Highly readable memoir of Amy Price's time managing the notorious Cecil Hotel on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles. In recent years, the hotel's notoriety primarily stemmed from being the location where Canadian student Elisa Lam disappeared and was eventually discovered dead in the rooftop water tank. Video of Elisa seemingly hiding from someone in the elevator shortly before her death went viral and sparked thousands of amateur online sleuths. But long before Lam, the hotel had a creepy and tragic history. Serial killer Richard Ramirez supposedly stayed there for awhile in the 70s (there's no proof of this). But the sad history mostly stems from the wide variety of poor, mentally ill, and addicts who lived there cheaply as long-term tenants—the kinds of people society tries to ignore and to whom no help is given. For years, often Price was their only link between their filthy one-room apartments and the outside world.

The most shocking story is of the "woman behind the door" who lived in an apartment with a strange man and did nothing but lie in bed under cockroach infested sheets. Despite more than one person reporting her missing and claiming the man was holding her hostage, Price can't get anyone—not the LAPD, not adult protective services, not the fire dept, to see if this woman is alright. (The man also kidnaps a dog and at least an animal agency finally gets the dog out.)

The shameful stories of the mentally ill tenants are bad enough but what is truly shocking is the extreme apathy of the government. In short, no one cares about these people. No one cares if they live or die. No one cares if they break laws. No one cares if they take up the courts with frivolous lawsuits. If you're an avid watcher of crime shows like Law & Order and think cops are essentially good, kind, and hardworking, I urge you to read this book. (It also jibes with any experience I've had with the NYPD—just complete and utter apathy.)

If you're a fan of creepy hotels, this is a must read, however, if you're an Elisa Lam aficionado, be warned the book isn't about that at all. Stick to the YouTube sleuths.

Thank you to #NetGalley, Amy Price, and the publisher for an ARC of Behind the Door in exchange for an honest review.

I received early access to Behind the Door: The Dark Truths and Untold Stories of the Cecil Hotel for in exchange of a review through NetGalley. As a true crime fan I was already familiar with the Elisa Lam story and had seen the Netflix documentary. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book as the author took you through the Cecil's history, she discusses stories of the residents that she had come to known during her 10 year tenure working at the hotel. She touches on the Elisa Lam story but that is not the core focus of this book. She wants people to understand the Cecil's history and shine light on the positive side of the hotel instead of its notorious criminal history.

An inside look at what it was like to work at the Cecil Hotel written by a woman who managed it for a decade. This was after only going there to redecorate one room, a three day job. She later ended up in a Netflix docuseries about the hotel, that brought her a lot of negative attention. She says that much of it was edited to be out of context in many cases. The hotel has long had a creepy reputation and is nearly a hundred years old.

I feel like I was lied to about this book. Sure it does talk about the hotel but that is not the main focus at all. Maybe I would be a little better on the review if the description mentioned that or maybe I wouldn't have even read it we won't know now.

The dark truths and untold stories of the Cecil hotel…… I think it was more about Amy Price.
Sure she mentions some goings on at the hotel but most of the book was about her.
This was not expected.

I am literally Dateline’s number one fan. If I’m ever murdered, I want Keith Morrison to narrate my life.

I am completely and totally obsessed with true crime. When I first heard about the Cecil Hotel mysteries on dateline, I feverishly sought out to watch and read every last detail.

After a bit you start to repeat things you already knew . This was not the case for Behind the Door. Amy Price did a magnificent job sending chills up my spine as I absorbed every last word she wrote . Price had first hand knowledge of what was happening at Cecil, as the general manager. The secrets were explosive and terrifying.

I really hope Amy Price continues to write, she definitely has a natural talent for story telling

If you haven’t heard of the Cecil murders you need this book, if you have heard, you still need the book. 🙃

Teaser:

When Amy Price took a temporary design job at an Art Deco hotel in Los Angeles to help a friend, she had no idea the path it would lead her down. Before long, she would become manager of the Cecil Hotel, seeking to make it more welcoming and correct its notoriety, not helped by sitting at the foot of Skid Row, or the fact that since its opening in 1927, there had been any number of deaths by suicide, and residents such as serial killers Richard Ramirez and Jack Unterweger.

She cared about guests and residents alike, though she faced challenges on many fronts, with over eighty people dying during her decade of service. Among them was Elisa Lam, whose tragic death became the subject of a Netflix documentary series that captivated millions and led to its own controversies and unwarranted personal attacks on Amy.

For the first time, Amy delves into her experiences at the Cecil Hotel. Equal parts memoir, true-crime, and cultural history, Behind the Door is essential to understanding one of America’s most enigmatic hotels.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.
I love true crime and enjoyed the Netflix documentary on the Cecil and its bizarre history.
Good read for me.

I received a free copy of, Behind the Door, By Amy Price, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The Cecil Hotel has always fascinated me, al the deaths and evil surrounding the hotel by skid row. Elisa Lam story is so sad, how did she die? Such a sad story. The Cecil Hotel has so many stories to tell, this book was ok, I was expecting more from it then it delivered.

I'm a voyer. A true crime junky. The creepier the better. So, of course, I watched the Netflix documentary on Elisa Lam and the Cecil Hotel. I watched it a few times. When I saw this book, there was no question, I absolutely had to read it.

The book focuses on the woman who served as the Cecil's manager when Elisa Lam was found and her experience with the hotel before Elisa, during, and after. It's juicy, bizarre, morbid, chilling, funny, haunting, intriguing, spooky.

The story of Mr. Sanchez was particularly unsettling. Not because of him or what happened to him but because Price's opinion on him sounded as though he was wrong for who he was. It rubbed me the wrong way.

This story doesn't get to Elisa until the 46% mark (Chapter Eleven). Just in case that's all you want to read about. Elisa had some rather strange behavior leading up to her going missing. Mostly passive aggressively assaulting other guests and some very odd comments. So, Amy had her moved to a private room, and shortly after she stopped calling her parents and was then reported missing. This book cemented my beliefs of what happened to poor Elisa.

As for the Cecil ... Nothing can contain so much evil and tragedy without becoming tainted, stained.

3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 because Amy Price is one of the lone decent people in LA.

The story is marketed as a recent history of the Cecil Hotel, a landmark Art Deco building in downtown LA steps away from Skid Row. In reality, it’s Amy Price’s memoir of her time at the Cecil - the wild, unpredictable, and overwhelming - juxtaposed with her own complimentary life story. Amy is overly sympathetic, bordering on naive, and it’s interesting to read about how calmly she can handle situations with unstable residents but can’t see past the many, many, many mistakes of her high school sweetheart.

This book is very humble: she doesn’t try to glorify or exaggerate her experiences, speaking in short simple sentences. Amy is earnest in her sympathy for the residents and guests under her care. You can feel her guilt, even years after she’s left the Cecil, that she wasn’t able to help more people. It’s endearing to read.

I am interested in more history of the Cecil and hope Amy is able to find happiness in her post-Cecil life.

Thanks to NetGalley and William Morrow for an advanced copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

I enjoyed this book, enjoyed learning a little history of the hotel behind all the rumors and mystery. If you’re wanting to learn more about the Elisa Lam death, or about Richard Ramirez or any other dark secrets…this is not the book for you. It’s mainly an account of the author’s life and her work history, and way too much about her personal life and boyfriends.
While I did find the hotel parts interesting, I think I just wanted MORE. I’ll admit I wanted more of the creepy and sleazy, less about the author’s moves back and forth across the country. I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone wanting a real history of the Cecil Hotel, even if I did overall enjoy the book. It just wasn’t what it was advertised to be.
Thanks to William Morrow and NetGalley for the advance reading copy!

As someone who was born and raised in Los Angeles, I am very familiar with the Cecil hotel and it's dark history - the serial killers, the suicides, etc. I have even driven by the Cecil hotel when in downtown Los Angeles.

I loved reading about the other residents that lived at there and were overshadowed with the darker news stories. I didn't realize Amy Price was the general manager from the Netflix series until I looked the author up after receiving the ARC. I loved hearing about the positive things she was trying to do for the hotel and for the residents, and the different personalities of those who lived there. This different outlook changed my view of the Cecil hotel and it doesn't seem quite so sinister anymore.

That said, I did rate this three stars for many reasons. I understand the book was part memoir and I loved hearing about Amy's experience in regard to the hotel. However, I could have done without the chapters on her love life. I was more so interested in the hotel and her take on that. Not her on again off again relationship with Teddy, etc. The timeline within the book was very jumpy and confusing as well. There was also a LOT of redundancy because of all the jumping - "More on that later..", "as you will see" were repeated a lot. This felt more like live journal entries than a book.

Overall, if you are interested in learning more about the Cecil hotel despite the usual new stories, I would definitely recommend this book!

Thank you to Netgalley and William Morrow for an advance e-copy of this book.

I enjoyed Behind the Door, a look at the history of the Cecil Hotel. Amy Price seems to have written this in response to the recent Netflix special about the Cecil and death of Elisa Lam. I liked learning about the history as well as the characters that have gone through there.

Could also be titled "In defense of how I reacted acted in the Elisa Lam Netflix special."

In all seriousness, Amy was most definitely trashed after the Netflix docuseries on Elisa's case, and I don't know that she did anything to deserve it. If anything, it shows how desensitized she became to the chaotic nature of the Cecil's clientele. She does come off as pretty defensive here, but again, she was draaaaagged.

I really liked getting a peak into the full picture of the modern Cecil Hotel. It's historically just a very dark and ominous place, and yet not a single ghost story or paranormal-leaning story was told here. (Maybe intentionally, but I like to think she's honestly shared everything worth sharing.)

Thank you NetGalley and William Morrow Publishing for this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book was very informative, and I enjoyed reading it after having watched the Netflix series when it first came out. The timeline skipped around a lot, and the book would have been better in full, rather than partial, chronological order of events. I think this book had a lot of potential. With some rearranging and a change of tone in places, it could go from a decent read to a really great one. This definitely expanded upon the Netflix series and I learned more information about the day-to-day happenings and upper management issues of the hotel. It didn't expand too much on the Elisa Lam case, but it did give more perspective. The chapters about the author's personal life easily could have, and should have, been omitted. I wanted to know more about the hotel, not her ex boyfriends.

There could be a myriad of reasons why one would be familiar with L.A.'s historic Hotel Cecil, a 700-room behemoth on the edge of Skid Row that opened in 1924 as a budget hotel with opulent marble lobby with stained-glass windows, potted palms, and alabaster statuary.

The hotel managed to thrive even through the Great Depression, however, by the 1940s began to experience a decline largely due to the growing influence of its proximity to a burgeoning Skid Row population.

"Behind the Door: The Dark Truths and Untold Stories of the Cecil" is in many ways a companion piece to the 2021 Netflix docuseries "Crime Scene: the Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel" that recounted the hotel's dark history and focused on the mysterious disappearance and death of Elisa Lam, a young Canadian student who was ultimately found naked in the hotel's rooftop cistern.

It was for ten years that Amy Price served as an employee of the hotel, first as a favor to a friend to help in a planned renewal effort around 2007-2008 and through her being named the hotel's general manager and the hotel's eventual closure and sale to Richard Born that resulted in the hotel becoming, in 2021, an affordable housing complex.

With "Behind the Door," Price takes us on a journey through her experiences while at the Cecil Hotel while also painting a portrait of the unique characters who often served as the hotel's residents from those with mental illness to suspected child molesters to a number of folks for whom addiction took its toll and the Cecil became their only affordable option. Price, of course, references the Cecil's most notorious former residents - such as serial killer Richard Ramirez and Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger. Unsurprisingly, Price gives the most time to Lam, whose presence was during the years when Price was GM and whose death led to an extended period of "tragedy tourism" for the hotel.

While the Lam sections are intriguing, they for the most part are familiar for anyone familiar with the story other than offering Price herself the opportunity to present her own theories about what happened to Lam. Her theories, however, align almost perfectly with Lam's actual autopsy and what the official investigation would ultimately conclude - accidental death by drowning complicated by Lam's existing bipolar disorder for which it was believed she'd not been taking her medications.

For the most part, however, "Behind the Door" is less about dark truths and more about the woeful inadequacy of social and justice systems that fail to meet the needs of the people who often filled the halls of the Cecil and those same systems who would often respond slowly, if at all, when these people would experience a crisis while at the hotel. While Price's observations are valuable, and very likely accurate, they are shared with a surprising lack of emotional resonance and with a sort of detached shrug that often feels like the systems she's describing.

Some of this, of course, is reasonable. As someone who worked in crisis intervention for ten years, I'm very aware that a certain amount of detachment is necessary to survive the levels of trauma that one experiences. Considering Price reports having experienced an estimated 80 deaths during her ten years at the Cecil, a certain professional detachment is the only way to survive the experience.

However, the impact becomes that the "dark truths" don't feel quite so dark and the "untold stories" feel sadly familiar. With only relatively brief mentions of Ramirez and Unterweger and very little, if any, recounting of the hotel's early years, "Behind the Door" ends up missing a grand opportunity to really delve into its history of suicides, homicides, and violence. While there's some reference to it, the hotel's reputation as a haunted hotel is largely ignored, while instead "Behind the Door" largely exists as an expose of the attempted renewal of the hotel and that attempt's ultimate failure.

"Behind the Door" is most engaging when Price gives an inside glimpse into the politics of renewal and the people with whom she worked. It has to be a unique experience to work within the walls of the Cecil and Price does a nice job of bringing that experience to life. She also brings to life just how invasive the demands were on her life as this iconic yet troubled hotel seemed to nearly constantly experience a crisis of some sort and time after time she writes of vacations interrupted, evening phone calls, and so much more. It is during these stories that "Behind the Door" most shines, though those hoping for a deep dive into the hotel's great mysteries will likely be at least modestly disappointed.

"Behind the Door: The Dark Truths and Untold Stories of the Cecil Hotel" by Amy Price. (Available 10/3/23) Written by the manager of the infamous Cecil Hotel, located in downtown Los Angeles a block from Skid Row, in response to the NetFlix docuseries "Crime Scene: the Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel", this book goes beyond the deaths (at least 80 in the ten years Price was manager), serial killers-in-residence, and ghost hunting reality shows to remind us that there are (at least) two sides to every story and many, many more stories behind every door at this iconic building. If you are a fan of the docuseries, you may get a lot from this book, but it is not essential that you watch it. That said, yes, there is a heavy emphasis on the mysterious death of Elisa Lam, the elevator video at the heart of the crime investigation and the public obsession to solve the case. When all is said and done, this book is a sad and hollow comment on the current mental health crisis in this country, the overworked, overwhelmed social services and inner city police force tasked to do too much with too little, no matter what spin Price attempts to put upon it. Yes, she manages to humanize many of the residents at the Cecil (be warned - drug use, mental breakdowns, violence and prostitution are on full parade), but in the end, her response to this entire endevour is a dismissive shrug of her shoulders and a "Well, it was a business, so I just did my job". I understand that a reaction is not a review, but this book just made me want a hot shower to wash it off me.

I read another book about the Cecil not long ago, but this one was far better. Written from the perspective of someone who has been there, this book puts readers in the shoes of stand right in the lobby.

Thank you so much for the chance to read this one early! I watched the Netflix show when it first came out and it was so intriguing and interesting to me, so when I saw this book I knew I had to read it. I loved getting a full inside scoop of the Cecil hotel and what it was like. People refer to it in the worst way but hearing from Amy made it seem like a more “normal” place with a lot of characters living and visiting there. The stories were very interesting and so crazy some didn’t seem real (even though I know they were) I just can’t believe a place could have so much trauma.