This book was an interesting challenge for me. I went in expecting literary horror and came out the other side reeling from the deep exploration of grief and trauma. Much more a story about the generational ripples of trauma as result of the war over a dark gothic horror story. I enjoyed the book overall but at times found the writing to be monotonous and slow moving.

This was such an interesting story! At the heart of it seems to be a reflection of grief and mental health and isolation and motherhood, all in the shadows of the Korean War. The imagery is fantastic, creepy and haunting and so striking that you can't help but devour each individual word and how the sentences string together. There's a constant fight as to what is reality and what is delusion, and the author plays with the battle so well, toying with the reader but also drawing lines in a clear, beneficial way. Can't wait to see what comes next out of this author!

What an interesting and atmospheric story! The bones in the bathtub really got me, and I loved the confusing nightmarish quality to the main character's reality/dreams. I do wish there was more of a climax, I felt like things could have woven a little closer together or taken a deeper darker plunge. Overall though, this was a wonderful debut with some heartbreaking stories in it, and my god! I cannot ever look at a bathtub the same lol. Can't wait to read more from this author.

This book will be included in a reading vlog on my booktube channel, I'll update the link when I post it.

Yeah it was ok. I was hoping for a bit more but it was decent enough. Well written but a bit montonal.

I didn't connect with the story like I normally would but I did finish it and would recommend if you like literary fiction but I don't think I would recommend if you are just looking for horror.

A darkly atmospheric story of the legacy of the Korean war, this was an absorbing but elusive book, I have to admit. It didn't quite hold up to its billing as 'gothic horror' for me, but in its own way it held my attention.

Yewon works in a convenience store, and lives in the small village of her mother, who ritually washes the bones of the dead in her bathtub. Yewon also suffers from recurring dreams of a hotel, with lots of rooms and keys, so clearly there is something troubling her. Her family life is fractured, her brother is in the army and stationed on the border, and then there is a North Korean woman who asks Yewon for help in driving her to visit her brother in prison.

I'm not sure I quite grasped all of the threads, I have to be honest. I felt like something more was going to happen, so maybe I just felt a little confused. Certainly well--written, with lots going on beneath the surface, but it just didn't quite grip me enough. Probably 3.5 stars, but I can't quite round it up.

(With thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC of this title.)

(I received this book from the editor and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review)

This is one of those (not so) rare occasions in which I find myself speechless after reading a novel, but I will try to make sense of my thoughts: The Invisible Hotel, by Yeji Y. Ham, is said to be part of the gothic tradition, but I feel like ‘gothic’ is not precise enough to convey the eeriness that, similar to a dense fog, swallows the reader in its words, thoughts and, above all, feelings.
There is something about the way the author writes that reminds me of watching something through a blurry filter; you kind of see what is going on, but you cannot be sure whether everything is real or your brain is completing the blank spots with something it already knows (or thinks it knows).
Thus, the pages come and go and the rooms of the hotel open widely, but for most of the time the blur is all that stays. Sadly.

"The Invisible Hotel" is a haunting and evocative work of literary horror that delves into the depths of trauma, memory, and the collective psyche of a nation.

This story is now scratched into my soul and its ghostly presence will linger on for a while. This book is billed as horror, and while things are quite horrific, the reader will not have the same tense sleep-with-the-lights-on energy while reading this book. The imagery presented in the pages is both haunting and sad, it takes generational trauma and manifests it into a physical presence. This is the story of Yewon. Yewon dreams of an abandoned hotel filled with closed doors, a deteriorating and destroyed interior and a pool straight out of a nightmare. In her waking life she is falling apart. The sudden death of her father, the closing of her workplace and the desire to move away from home leaves her adrift. Her brother is away for his mandatory military service and her sister is acting distant and closed off. Her mother spends all her days caring for the bones of their ancestors in the houses only bathtub. Every house has these bones that they care for as reminders of all that was lost. War is a many tentacled beast that refuses to let go of its prey and the entire peninsula of Korea is in its grasp. They fight as hard as they can to forget the duty of the bones but the threat of war looms constantly over their heads as north Korea is still partitioned off and frequently causes concern with missile launches. Through all this chaos in her life she continues to dream of the hotel… This is a very dark coming of age story that is complex, deep and littered with symbolism.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

I feel as though marketing this as suspense or gothic fiction isn’t doing the story justice. I’d describe it as some sort of speculative historical fiction/ literary fiction. Even as someone who has almost no working knowledge of the Korean War - the emotional impact of this book still definitely landed. This book is a very nuanced and beautiful exploration of generational trauma.

If you are interested in any of these things - I think you’ll love this book. It is very much outside of what I usually read, and therefore I’m not sure that I was the ideal audience for this story.

What begins as an interesting premise quickly becomes boring and I found myself not caring about where it was going before I even reached the halfway mark.

This book is haunting. There is a level of creepy and eerie throughout the entirety of this novel that the author nailed perfectly. That being said I felt the story itself left something to be desired.

This novel was vey haunting.

The bones is a metaphor - in a way - to the loss of those who were close to us, and the rebirth of a new life. This story takes you to the lows of war and he affects it has on those living in it. Our main character goes through a lot of inner turmoil and is trying to discover herself within her family and her home town.

The author does a fantastic job at distinguishing between reality and the hotel. I get chills reading about it and what it all means.

Overall, a great novel, there are a few parts here and there that could just more explanation, but that does not deter from the story.

In this claustrophobic novel it's not a "ghost" ghost haunting Yewon, but the ghost of a country ripped apart by war. This novel's blurbs call it gothic horror - I wouldn't put it in this category. It's war history, it's family trauma, bleak, with a sliver of hope.

Yewon is a young woman in a tiny village in South Korea, a village pillaged by war, a war the elders seem to relive every day. The bones of the village ancestors live in Yewon's bathtub, her mother washes them, the women in the family give birth on them. The novel was abstract and terrifying, with Yewon going in and out of her nightmare of being in the hotel. I couldn't tell if the bones were real or a metaphor. The abrupt changes and odd settings made this one hard to follow and disorienting,

My thanks to NetGalley and Zando Projects for the ARC.

I think the marketing was a little off the mark on this one; the genre is listed as horror, but I think that will confuse people's expectations. There's a lot of stuff that is very horrific - it's a book about war, family, and generational trauma at its core after all, but I don't think the storytelling style or writing or even plot are what anyone will expect when picking up a book marked as 'horror'.

That all said, I really enjoyed this. The writing is dreamlike and emotional, and the story is surreal if maybe a little slow. We follow a small main group of characters that consist of the immediate members of a family, with the main focus being on/from one of the daughters, Yewon. She's dealing with a lot, and is struggling emotionally with all of it. The anxieties and traumas and issues she's internalizing due to what's happening around her - things ranging from the recent death of her father to a precarious political climate - end up manifesting as a super creepy hotel in Yewon's dreams, and even in her waking hours.

I don't want to say too much more because I think the story is more impactful knowing less, but I would recommend this if you're open to 'horror' that's written as an examination of grief and trauma moreso than in an effort to scare you or overwhelm you with blood & guts.

The affects of the Korean War and the separation of North and South is a deep undercurrent affecting cultural identity. Yeji Y Ham brilliantly explores this through her character Yewon. It is a tale of inherited and generational trauma and the long arm of war and it's subtle affects on the psyche of a nation through the lens of an individual.

Highly recommend.

Was really excited about the description of this book, but unfortunately hat to DNF :( Shouldn’t have been marketed as a horror in my opinion.

Unfortunately a DNF for me around 25%. Although the literary horror concept intrigued me, the writing style felt very sparse and cold. I was hoping to feel immersed and unsettled, but wasn’t getting there for me personally.

This book was truly a wild ride and I don't know how I can even summarize it well. Billed as a horror novel, I don't think that's accurate. It is hugely atmospheric, however. There's a pervasive sense of dread, or creepiness, or a haunting feeling throughout it all, but I wouldn't say it's horror. I felt for large parts of the book I wasn't completely clear on what was going on, and what was reality and what was conjured in a dream-like state. I think that's part of the appeal, however. Even though I couldn't figure out things like the bones -- are they really washing bones? what is this? -- the hotel -- what is this a metaphor for? -- I couldn't put the book down. I'm sure there's some deeper symbolism in all of this, and my understanding only scratched the surface. The main character, Yewon, sort of drifts through life in a dream-like state, not super clear on her direction in life, and obviously dealing with some deep (generational?) trauma. I think that's ultimately what the book is about -- this shared trauma and unresolved history of the Korean war, but again, much of the symbolism maybe went over my head. All in all, though, I did enjoy it. It was like nothing I've ever read and it was compelling in it's creepiness and ambiguity.

A hypnotic and haunting debut that submerses you into the less obvious horrors of war- the struggle to live in a turbulent world knowing everything could disappear in an instant? How do you go on about your life with that fear? Or have children knowing that it's a part of their inheritance? The book's narrator Yewon wants answers to these questions. She's trapped in her hometown it's macabre traditions and her familial obligations while awake and in sleep is stuck in the titular 'invisible hotel'. She explores it's halls and encounters the living ghosts trapped in an unending nightmare that seeps more and more into her waking life. This is a lyrical psychological horror that I'm going to need to sit with for a while before I fully come to terms with it but it will definitely stay with me.

4.5/5

This book was absolutely haunting. Scary at time, definitely a bit creepy or eerie, but I think I would stay away from classifying it as “horror.” I kept waiting for the borrow elements to come out, and I am still waiting. I don’t think that’s at all a flaw of the book - I actually think veering into gothic horror would detract from it - just a flaw of the marketing or labeling.

This book deals with generational trauma in such a literal way, it’s impossible to overlook it. The constant refrain of the bones haunted me when I put the book down, and I’m still left thinking about them. This is a phenomenal debut book, and the writing is really wonderful given that fact.

The characters and setting were also very well executed, with our main character falling into her hotel nightmares/dreams with me barely realizing she had. I think I was lost a little on the exact details of that part, but I think that’s okay. I don’t have to understand the technicals perfectly to understand it.

Thanks to netgalley & Zando for the advanced copy!