in, the emotions run high, the environment makes you feel like you're part of the story.

Highly recommended.

This is an honest review given in exchange for a copy of the ARC. Thanks to Netgalley, Random House books and especially the author, Rob Hart. All opinions are my own.

LGBTQ+ inclusion, violence, swearing.

This ARC was provided to me via Kindle, Random House Publishing Group- Ballantine and by #NetGalley. Opinions expressed are completely my own.

Unique, fascinating read with a take I didn’t expect.

(4.5 out of 5 stars. My review will run on Geek Vibes Nation and Thoroughly Modern Reviewer on the novel's publication date.)

If you've ever wanted a book that combines elements of time travel, murder mysteries, and ghost stories all into one, then Rob Hart's "The Paradox Hotel" is the book for you. Genre-defying to a fault, "The Paradox Hotel" crams so much story into its 300-odd pages that it's kind of a miracle everything works as well as it does. But overall, "The Paradox Hotel" is a genuinely impressive book. The mystery's satisfying and well-plotted. The emotional stakes are clear and well-developed. And the book is just so much fun to read - a shining example of a compulsive page-turner.

In the future, time travel not only exists but is available to the extremely wealthy as an exotic vacation. And, of course, all those would-be time travelers need somewhere nice to stay, right? That's where the Paradox Hotel comes in. Lodging for the rich and powerful. A destination in its own right. Reportedly haunted. And, somehow, losing money. Which is why a U.S. senator has brought a group of the world's richest trillionaires to the hotel to attend a summit. More of an auction, really, where the U.S. intends to sell the hotel and its accompanying time-port to the highest bidder. Assuming January Cole, the hotel's head of security, can figure out what's causing a series of increasingly strange events - velociraptor attacks, missing security footage, assassination attempts, and a dead body only she can see - and put a stop to them before they derail the entire auction.

As if that’s not enough, there’s an extra wrinkle - January Cole, herself. Because January, after years of traveling the time stream as a sort of time cop, has come Unstuck. Meaning that she has some kind of rare terminal disease that results in her having time slips - moments where she hallucinates past and future events. The longer she stays near the time stream, the quicker she deteriorates. And the more she deteriorates… Well, it’s not good. She should really leave the Paradox Hotel. But she won't. Because it's the only place she can see the "ghost" of her dead girlfriend during her time slips. So, we’re left with an unreliable detective haunted by her past and her future. On top of a mind-bending, page-turning murder mystery. But the combination of emotional character study and pulpy, genre fare ends up being an absolute delight to read.

"The Paradox Hotel" has a lot going on, all at the same time. Some might argue too much. And they'd have a point. I mean, there's a murder mystery, complex political machinations, and emotionally driven hauntings and time slips. One of those would be more than enough to form a complicated story. But the combination of all of them? Absolutely nuts. So, the fact that the story works as well as it does is beyond impressive. The weakest element is easily the political intrigue. Nowhere near enough time is spent on the senator and the trillionaires all trying to take advantage of each other, even as it pertains to the novel's central mystery. Hart flirts with some biting social commentary, but it never quite comes together in the end. It's interesting, to be sure. But a little hard to follow and in need of a little more development.

However, it's hard to care that much given how well Hart executes the novel's central mystery. "The Paradox Hotel" delivers the good kind of mystery - one where the mystery is actually solvable. Even without the big monologue at the end that explains everything, you can put together about 80% of the pieces based solely on the clues scattered about the story. So, when that monologue comes, it feels more clarifying than revelatory. And that's exactly what you want out of something like this, where the mystery involves a lot of mind-bending ideas about time. It's a complicated mystery, to be sure. But not so complicated that you feel woefully lost. Instead, it feels like you're figuring things out alongside January - which is super satisfying. And endlessly fun. It's exactly what you want out of a modernized hard-boiled detective novel.

That being said, "The Paradox Hotel" isn't really a murder mystery. Sure, it has all the trappings of a classic, pulpy detective novel. There's a detective with a haunted past, a quirky sidekick, a host of red herrings, and even a mystery that ties into the detective's backstory. But "The Paradox Hotel" isn't really about any of that. Instead, it focuses more on January Cole as a character. And the deeper the book delves into her backstory, the more heartbreaking it gets. Because, at its core, "The Paradox Hotel" is an examination of one woman’s grief over losing the love of her life. And the pain of being unable to move on from that loss. That emotional core latches onto your heart, making you root for January despite her rough edges and her mean streak. And it’s the best part of the book.

Now, to be fair, January’s emotional arc is also the most complex part of the book. While "The Paradox Hotel" doesn’t feature a huge amount of time travel, its exploration of time slippage gets a bit confusing. You understand what’s happening, sure. And Hart does a great job of explaining why January is experiencing these slips. But the book doesn’t always do a great job of making it clear when she’s slipping. Especially since the book's written from January's point of view (in the present tense). Meaning that we're experiencing exactly what January experiences, when she experiences them, with little clarification in the moment. Which is quite disorienting. To be fair, it’s intentionally disorienting. But it’ll probably turn some people off. However, if you’re willing to roll with it, it’s quite rewarding.

And honestly, that’s true of the whole book. If you’re willing to roll with what "The Paradox Hotel" dishes out, you’re gonna have a fun time. Hart delivers an excellent page-turner of a book. Meticulously and impressively combining elements of time travel, murder mysteries, and ghost stories, "The Paradox Hotel" defies classification. But that’s what makes it special. Underneath the delightfully pulpy mystery and the immediately engaging worldbuilding is this story about a girl just longing for what she’s lost. For a family and a home to feel safe in. And it’s easy to relate to that and to get invested in her story. So, while the book isn’t perfect, it’s an absolutely delightful, page-turner of a read. It's a dense, complicated read. But if you're game for that, you'll have a lot of fun.

This book has a unique and fascinating premise. The Paradox Hotel offers concierge time travel services for discerning clientele who can afford the price of an unforgettable experience, and our narrator is January Cole, a sarcastic, quippy head of security who also happens to be why is called ‘unstuck’ — a term meaning that she suffers from a condition where she slips through the time stream and can see sometimes things that haven’t happened yet. That sounds complicated enough as it is, but it becomes more complicated when she sees the dead body of an unfortunate guest who will soon be murdered in his room.

Meanwhile, there’s a summit happening and several multi-billionaires are bidding on the chance to own the Paradox Hotel, and January has to somehow solve a locked room mystery while also doing her job. I found the story interesting, but it’s very chaotic and sometimes a little all over the place. There are a lot of characters introduced and a lot of zany events that happen in quick succession, so the plot often gets a little unwieldy and hard to follow. I’m looking forward to seeing what other interesting ideas come from Rob Hart though.

A wonderful premise
Time travel and the hotel that holds those who are traveling. You might even see a baby dinosaur hopping around. A fascinating read. January is a fun character, though seems unreliable at times. Rich imagery really displays the hotel for what it is. A fun twist on time travel books.

I was so excited to read my first-ever ARC and for it to be the Paradox Hotel by Rob Hart was so thrilling. I liked this book. The action and mystery kept me turning pages and didn't drag on too long which is a pet peeve of mine. I also liked how inclusive this book was without feeling over-the-top pushy. However, I felt like the characters were a bit superficial and I felt confused at times trying to figure out if I had missed something. Overall, I give this book three stars!

FIVE STARS!

The Paradox Hotel, the latest mashup novel to pop onto my radar, strikes the perfect balance between the SCI/FI, mystery, and literary genres. The Paradox Hotel is one of those books that you will never stop thinking about and I blame January Cole. Our main character, January is gritty, real, and damaged by her past. She has a depth and intensity that pulled me right into her story and kept me invested through and beyond “THE END”. January suffers from being unstuck in time, an ailment that comes along with too much time travel and often happens to Federal Time Agents. We follow along as she races against time, her own crumbling mental state, and more bad players than you can count to solve a murder that may or may not happen, depending on the rules of future time.

If you’ve read Rob Hart before, you’ll recognize his unique voice, an excellent blend of sharp wit, pitch perfect character and world building, and so, so much heart, which will help to ground you in the future. The future, where time travel is the latest frontier of luxury travel and the ultra rich will stop at nothing to monetize it. The parallels to present day social commentary are astounding and relatable. Hart makes the technical language of quantum physics accessible for his reader, while never feeling like he’s dumbing it down.

I really loved this book and would heartily recommend it to mystery fans, speculative fiction enthusiasts, sci/fi nerds, and anyone who loves a good book. Very warm thanks to Mr. Hart, Ballantine Books, and Net Galley for the opportunity to read this stunner in exchange for my honest review.

I really like time travel books. I wasn’t really expecting it to take place entirely in what sounds like a time travel depot. The book seems a little intense at times and maybe a bit too drawn out. I do like January tho, she’s kinda tough.
I enjoyed the story.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the early copy

Thank you Net Galley and the publisher for granting me early access to THE PARADOX HOTEL by Rob Hart, what I'm pitching to my friends as murder shenanigans in a time-travel hotel. I had such a fun time with this book, not gonna lie it did take me a moment or two to get into it but when I did I was unable to set it down. The premise is what drew me to the book: the ultra-wealthy can travel to the past? via the hotel?? Sign me up! But it has to go private bc it's just not making enough money. Cue a locked-room murder mystery (as you do).

January Cole. (Hi. I love you. You are an utter badass.) She's recently broken up with her girlfriend and already not in the best frame of mind, so her time traveling illness is messing with it even further. January is the hotel's head of security and also the only person who can see the body. She's snarky, cynical in the best noir detective way, and literally takes zero shit. She really is the reason I enjoyed the book so much, especially when her reality is falling apart. Special shoutout to Cameo who uses they/them pronouns. Can't wait to get a finished copy!

Thank you Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Ballantine Books for the copy of this book. I raced through the first 25% of the book. I took a break and when I started reading it again, I couldn’t get my momentum back. This has happened before, so it might just be me! I got engaged in the book again, and then hit another slow point. The book picked up again. I thought the talk about time travel was fascinating and thought-provoking. It made for a really good story, but at the end things got really convoluted and confusing. I didn’t connect to any of the characters either, but I liked Ruby! The writing was good and I’ll try other books by this author!

THE PARADOX HOTEL by Rob Hart
5 stars!

Rob Hart has come up with a brilliant funny and thrilling follow-up to his wondrous first novel, The Warehouse. It’s 2072 and the U.S. government has cracked time travel, creating an Einstein Intercentury Timeport, but the facility has been bleeding money. The government has opened it up to uber wealthy travelers willing to pay hundreds of thousands for a firsthand plunge into the past but now believes it needs to be privatized, with governance overseeing that rules of not interfering with the past remain upheld. The Paradox Hotel, a futuristic highly architected hotel, serves as the transit point for departing and arriving time travelers, with amenities running the gamut from costuming to era-specific vaccinations to earbud translators.

January Cole, a former high-level time travel authority agent who successfully caught people trying to smuggle items back from the past, now finds herself as head of security at the Paradox Hotel. She traded down jobs as she’s become “Unstuck” due to all the time travel legs she’s travelled, where her mind now increasingly jumps erratically back and forth from the present to past events to vague fading glimpses into the future. Despite taking drugs to control the flashes, she’s on a pathway that will eventually lead her to lose her mind. As the chaotic plot unfolds, January struggles to separate what’s going on right now in the hotel versus these flashes sending her backwards and forwards in time. She’s often asking Ruby or others if they see anything amiss to gauge her time frame.

You cannot help but fall in love with January who’s bitingly and hilariously snarky and antagonist to her bosses and over-reaching guests. Ruby, her emotive AI drone, rides shotgun around January’s shoulder, giving her inside intelligence on the guests, controlling the hotel’s tech, and taking hut offense at January’s bad attitude when directed her way. There’s a wide variety of hotel staff, ranging from the always-high-on-drugs porter who’s actually a physics particle specialist down on his luck to a transgender clerk at the front desk to cowered hotel managers fawning over the high-paying guests and politicians.

January’s job, already setting her on constant edge dealing with fussy tracking uber-wealthy travelers staying at the hotel and looking out for would-be smugglers, ratchets up ten-fold as the opening day unfolds. The time travel device has been shut down for a day, causing an overload of delayed guests that has the rooms maxed out. January comes across a dead body in a hotel room, slashed across the neck, that seems to be a vision from the future that no one else can see. Delegations of big personality trillionaires, a U.S senator, and their staff start arriving at the hotel for a summit to create bids to purchase the government’s time travel apparatus. Three chicken-size biting dinosaurs are on the loose, having been smuggled in from the Jurassic age perhaps as just about to hatch eggs. The main lobby clock goes on the fritz. A blizzard is approaching. Large segments of the hotel’s video recordings start going missing. Ghosts wander by, from January seeing Mena, her dead beloved girlfriend waitress, still circulating the hotel’s halls, to reports of guests seeing ghost like appearances.

With a potential murder needing to be solved, chaos abounding, the future of all time travel at stake as well as her mental stability, January plunges into action!

Thanks to Random House, Ballantine Books and NetGalley for an advanced reader's copy.

This is a complicated intelligent book about the nature of time and history and what is set and what can be changed. It is a love story, a story of growh for a prickly, angry, hurt, grieving head of security trying to manage a hotel of time travel. Many mysteries, people only she can see, dead bodies, dinasaurs. ;losing time, time speeding up. Lots to think about, has to be read slowly to take it all in

ull disclosure: I received this ARC from netgalley and Ballentine in exchange for an unbiased review.
Thank you for this opportunity.

Thich Nhat Hahn is everywhere. Always was; always is. What an opportune coincidence that Hart's intriguing techno thriller will be published during his formal period of mourning. In Hart's own words "He’s very much in the DNA of The Paradox Hotel."... the way Eastern philosophies and quantum physics can dovetail from one another" (see: The Quantum and the Lotus). On the Passing of Thich Nhat Hahn www.robwhart.com 21Jan22. Here is a time paradox for you. Hahn died in Hue at midnight on 22Jan22. Hue is 12 hours ahead of the EST. Did he die on Friday or on Saturday? That is what 'time' is about, and that is what Hart plays with in the Paradox Hotel. The setting is the near future circa 2070. The hotel is a luxury location owned by the US govt. The place where people come to engage in time travel, only to the past, and only with government controls.

Our hero, who speaks to us in first person present, is the head of security at the hotel. January Cole, whose mind has become sensitive to glimpses of possible events in the time stream, has been charged with establishing security for an important event that could change the future of the hotel. The government plans to privatize the time port and their adjoining properties. A group of trillionaires, with their entourages, are set to bid. They hold the power of money. Senator Drucker, who will chair the event holds the power of government. The Senator reminded me of Margaret Thatcher, who was known as Atilla the Hen. This character will stay with me for a long time. Our
January is held in the power of grief. Mena, her beloved, has died. Yet, January can catch glimpses of her, speak to her, and hold her. She is both real and not real. A paradox.

Time travel novels work best when an author avoids implausibility, when the science involved is believable, when events are not determined by fate. Setting the novel in the near future creates a realistic setting for this reader. For example, I could see the coffee urn in the lobby. Hart's understanding of quantum physics makes his explanation of the time port plausible. Buddhism 101 states past present and future already exist. By introducing this philosophy, Hart is able to avoid cliched aspects of this genre.

I enjoyed meeting the primary and secondary characters in The Paradox Hotel. January, the ultimate "Tank Girl warrior, the stoner, the transgendered, the traitor, the corpse that may or may not be there, even the 'walk on' characters. No one is banal or trite. They do engage in some horrendous violence, the shuddering thought provoking kind, not pornviolence. This novel is very dystopian; not suitable for young readers.

Time travel books often serve as social commentary. Hart nails this commentary with The Paradox Hotel.

Highly recommended

PC science fiction meets mystery in s confusing and not very involving story set in 2070. The dialogue isn’t as snappy as it thinks it and I just couldn’t get into it.

Decent storyline and good pacing of the novel, but I wasn't a big fan of the characters.
Overall, a good sci-fi story and I liked the time travel hotel. 👍

Before I get into the review, a quick thanks to both NetGalley and the publishers over at Ballantine Books for giving me an ARC in exchange for an honest review. The Paradox Hotel centers around January Cole who runs security for The Paradox–a hotel for people vacationing via time travel. Things get weird when you’re so close to the device that makes this all possible. Clocks run backwards and rumor has it that ghosts stroll the halls. But things get even weirder when January has to solve a murder that may not have happened yet. But as she gets closer to the heart of the mystery she discovers she may not be able to trust her own mind. The Paradox Hotel comes out on February 22nd and is available for pre-order now.

I was so interested in this book when I saw it on NetGalley. I’ve recently (or somewhat recently) discovered that I absolutely love sci-fi/mystery novels. Mash those genres together and I am so happy. But I struggled with this one because I felt like a lot of things were brought into play just to make the hotel chaotic. Not because they actually mattered to the story. Also, we’re supposed to have a sense of urgency about what’s happening at the hotel and January is supposed to be running herself ragged. But at multiple moments in the story January stops to do other things. Like workout or take a shower. Is this life or death or isn’t it? The other thing that dragged this down for me was the huge cast of characters who all felt so shallow. The only characters if felt like I really knew were January and her AI, Ruby. Otherwise, I kept mixing up characters (because they’re all so shallow and the same) and I didn’t truly believe that, despite her obvious anger issues, January loves and is loved by this giant family of hotel workers. The thing that probably got to me the most though is that I could see where the story could end up making all of this worth it. I didn’t fully trust that the book would go somewhere that made sense by the end (for all of the reasons listed above) and I was right. It had some good foundational moments that could have led to the reader going, “Oh my god how didn’t I see this coming?” And instead I just thought that this was disappointing.

I did enjoy the sassy AI (hi, are you new here? I LOVE sassy AI) and January was actually an okay main character. Flawed with a lot of emotional stuff to unpack. But okay. I liked the idea of the hotel as a whole but also as a setting for this story since it’s a place for the rich elite to spend the night before their trip in time. I thought that everything seemed like it could be plausible. I just didn’t think the ends justified the means by the time we got there. But I know for some people this is going to be right up their alley. It just wasn’t for me.

I'm a fan of time travel plots and this one has an interesting twist: an incurable disease afflicting some who have travelled a little too much. As one of the "unstuck", the protagonist January sees bits of her past as well as moments of the future as if they were really happening. It's not a good thing when you're trying to run security at a high end hotel next to a time port. But things start to go a little haywire with time just as a major summit is about to take place over the ownership of the hotel. January has to figure out what's going on with time, who's sabotaging the summit and how she's going to survive all of it.
There's a lot going on in this novel. Yes, it's sci-fi, but it feels very real world. There are time travel aspects, though no direct travelling through time. And it has a mystery thriller tone as well. But it's also a pretty emotional story about relationships and family. Amazingly, the author brings all of that together rather well.