Rating: Enjoyed It, 3.5 stars

Lucy is a very successful hotel manager who has fallen into disgrace in her field due to the criminal actions of her boss/boyfriend. Unable to get a job in the States, Lucy takes a job to get an old hotel in Renens, France up and running. She is a bit surprised to find that not only is she going to be managing the hotel and it's day to day operations, but she is physically in charge of the remodel as well. There are a number of live-in "guests" who make for an enjoyable cast of characters, including Bing, who is an artist and a bit of a pain for Lucy as she goes about her tasks in bringing this hotel back to it's former glory.

Overall, I definitely think that this is more Women's Fiction than Romance. There is a subplot featuring a romance; however, this story was much more focused on Lucy and her journey. The characters were a fun cast, but I don't think that the character work was very deep. I did enjoy Lucy's journey, but I think part of that is that I liked the setting.

It's a small thing, but Lucy and Bing are both in their 50s, which is definitely not reflected in the cover art. It didn't bother me at all that she was older, but I just thought it was interesting that they put a slim, brunette on the cover when the heroine is described as having gray hair and being heavier.

So all-in-all a fun read, but not a new favorite. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review. Lucy Checks In releases on 8/16/22.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my fair and honest review.

I love a story about redemption. Especially when a woman is done dirty and ends up pulling herself up and proving everyone wrong.

This book was fun. I felt myself transported to France. I wanted to go to the hotel. I wanted to meet all the quirky people that lived there - the people that become your family.

If you are looking for a fun book, a cute beach read or an escape - definitely pick this book up!

Thank you to St. Martin's Press / St. Martin's Griffin for this eARC! I really loved it.

Lucy arrives in France for a job restoring an old hotel but when she arrives things are not what she expected. As she tries to navigate what this hotel has to offer and how much extra work it's going to take, she realizes that the people who live at the hotel aren't just tenants, but an unusual little family.

This book was cozy in all the best ways. I loved the idea of this extremely successful former hotel manager dropping herself into an entirely new place with a culture she'd never been in and people who questioned her abilities. The characters made me smile on so many occasions and I really wanted all of them to succeed.

Dee Ernst writes beautifully. One of my absolute favorite aspects of this book was that I could perfectly picture these characters and this hotel throughout its entirety.

A couple issues I had with it:
The cover was slightly misleading in that Lucy is almost 50 years old, and mentions her gray, curly hair often. The cover had me going into this thinking that Lucy was in her 20s - just based off of appearance. So while I love the cover, that did throw me off while I was reading.

Another somewhat minor issue was that a few times Lucy came off as a little harsh in her tone and words to some of the people who live at the hotel and work there. I realize that Lucy is very good at her job, so all of those instances came from a place of knowledge and wanting what was best for the hotel and future guests, BUT she was also a newcomer and didn't quite know how things went in France. I sometimes felt like she should be more understanding and gentle with them.

I also am just now realizing that on Netgalley this is marked as a 'Romance' but I honestly felt like the romance aspects were secondary to the story of the hotel revamping -- which was wonderful and very well done, but I just don't feel like there was enough romance focus for it to be a romance. Unless you think of it as the SLOWEST slow burn haha

BUT overall, I really did love it. Will be recommending to friends!

4 stars

This book was a light quick read. I originally thought it would a rom com, but it does not primarily focus on the romance, but rather the journey of the main character. I enjoyed the details of flipping the run down French Hotel and the potential it has. The book is very slow to begin, but develops as it goes along. The characters are of an older age group around 40s which I did not click with, but it was well written.

***4.5 stars***

I will start this review by saying that this isn't a true romance or rom-com. It's maybe more women's fiction with a subplot of romance. And what romance there is, is highly slow-burn and very clean. A lot of people so far are really upset by this and I agree that it should be reclassified. However, I honestly really enjoyed my reading experience of this novel. It's pure escapism set in an 18th century French chateau. All I wanted to do after finishing this book was book a flight to France and stay at this hotel. And the food! I wanted to crawl inside the pages and taste all of it. I was starving by the end of this book and wanted all go to France and eat all of the bread and butter and cheese I could get my hands on.

I do have a couple things that made this not fully a five star read for me. Lucy herself is a bit hard to like or relate to at the very beginning of the book. She is consumed with dreams of a five-star hotel where she can be ferried around in a Bentley, live in a penthouse suite and order around her staff without having to do any of the hard work herself. Now there is nothing wrong with liking or wanting the finer things in life, and she did have those things in her last job. But she comes across as a bit stuck up. Despite her numerous email exchanges with the hotel owner, she expects to have those things when nothing was promised, and in fact the expectations of her were outlined very clearing in her contract. Lucy does change over the course of the book to become a happier, more well-rounded version of herself and in doing so, she became a character I could really root for.

The cover is a bit misleading. It speaks to the 20-30 age demographic. With the average character in this book being about 50 years old, I think a lot of people my age would be put off of this novel once they read the synopsis or started reading the book. There's also the fact that the woman on the cover, who is supposed to be our 49 year old main character Lucy, doesn't reflect what Lucy is described to look like. She has "salt and pepper" curly hair. It would have been nice to see a woman with greying hair who is thriving on the cover of a book.

Overall, this was an easy and relaxing read with an overall hopeful tone. I loved the found-family aspect and how they all worked together to bring a dilapidated old mansion into a world class hotel. Maybe it stems from my love of the Home network but I loved all the renovation scenes.

Lucy Checks In kind of took me by surprise, I'm not gonna lie. This book started a bit slow for me, but there was a lot of backstory that lent itself well to character development, so once I got used to this author's style I really enjoyed the book.

This book was sweet. It's basically a second-chance, later-in-life romance -- which is not typically my favorite genre. I really like a straightforward HEA-type romance. This one, however, is one of a few I'd count alongside my favorites, simply because of how well-written it is. There were times in this book where I found myself very much identifying with Lucy, our main character.

She was completely relatable, frantic, a hot mess, picking up the pieces of her life, starting over, ending a long-standing relationship in which she'd been betrayed, had to get a new job because previously-mentioned long-standing relationship cost her hers -- one she loved. I think we've all been in a similar situation. Lucy was a bit of a stuck-up character in the beginning, but she rediscovers herself along the way and begins to make friends with her "co-workers."

I loved the situation in this book. Lucy accepts a job in France, getting an old hotel ready to take guests again. She finds out when she gets there that she won't be fluffing pillows and delegating, as she'd assumed. She gets to jump in and do the work, get blisters, get messy, and make mistakes! Sorry - couldn't help the reference to the Frizz. ;)

So eventually she meets the romantic interest - Bing. I'm sorry, she totally loses me here. Bing? I don't want my name character named Bing, lol. All I can see is Chandler, then I'm reading all the lines in Chandler's . . . PARTICULAR tone. Again - Friends reference. I don't love that. Otherwise, Bing is an awesome lead. All in all, the book was really good. I loved it. I could see it being a beach read or vacay read, or just a good ol' it's-time-to-read read.

Worth the time to read!

Britt

Lucy Checks In was a delightful and quick read. The characters this story was centered around were in their late forties to mid fifties and it was refreshing to hear a story that involved characters with established careers and children from previous relationships and how they worked to blend that together. The HGTV lover in me also enjoyed the details of flipping the run down French Hotel Paradis and the host of characters involved in that as well.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, and realized I might need to stop reading stories set in Europe before I cave and buy a flight!

So many thanks to St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book in exchange for my honest review!!

Lucy at 49 years old is looking for a fresh start. After being involved in a scandal with her ex, Lucy takes a job managing a hotel in Rennes, France. When she arrives, Lucy realizes there was a lot more work to do than she originally expected. Through the story we see Lucy regain her confidence and even has another shot at love.
Lucy Checks In is a feel good book that you definitely won't want to put down.
Thank you to St. Martin's Press, Dee Ernst and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Easy read about a women going through a hard time in her life who has to take whatever prospect comes her way even if it seems and impossible feat. To men, a lot of the things that happened in the story seemed to be just too easy, and I saw the shocking event that happens from a mile away, but the book isn't trying to be anything more than it is. I could easily see this as a Hallmark movie.

I'm going to try not to gush about this book but it's very difficult because it was so #$%& good! Inhaled it in one sitting (not a huge accomplishment because it's not too girthy, kind of 'Goldilocks Zone' for me) and the pacing, characters, and the oh! lovely! setting were just completely absorbing.

I've whinged frequently about the lack of older characters in romance - sorry, but I just don't connect with teens, college-age, twenty-somethings...even the thirty year-olds are slipping out of my wheelhouse. So, how awesome it is that Dee Ernst has written such a capable, accomplished, smart character as Lucy. The supporting cast was also fully realized, and Bing the love-interest was Lucy's equal in maturity and complexity.

Lucy's life has been derailed in a spectacular way, so she takes a job managing a hotel in Rennes, France and after realizing how daunting a task it will be, she rises to the challenge and regains some of the confidence in herself she had lost. She and Bing joust a bit, throw sparks a lot...it was good fun to watch that in the beautifully described setting of château converting to a hotel to meet the needs of the modern tourist.

I won't say too much more about the plot, except that there's a bit of found-family, and a late twist that was both sad and satisfying.

If I had one wish it would be for everyone to have a friend like Lucy has in Julia. Loved her.

I received an ARC of this book thanks to St. Martin's Press and Netgalley and all opinions are my own.

I really enjoyed reading this book. I loved Lucys character and how even though she was thrown into a situation she was not expecting, it all worked out for her in the end. I do wish that we got to see her and Bings love story a little more. I feel like we didn't get to read much about them getting closer so when they finally did get together, it seemed a little rushed.

I feel like this book is a little mature for most of my students but I can see a few picking this up and enjoying it. I personally thought it was okay but a little slow for me personally. Had the pacing been a bit quicker, primarily at the beginning it would be more engaging.

What a breath of fresh air this one was.
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Lucy a 40 something hotel manager suddenly finds herself at a crossroads in life. The hotel owner of the exclusive hotel she work at in NYC (and boyfriend) up and leaves taking Millions of dollars with him. Lucy is looking for a fresh start. With 50 just under her nose, she up and moves to France for an opportunity to manage a hotel there. What she discovers once she’s there is a whole lot more than she imagined.
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I adored this book. I sincerely appreciated that the MC was nearly 50 years old. So rarely do we see women in books starting over at this point in life. I appreciated the found family aspect that was created. Bing was a delight, and France Man oh man did this book make me want to travel to France. The scenery was beautiful.
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Dee Ernst, writes with such Grace. I thought the character development was spot on and I just adored Lucy. I found her charming and relatable.
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Thank you so much netgalley and St. Martins Press for giving me the change to read this one early in exchange for an honest review.

I received an advanced reader's copy of Lucy Checks In by Dee Ernst in exchange for an honest review.

A disgraced, middle-aged hotel manager, Lucy, takes a job at the Hotel Paradis, a small hotel in Rennes after a scandal rocks her professional and personal life. Believing this to be a chic boutique hotel, Lucy is horrified to realize she has signed on to rehabilitate a building that has not housed guests in decades. Responsible for rebuilding the business from the ground up, Lucy seeks assistance from the locals- some of which who live on the premises. The novel follows Lucy and the occupants of the Hotel Paradis as they navigate the reopening of a beloved home.

This novel is a sweet read that embodies what it feels like to accept love in all its forms. Lucy’s understanding of what it means to love and be loved is central to the plot and the reader comes away feeling light. Though I wouldn’t classify this novel as a traditional romance, there are certainly some romance elements to it. Lucy comes to love her neighbors, Rennes, and most importantly herself again during the process of renovating the run-down hotel. The pacing of the novel feels appropriate when it comes to the rebuilding of the hotel. The only time it feels off is in regards to Lucy and the love interest. The relationship feels both dragged out and rushed simultaneously in parts. The characters are both middle-aged but their dialogue occasionally felt too young.

Overall, I enjoyed this novel. The story was fun and light. I would recommend it as a beach read or to someone looking for something quick.

First, the not so good...I guess I just didn't expect Lucy to be 50 years old (based on the cover and synopsis) - while this wasn't bad per se, it just wasn't a book I would have necessarily picked. Also, the back story of Lucy's past. It was super important to the story, but just wasn't all that well explained. Finally, the renovation of the hotel was done fairly early in the book, so, again, just not what I expected based on the synopsis.
Next, the pretty good. I mean, the setting of a historical hotel in France was just an idyllic setting. The portrayal of middle aged adults as real people, not stereotypes as grandparents who are beyond the age of living their life was refreshing. The characters - I liked all the different people who lived at the hotel and wished I had known more about them.

I missed reading the description that said the character was 49 until reading the book so I thought as a younger reader Lucy would not be relatable turns out she has the same struggles as most.
It was very reminiscent of the storyline of Under The Tuscan Sun only set in France not Italy and instead of a chateau being remodeled it's a hotel. I was hoping for a bit more romance or more written about Bing and Lucy's budding relationship to really help sell them together especially given the genre of the book, but it was still a cute story.

the Idea of the book is what interested me the most, but it fell short as to what I expected when starting this book.

I would not classify this as a romance, and it is not about a late 20 something either. It’s more of a fiction book with some romance staring a late 40 year old.

Don’t get me wrong it was good and I love a lot of parts of it but, it was not at all what I was expecting and disappointing in the end. That’s why I gave this book a 2/5.

Just when you think like couldn't suck more, you find yourself jobless at the 'young' age of 49, trying to revive a run down hotel in no other place than Paris.

And I think I needed to put myself in Lucy's shoes for just a sec, to understand the concept of feeling depressed due to lack of achieved dreams. That's the full impression I have on myself. I saw myself reflected in Lucy's ordeal and I said to myself: 'well, at least I'm 40, not 49' and I still have a tad bit more energy...'

Dee Ernst brought Lucy to life and made this story, more than a romance, a feel good encouraging book with a lesson: don't ever, EVER mix pleasure with business, and it doesnt matter how old you are, it's NEVER too late to reset your life.

I can't get into to many spoilers, but I have to admit I was a tad bit dissapointed because I expected MORE romance. In the beginning I was thrown off by the MC age, (cause I'm still 40, I dont like to read love stories with a main protagonist older than me) but then again this is NOT a romance per se. Yes, there is sparks and eventually love, but the HEA is not the main goal in this story. Far from it. This is a lesson in how to keep going on when the world turns against you and you feel everything is lost. Its not. There is a light at the end of the tunel. The problem is, I went thru that 15 years ago, and I wish I would've found a different type of motivation innthe story, but mostly LOVE, which IMO fell quite short of.

Everything else is ok I guess. Memorable, but not long lasting. The one thing I do live for? The cover. Its beautiful.

I really loved this book. The cover is perfect, which is what originally drew me to the book. I also really enjoyed Lucy. She's a little bit older than I typically find in many of the books I read, and she's in a very different place in life also. I enjoyed this contrast and it made the book so much fun to read. Of course, I loved that she ended up in Paris to work at and help revitalize an old hotel. Talk about a dream! I will be honest, I didn't totally love the romance aspect of this book. It wasn't as rom-com as I wanted, but it totally works as a women's fiction story. This was a great read and I highly recommend it!

This was a cute 2nd chance, it's never too late romance. I loved that the fmc was older. The setting was perfectly done, lovely image of france. I did have some hang up on the mmc but it didnt pull me out of the story too much. I would recommend this if you want a light read with more story then spice.