After reading 10% of the book, I realized that I am probably not the target audience. Going in I expected a history of the hotels (how they came to be and the downfall, societal perceptions, maybe following the lives of a few women's daily routines.....) What I got instead was the author trying to use as many words as he knows to get his point across. At times a SINGLE SENTENCE took up entire page of my kindle. There were sections where the paragraphs were so long that I flipped through multiple pages of the kindle and the paragraph still continued. Reading felt like a chore especially when my eyes kept swimming because there was nothing to break up the text and give my poor brain a chance to breathe.

50% into the book I did start to enjoy the book more, but I think I was too jaded at that point from the awful 1st chapter. Will attempt to reread the book again in a few weeks and see if I can change my mind.

The prologue of Daniel Lavery’s debut novel suggests that he has written a formal history of women’s hotels, residences for single women living alone in big cities until they land a husband; however, what he has penned is a charming, and often poignant tale, told in vignettes, about the denizens of one such hotel, the fictional, second rate, fifteen-story Biedermeier in 1960s mid-town Manhattan. When the story opens, there are only two new residents moving into the Biedermeier on “Moving Week” as young women seem to be moving to the suburbs. The residents are alarmed when the hotel’s diminished fortunes cause its penny-pinching, longtime manager, Mrs. Mossler, to suspend in-room continental breakfast service as the unspoken rule was that no self-respecting Biedermeier girl could be caught scrounging food (which they purloined from a Baptist church or a synagogue or a faculty dining room) between eleven and after dark. Mrs. Mossler’s right-hand, Katherine Heap, the recovering alcoholic and first-floor director (who saw no reason to “push her luck” and live higher than the third floor), handled the odds and ends that might arise, including discouraging men from using the elevators since Stephen, the hotel’s elevator operator who extracted large tips during Moving Week, could not be counted on to do so.

In addition to a legal secretary, a Hunter College student, and a woman who had a “real job” at the New York Transit Authority, a favorite resident is Lucianne, a John Robert Powers girl and a newspaper reporter fluent in the language of clothes. Lucianne covered horses, Anglo-Japanese ceramics and lacquerware, day boating and nouvelle cuisine, but she declined to cover divorces, affairs, engagements or foundation garments. She was in love with Sidney Avery until she concluded that he was discouraging her by ordering ginger ale for both of them. The there is the beautiful new resident Gia Kassab, a ballet dancer, who is disarmingly honest about her singleness of purpose which was to marry her mother’s former beau, Douglas Burgess, an editor at Viking, who was recently widowed.

Lavery, formerly of the beloved defunct website “The Toast,” has written a delightful novel with precise period details, such as automats, cafeterias, and chicken in aspic. Although his ensemble cast of off-beat characters seem light on the surface, Lavery leavens the comedy with unexpected darkness when he lingers in the characters’ backstories. Thank you HarperVia and Net Galley for an advanced copy of this fresh story.

Women's Hotel gives us a window into the lives of a few residents of the Beidermeier. At times, the writing seems to get bogged down in details, but eventually it comes together into a nice story. Light reading, but heavy prose, if that makes sense. This might be better enjoyed in audiobook format.

3.75/5

an interesting read!!

I really love the concept, following the interweaving of a group of women’s’ stories as they navigate their lives within a women’s hotel

I haven’t been able to pinpoint it, but something about the writing style didn’t fully mesh with me, but this could be personal preference! I am someone who typically gravitates towards dual or multiple perspectives in a text, but I did find that the narrative voices of the different characters were difficult to differentiate, and often their alternating perspectives felt similar in tone and voice to one another. This made it difficult for me to truly connect with the cast of characters or become deeply invested in their development as characters.

With that said, the last chapter was fantastic, and had me heavily reconsidering and changing ratings. The ending of the book was raw and unexpected. Fantastic way to tie it all off.

If you prefer plot-driven books to character-driven books, this one likely wouldn’t work well for you, but if you love a very slice of life, mundane set of vignettes centering this women’s hotel, this could be an enjoyable read for you!

Thank you to Netgalley and Harper Collins for this advanced readers copy!

***A big thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for the ARC of this upcoming book***
I was unfamiliar with the author but I stumbled upon this upcoming title and was intrigued by its title and premise. I went into it based off of my initial observations hoping for/expecting a mashup of Mad Men (the book takes place primarily in the 60’s) and The Grand Budapest Hotel. It *kind* delivered on those expectations. The book primarily focuses on a handful of the women living in the New York City hotel and their day to day goings on. There isn’t really a plot, per se, which is fine if the writing is good and the characters leap off the page. I had a hard time differentiating between some of the main characters and the writing wasn’t as approachable as I like it to be.

This book wasn’t my cup of tea but I don’t regret reading it and would recommend it to any readers looking for a time capsule that will show them what life was like for a small group of women trying to make it in Manhattan in the 1960’s.

ultimately this was too wordy for me and poorly described by the publisher so maybe i was putting it up against unfair expectations. ALL vibes no plot but like very fine vibes.

The Women’s Hotel has an unexpected commonality with Seinfield, which is about “nothing,” but actually is a canny and compulsively entertaining examination of the quirks, misunderstanding, stratagems, assumptions, social connections, and cultural pulse of friends bound by time and circumstance in a very specific part of New York. The same could be said for The Women’s Hotel by Daniel M. Lavery, which is about a slowly fading New York specialty hotel for women, mostly young or youngish overseen by Mrs. Mossler, a vaguely kind but absent-minded manager who is happy to delegate most of her responsibilities to even kinder (to the extent of being a pushover), Katherine, whose reflexive generosity covers an uncertain sense of self and a burned bridges family scrapbook. Lavery shows an unflagging interest in the smallest details of the lives of its residents, who run the gamut from leftist activism to wannabe socialites to models, stock room workers, bartenders, shop girls, journalists, typists and office staff; they are all just scraping by. The residents are hunting for husbands, for independence, for friendship, for freedom, for an end to capitalism, for a celebration of it, for sobriety, and they are uniformly fascinating. This is due in no small part from the narrative tangents Lavery employs detailing bad bosses and worse mothers, the social repressions of gay culture in the 1960s, the small to medium shady practices some working and out of work women use to supplement their incomes, and especially, the often hilarious, often poignant interactions of borders with very different agendas. Lavery lavishes a good part of this slim book in setting the scene, which can be off-putting initially, but his observations are droll and acute, so the slower pace pays off. There is not much of a plot, other than the repercussions and rebellion against the new cost saving policy of eliminating free breakfast. But Lavery is able to string a wealth of character exploration, historical positioning and social commentary on this premise, it is well worth a visit. Recommended.

Sometimes you hear the phrase “no plot, all vibes” to describe a novel, but this one managed to feel more like “no plot, no vibes”, yet still somehow kept me reading. It’s been hard to really describe how I felt about it - I enjoyed the characters (at least, to the extent that we got to know them) and I enjoyed the concept of a group of young people all living together in hotel with a college dorm-type atmosphere, but the lack of a throughline and depth of the characters kept me constantly wanting more to grasp onto.

It’s hard to pin down what Women’s Hotel is really “about” since there’s not really a central plot, but it follows a small cast of characters that are living and/or working in a women’s hotel in NYC in the 1960s in sort of a slice of life type of way. It unfolds as a series of vignettes or scenes that almost feels like episodes of a tv show. If I had to identify a “main” character around which many of the vignettes revolve, that would be Katherine - a young woman who we eventually come to learn moved away from home under difficult circumstances and who is leaning into her found family in and around the hotel as the hotel’s manager. In addition to Katherine, we also get stories that involve the hotel’s owner Mrs. Mossler, the elevator operator Stephen, and hotel tenants Lucianne, Gia and Ruth, among others.

The concept of the women’s hotel was really fascinating to me, and I really liked its feel of a more mature type of sorority house. Each character is completely quirky, odd and eccentric in their own way, and I really enjoyed the humor in the prose as we heard their stories. It was honestly really funny, and I don’t say that lightly about novels! But at the same time, it was almost unnecessarily verbose, and would veer off into waxing poetic about the most inconsequential details, which took me out of the story. I really enjoyed getting to know our characters in the hotel and certainly enjoyed the witty prose, but then I often felt that as soon as I was getting to know a character, the chapter would end and we’d move on to a different character and set of circumstances, leaving me unsettled.

All in all, it was a mundane yet charming read that was nothing like I’ve read before - the publisher compares it to Lessons in Chemistry and personally I don’t see any similarities there. True, they both made me laugh at times, but for very different reasons and they have very different vibes. While overall it had a number of things to like, I wish it would have had more of a cohesive plotline to pull everyone and everything together. Thank you so much to NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Enjoyable! I laughed, I pondered. There was a mix of joyful, funny moments, sad or stressful moments, and insightful quips about humanity. I loved Katherine and Lucianne’s stories. Ruth and J.D. were compelling. Overall an interesting look into a forgotten time period and a world that I don’t feel I’ve seen much about, so I appreciated the chance to learn more. Thanks Netgalley!

Women’s Hotel is set in the early 60s and centers around the lives of various women living in the same hotel. I will jump into and read anything set in this time period but unfortunately, this novel did not deliver.
The blurb also says for fans of Bonnie Garmus’s “Lessons In Chemistry” and I feel that is a bit of a stretch.
The pacing is at an achingly dull rate and an overwhelming amount of inner dialogue without much happening or adding to the plot.

Publication date October 15, 2024.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperVia for allowing me to read and review Women’s Hotel by Daniel M. Lavery.

A cozy book for a cozy fall. As I have been for years and years, I was delighted by Lavery's writing. This book, his first novel, truly lets his knack for prose shine. A perfect example of little plot, all vibes, I loved the peek into 1960s NYC via the strange concept of a women's hotel in the heart of the city. As we follow the lives of the women who occupy the building, my only complaint is that we didn't have as much time as I would have liked with each character. Lavery creates characters who are complex, vivid, and sharp. This book is the same, and I'm so happy he's now writing novels because I can't wait for more.

3.49

“Women’s Hotel” is a very difficult book to pin down, especially a book like this about women and their inner thoughts and written by a man, though I did not realize that until the end. That must be a compliment.

I almost said it was a difficult story to pin down, but I struggled to find the central story, other than the end of the Biedermeier Hotel and the era of women’s hotels. After a forward all about women’s hotels and then Mrs. Mossler’s story, it was a while before I could even pin down when most of this book took place.


About fifteen pages in, we met Katherine, who runs the day-to-day management of the hotel, some of it by default. Soon, she meets with several of the “girls”, so it then seems that the story will be from Katherine‘s perspective, but as part of a full ensemble. We then flash back into Katherine ‘s full backstory, which is a little odd, just like Katherine (though far from the oddest). We learn about her alcoholism and what brought her to New York. I don’t know how prevalent alcoholism is in the situation like hers, but it is something that feels somewhat unlikely. I won’t judge since I don’t know and I also realize that everybody’s story is different.


Different characters have different spotlights throughout the book, but Katherine is more heavily featured. There are characters being “spotlighted” even beyond the 80% mark, which just feels disjointed because we dive into the inner monologue of their life when their name has only been mentioned once much earlier in the book. Keeping all of the characters straight was hard enough already. Some are more heavily featured than others. The people you thought were a little more “normal” are so only by comparison. I guess that’s what happens when it seems to be the only hotel that will house women who can’t afford much at all, in exchange for declining amenities and conditions.


The oddities of the characters leads to some of the uneasiness factor, but is also part of what makes this book unique and engaging. It’s a very interesting read, and if it had presented some more cohesion and continuity, I think it would have been excellent. The rest of the elements ultimately overshadowed the extremely witty cadence, particularly parts told through Katherine.

Though I didn’t notice the first name of the author until the end, it now makes me wonder how the story might have read differently had I known the author was male. Though I don’t want to read it again, I wish I had that lens now to see what differences might appear.

Thank you to Daniel M. Lavery, NetGalley, and HarperVia for providing me with a free advanced copy of this book in exchange for my unbiased review.

I wanted to like this. It’s a premise I enjoy, character studies of a group of people. But it’s just boring.

It centers, per the title, on a hotel in 1960s New York that serves women. The tenants, owner and the elevator operator are our main focuses.

But it’s just dull. Lovely writing but that’s not enough to keep me interested.

I absolutely loved the concept of this book and the idea of us as the reader getting glimpses of the residents of the hotels lives but it was overall a miss for me.

I know many people are going to love this one but it sadly wasn’t for me. I wanted to really dig into the lives of the characters but it ended up feeling a bit too surface for me. I just didn’t connect to the characters like I wanted to.

I loved the way the Daniel Lavery writes and would definitely read another book by him in the future.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC!

Absolutely fantastic plot! Could not put the book down once I began reading it. Cannot wait for it to be released. I will recommend it to everyone I know!

As someone who has been fascinated by the idea of women's hotels since reading The Bell Jar, this was such a fun read. I loved the atmosphere and the richly drawn characters. I found myself smiling while I read more often than not. What an excellent slice of life in the strange microcosm of the Biedermeier.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3/5 stars)

Women's Hotel by Daniel M. Lavery has all the ingredients for a witty, trenchant look at the lives of women in a crumbling institution. With a quirky cast of characters like Katherine, the lightly cynical manager, Lucianne the workshy party girl, and Stephen, the part-time elevator operator, this novel sets up a stage ripe for both humor and insight. And yet... it’s just meh.

Don’t get me wrong—the premise is solid, and there’s definitely some humor sprinkled throughout. Lavery has a gift for sharp one-liners and situational irony that gave me a few chuckles. The book draws comparisons to the likes of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Lessons in Chemistry, and I could see glimpses of that kind of wit. But unlike those stories, Women’s Hotel doesn’t fully land the emotional punch or offer enough narrative momentum to keep me fully invested.

The problem? The characters felt underdeveloped. While they’re quirky, they’re also kind of... bland? There’s a lot of potential in their situations—struggling at dead-end jobs, juggling failed ambitions—but the emotional depth I wanted just wasn’t there. The plot meanders, and while that can work in character-driven novels, I found myself losing interest as the story shuffled along without much growth or change for the residents of the Beidermeier. The stakes felt low, and as much as I wanted to connect with their struggles, I just didn’t feel that spark.

That said, Women’s Hotel has its charm. If you’re into lightly cynical, slice-of-life novels that offer subtle humor and dry observations about the absurdities of life, this book might still be worth a read. Just don’t go in expecting the depth or emotional heft of a true modern classic.

This was simply just not it for me. I tried to get into this, but quickly realized there was nothing actually happening. No plot as it just felt like I was meandering through it and forcing myself to read more and that's not enjoyable so I just stopped. DNF.

I really loved the first 100 pages of this book. I enjoyed the characters, each of them with their quirks and hopes and dreams. Each of them had flaws, making them feel real and tangible. I especially loved Katherine. I thought the writing was fun and cozy and lighthearted, with a meandering pace that was quite enjoyable. I liked how it kind of jumped between characters, zooming into one woman’s life then back out to the hotel as a whole. Overall, while it was fairly mundane it was still quite charming and I was enjoying it. However, after 100 pages the mundane charm was no longer enough to hold my interest. It also became abundantly clear the story was generally plotless. There were a few side plots, but no concrete main plot. It really was only about the women’s lives, with no major thread outside of their residence really tying them together. At the very end a plot sort of appeared, and I did not like it. And then the book just sort of ended, without feeling adequately wrapped up. So overall this book started off
fairly enjoyable but ended up lackluster.

I loved Lavery’s writing on The Hairpin and The Toast, and was not disappointed! A fun take on places like The Barbizon. Would recommend.